Category Archives: Politics

Bill Lockwood: May Christians be Engaged in Politics? 0 (0)

by Bill Lockwood

“Politics” is one of those words that has taken on ugly connotations in almost every context in which it is used. It has the air of manipulating people for some personal gain. Indeed, one of the definitions of “politic” is “shrewd, crafty, unscrupulous.” If we leave it right there, then the issue of Christian involvement settles itself.

However, political science refers to the methods and principles of governing. When used in this sense, it is more statecraft, which is “the art of managing state affairs.” Used in this way the entire issue of Christian participation takes on a different color. Let’s back up to some basics.

Genesis Account

God created man in his own image (Gen. 1:26). Only mankind (humanity) was created by God with this “image.” This apparently refers to the capacity of humans to exercise free will; to have moral sensitivity; to manage rational behavior. The point, however, is that humankind only, of all of God’s creation, has intrinsic value. 

An extension of this value is liberty—freedom of movement and choice. This is man’s endowment from God because man cannot sustain himself without labor or work. Man is to utilize (subdue, have dominion over, Gen. 1:28) the creation to that end. The original order from the Creator was to work or labor in order to eat (Gen. 2:15-16). God’s design therefore implies liberty in order to accomplish this.  

At the same time, private property is an extension of my labor, an extension of myself. “Thou shalt not steal” implies private ownership of property. Even the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the same in 1972 in Lynch v. Household Finance. Property rights are “fundamental civil rights.” Further, the right to property is inseparable from the right to liberty. One cannot exist without the other.

What is Law?

“Law” is simply “rule of action.” Frederic Bastiat, in his classic essay The Law, wrote it best. “Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” Are Christians banned from crafting laws by which to protect their God-endowed rights? Surely not.

Law then, as Bastiat breaks it down, is defined as “the common force that protects this collective right [and it] cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute.” That is to say, law is the common force of a number of people and only has the authority of those individuals in defense of life, liberty, and property. 

We ask: Is it right to defend my life with force? If yes, then, I may do it collectively as well with a “common force.” Is it right to defend my liberty with force? My property? “Thou shalt not steal” is again, good law—but it is meaningless without an enforcement mechanism. Empty words without teeth. Remember, even the apostles carried swords (Luke 22:38).

If the answer to any of these questions is “no” then we might ask how was it that God Himself so provided for those things in the Old Testament? Defense of any of these is certainly not inherently wrong. The “common force” is nothing less than government. If a Christian may engage in defense of life, liberty or property as an individual, he or she may do so as part of government.

Is it possible that a “common force” (government) can be used for nefarious ends? Of course. But it is also possible for the collective force or governing authority to do right. This is the basis of Romans 13:1-7.

The New Testament

Let’s check our answer with the New Testament. The apostle Paul was arrested in Jerusalem (Acts 23). Kept in a Roman prison, he discovered that a plot had been laid for his life by the Jews. This conspiracy (23:12) was made known to Paul by his nephew while visiting the apostle. Paul instructed the young lad to take the information to the commandant. The commandant considered the news credible and prepared almost 500 armed soldiers—acting as a police force and deterrent to the murderous plot of the Jews—to transport Paul to Caesarea.

Here is a case of an apostle, utilizing the lethal force of government to protect his life and ensure a miscarriage of justice did not occur. It is certainly right to use violence for self-preservation. If it is right for Paul to use it, it is right for another Christian to participate in the governing authority that Paul used.

It seems less than satisfactory for one to respond, “Well, the Roman soldiers and governing authorities are going to hell anyway, so let them to the killing.” By that lack of rationale one would hope that conversions among the military or police or state officials would not occur so that we may protect ourselves with the devil’s population!

It seems clear that a Christian may engage in statecraft—organizing laws and regulations for a community based upon Christian standards, including enforcement mechanisms. The only issue therefore, is: What kind of governance is it by which we can best maintain the liberties granted to us by God? The perfect answer is provided succinctly by the one and only Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson

In a letter to Gideon Granger in 1800 Jefferson explained how centralization of government would lead to despotism and loss of freedom.

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens, and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite the public agents to corruption, plunder and waste. And I do verily believe, that if the principle were to prevail, of a common law being force in the United States, … it would become the most corrupt government on the earth.

If you wish to maintain your liberties, keep the governing powers local. With words that are so accurate they ring prophetic, he continued,

What an augmentation of the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building and office-hunting would be produced by an assumption of all the State powers into the hands of the General Government. The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the States are independent as to everything within themselves, and united as to everything respecting foreign nations. Let the General Government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our General Government may be reduced to a very simple organization and a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.

Bill Lockwood: Good-bye American Heritage? 0 (0)

by Bill Lockwood

The inspiring ideals enshrined in the founding documents of our nation include a limited government that allows maximum personal freedom, equality of opportunity, and equal justice under the law. These are founded upon the pillars of inalienable rights, including the fact that all men are created by God as equal. But we have gone about “as far left” as socialist policies can take us if the Democratic debates are an indication of where America will be tomorrow.

“Our job,” Bernie Sanders spouted in the Iowa debate, “is to build the United Nations.” Not surprising from a socialist who has been photographed enjoying toasts with the leader of the old Soviet Union’s gulag communistic state. But frightening that he maintains substantial support in the Democratic Party.

The United Nations has been from its inception a design for socialistic world government. In its most recent COP 25 climate summit in Madrid, Spain, Executive Director Stuart Scott called for the UN to implement drastic population-control policies and “family planning” such as control the Chinese. Other plans include a massive transfer of wealth from “western countries” (read, “United States”) to third world poorer nations in the form of “climate reparations.” The UN is a world dictators’ dream. This is what Bernie Sanders favors. National Socialism is not brave enough—we need International socialism.

It is inescapable, however, that we have already lost so many of our freedoms that have made America the envy of the world. Whether due to taxes, to regulations on our businesses, farms, homes, cars, to our activities, to our speech, and to our abilities to exercise without government interference our religious liberty—our American heritage has dwindled.

So the issue is whether we will preserve even the semblance of our once-cherished ideals of limited government, the sovereignty of the States, the protection of life and property that is so nobly enshrined in our founding documents? Will we maintain any semblance of our freedom over our own health care or will we capitulate to the totalitarian proposals of the Democrats by which the government becomes a monopoly funded 100% by the American taxpayer? Will we continue the path to a more limited government under president Donald Trump or listen to the siren song of socialists?

Samuel Padover edited Thomas Jefferson’s letters in Thomas Jefferson on Democracy. He refers to Jefferson as “the St. Paul of American democracy.” Padover completes his introduction;

“The modern trend is in the direction of greater concentration of power in the hands of government. The problem of individual freedom within the framework of a more or less regulated economy will have to be fought out in our age, just as the question of political liberty and the free market were the issues in Jefferson’s day. … Jefferson felt that without liberty, life was not worth living. …In the difficult years that undoubtedly lie ahead, Americans will have to gather all their moral forces for the preservation of their way of life, their liberties, and their opportunities.”

These words were written in 1939.

William F. Jasper: Socialists Stop Spread of Success 0 (0)

by William F. Jasper

The United Nations and the Socialist International are waging war against Chile and its conservative president, Sebastián Piñera. Since mid-October, Chile’s capital, Santiago, and other cities across the country have been wracked by violent riots, with dozens of people killed, thousands injured (including hundreds of police and military personnel), thousands arrested, and an enormous amount of destruction of public infrastructure and private property, including train stations, businesses, shops, and supermarkets.

The Piñera government declared a state of emergency and imposed curfews. President Piñera faces a National Congress that is stacked against him, as well as a hostile media, and leftist-controlled universities that serve as hotbeds for revolution.

The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, has responded to the turmoil by sending a team of UN investigators to Chile to examine allegations of human rights abuse by the Chilean government. This move by the UN should have caused suspicion from the get-go. Why? Well, for one thing, Michelle Bachelet is herself a former president of Chile (two terms, 2006-2010 and 2014-2018) and a virulent opponent of President Piñera. That alone should lead any reasonable observer to suspect, at the very least, that her UN “investigation” is likely to be politically motivated.

However, it goes much deeper than that. Bachelet, a hardcore Marxist, is an ardent admirer of the late communist dictator Fidel Castro, and, as one of her last acts as president of Chile, made a pilgrimage to Cuba to praise Fidel and meet with his designated successor and brother, Raúl Castro, the current communist dictator of Cuba. She is also a supporter of the Marxist regimes in Nicaragua and Venezuela.

In the 1970s, Bachelet left Chile and moved to communist East Germany, then one of the most oppressive dictatorships in the Soviet bloc. Moreover, Bachelet is a longtime member of, and was elected president while the leader of, Chile’s ultra-left Socialist Party, which is a member of the Socialist International, the global cabal of more than 135 national political parties from all continents, including former communist parties that have rebranded themselves as socialist or social democrat.  The secretary-general of the Socialist International is Luis Ayala, a radical Chilean who is a close comrade of Bachelet in the Socialist Party. Bachelet was selected for the UN high commissioner post by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, a former president of the Socialist International. Although barely known in the United States (because it is seldom mentioned by our controlled “mainstream” media — and is even largely ignored by our alternative media), the Socialist International (SI) virtually runs the United Nations and many of its agencies, with Guterres being only the most obvious example of its influence.

Another SI/UN alum is former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, a former member of Chile’s Socialist Party and one of the Chileans often quoted in recent stories undermining President Piñera. He is also one of the few SI members named to the “Committee of Twelve Distinguished Members of the Socialist International.” In 2007, he was named as a UN special envoy on climate change, along with former SI vice president and UN functionary Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former prime minister of Norway.

Bachelet, Guterres, Lagos, Brundtland, and other SI/UN comrades are welcomed as honored guests at the CFR and other globalist gatherings. Bachelet and Lagos are both members of the elite Club of Madrid, as well as Inter-American Dialogue, where both have served as co-chairs.

The cause of Chile’s current “unrest,” according to the lords of the Fake News Media, was the government’s subway fare hike of 30 pesos, the equivalent of four U.S. cents. Anger over the fare increases, goes the standard line from media commentators, caused spontaneous, “student-led” flash mobs of hundreds of youths to jump the Metro turnstiles in protest, which then escalated to “youth-led” mobs setting buses and Metro stations on fire and looting stores, and then escalated still further and broadened into massive protests, supposedly motivated by “income inequality.”

This is the story we get from the New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, CNN, PBS, and the rest of the Deep State media cartel. Most of these “news” reports take their cues on the issue from so-called experts at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Council of the Americas, Inter-American Dialogue, and similar globalist propaganda founts that posture as objective think tanks.

According to Amelia Cheatham, a “Special Assistant” at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), “The turmoil began on October 18 with student-led protests over a metro fare increase.” Her CFR blog post entitled “What’s Behind the Chile Protests?” states that “Political unrest is sweeping Chile, as impatience with inequality grows in what has been one of Latin America’s most prosperous and stable countries.”

President Piñera and other Latin American leaders paint a different picture. “We are at war against a powerful enemy, who is willing to use violence without any limits,” Piñera declared in a late-night televised statement on October 29. “We are very aware that [the perpetrators of riots] have a degree of organization, logistics, typical of a criminal organization,” he said. According to news reports from Chile, Cuban and Venezuelan nationals were arrested as instigators of the rioting. And Chile is not alone in this regard.

On October 22, Argentina’s National Security Council met to consider the wave of violent protest that is sweeping across Latin America. Following the meeting, Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie pointed to Cuba and the Marxist dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela as the source of the orchestrated upheavals. “They intend to intervene in the political, institutional and social lives of our countries, threatening us like a Bolivarian hurricane that brings in its winds hunger, poverty, dictatorship, the loss of liberty and a prison sentence,” Faurie charged. “Bolivarian” refers to the political philosophy of Venezuela’s founding father, Simón Bolívar, which has been expropriated and hybridized by Hugo Chávez, Nicolás Maduro, and others of the communist-Left to advance their socialist agendas.

TNA: https://www.thenewamerican.com/print-magazine/item/34153-socialists-stop-spread-of-success


William F. Jasper is an American journalist and author, and a senior editor of The New American, and long-time member of the John Birch Society.

David Horowitz: Anatomy of a Lynching/The political uses of race. 0 (0)

by David Horowitz

Editor/Writer’s note: Anti-white racism and generalized ignorance so permeate our media elites and elected officials today that some common sense reminders are in order. Lynching – named after a Judge Lynch – was a form of Alice-in-Wonderland Frontier Justice: first comes the verdict and the punishment, then the trial.

Although a repugnant racial dimension eventually entered into its practice it was carried out against criminals — white as well as black — whose victims lynch mobs feared would not get justice in the courts. One third of all lynch victims were white. Impatience with due process is endemic to the progressive Left, the #MeToo mobs, the Destroy-Brett-Kavanaugh-Feminists and the Remove-President-Trump-Democrats. Why hold Star Chamber impeachment “inquiries” where the president has no rights if their purpose is really to inquire rather than what it obviously is — to convict and punish?
Below we are reprinting a Frontpage article by David Horowitz about how he learned the truth about the most famous lynching of all, and discovered what its real political agendas were. We are also linking a talk he gave on “progressive racism” which is in effect the lynching mentality of our time.

According to President Obama racism is “part of the DNA” of America, transmitted through the generations from its origins right to the present.  This statement is perhaps the most malicious libel ever uttered by an American president against his own country. It is true that racism became one of the rationales for slavery, an institution America inherited from the British Empire before abolishing it. But slavery existed in Africa for a thousand years before a white person ever set foot there, and for 3,000 years in all societies. It is what peoples of all races and ethnicities imposed on their enemies when they conquered them. Moreover, for 3,000 years no one declared slavery to be immoral – not Aristotle, not Moses, not Jesus, not the African slavers – until white Protestant Christians in England did so towards the end of the 18th Century. At that time, in Britain’s North American colonies a white slave owner named Thomas Jefferson wrote into the birth certificate of a new nation the proposition that liberty is a God-given right, which government cannot take away – and equality too. Within little more than a generation, and at the cost of 350,000 Union lives, slavery was abolished in America, and then rapidly throughout the Western hemisphere.

In other words, every black person alive in this country today owes his or her freedom to America – to the Americans who conceived this nation in liberty and gave their lives to make it so. That is the true DNA of America: liberty, not racism. An unappreciated effect of Obama’s libel is to persuade large numbers of black Americans that it is true, and thus to alienate them from their own country and make them feel like outsiders in a land whose heritage they are a part of. Black people are as American as any race or ethnicity who came or were brought to these shores. They arrived in 1619, before the Mayflower and have been an essential part of America’s culture and history ever since.

Sometimes it takes years to ingest so crucial a fact. Sometimes, even a lifetime is insufficient as President Obama has shown. Even then, the knowledge can be lost through the ignorance or prejudice of the next generations. In the 1960s radicals rallied around the slogan, “You can’t trust anyone over 30,” which was an expression of youthful arrogance and poor judgment. Because youth lack real world experience, the slogan “Be cautious about the conclusions of anyone under 30” would have been a more reasonable counsel.

When I was eleven years old, a book came into our progressive household titled We Charge Genocide. It was published by an organization calling itself the Civil Rights Congress and was a book-length petition calling on the United Nations to condemn the United States for conducting genocide against American Negroes (as they were then referred to). The frontispiece to the book featured a photograph of a lynching that took place in Indiana in August 1930. It was, in fact, the most famous photograph of a lynching, one that was the direct inspiration for Strange Fruit, Billie Holliday’s elegy for the victims. The photograph shows two black men hanging from the limbs of a tree surrounded by a crowd of whites. One man facing the camera points at the hanging bodies with a ghoulish grin.  Everybody who has seen any picture of a lynching has probably seen this photograph.

The image is horrifying but it took me more than 10 years before I had read enough to understand that lynching was actually not devised for black people. To be sure, as practiced, there was a racial dimension to lynching, and an evil one.  But in its origins lynching had no racial dimension. It was just frontier justice – “Let’s not waste time with trials and get on with the punishment.” In the course of my reading I also learned that a third of all known lynching victims – more than a thousand – were white. This tells us two important things: First, that lynching wasn’t just a practice against black people, and second that the victims were punished because they had allegedly committed crimes worthy of hanging. In other words, most lynchings were not about mobs of white racists grabbing black people and stringing them up because of their skin color. They were extra-judicial hangings to punish people for serious crimes of which they had been accused. This is not to say that racial prejudice was not an important factor, as evident in the fact that two-thirds of the lynching victims were black. There were probably prejudicial aspects to the cases where whites were targeted as well, though less obvious and fewer. That is why we provide due process to all as a constitutional right. In any case, the photograph of one lynching or many is not evidence of genocide.

The two men hanged in the famous photograph in We Charge Genocide were named Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. A third man with them, James Cameron, who was sixteen and also black was not lynched. The three had been arrested, after being accused of murdering a young white factory worker and raping his girlfriend. A mob 2,000 strong had broken into the jail where they were being held, and taken the three men out, and then hanged Shipp and Smith from the tree.
I learned these facts by accident nearly fifty years after I first saw the photograph. I had tuned into a National Public Radio program on which James Cameron, who was then an old man, was being interviewed about what had taken place. According to Cameron, Shipp and Smith had actually committed the murder they were accused of. As for the rape, the white woman who was the alleged victim said afterwards that she had not been raped. So the rape charge was spurious. But the murder charge was not. This does not make the lynching right, but it does call into question whether there was a racial dimension to this incident after all.

Why didn’t the lynch mob hang James Cameron, who was also black and who was accused of the same crime? The answer is that Cameron claimed he didn’t want to participate in the robbery and murder, and stayed in the car. It is possible that he would have been hanged by the lynch mob anyway but the reason he wasn’t was this:  A member of the lynch mob, a white man, stood up for him and affirmed his innocence. Afterwards, Cameron was tried in court and convicted of being an accessory to the crime before the fact. He served four years in prison, and then spent the rest of his life fighting for civil rights, founding three chapters of the NAACP in Indiana. In 1991, the State of Indiana pardoned him. One can find all this out on Wikipedia, if one just looks up “Marion Indiana lynching.”

We Charge Genocide featured the photograph of this lynching as a symbol of America’s racism – of its genocidal white racism. But once the facts are known, this claim is shown to be an unscrupulous misrepresentation of a troubled but more complicated reality. Other facts complicate it more. The genocide petition was presented to the U.N. in December 1951. But at this time a great civil rights revolution in America had already begun, in large part because Americans had just defeated an enemy dedicated to the idea of a “master race.” The conscience of a nation had been awakened, and racial barriers had begun to fall. In 1947 the military was integrated along with the civil service, and Jackie Robinson became the first black athlete allowed to participate in America’s national sport. It was only a couple of years before Brown v. Board of Education integrated the nation’s school systems, and only a few more before segregation and racial discrimination were banned by the Civil Rights Acts.

So why the charge of genocide – a campaign to exterminate an entire people – since it is obviously a malicious libel? It took me 40 years to put together all the facts to arrive at the answer: The Civil Rights Congress, the organization responsible for the petition, was a Communist Party front, and thus the genocide campaign was designed by people who wanted to create a “Soviet America” and help Russia – America’s mortal enemy – to win the Cold War. The extent of Moscow’s control of the American Communist Party was something that the world only learned as a result of the opening of the Soviet archives after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

At the same time the We Charge Genocide petition was being put together, Moscow was conducting a series of arrests in its East European satellites, followed by purge trials and executions many of whose targets were Jews. In Czechoslovakia these purges climaxed in a show trial of the top leaders of the Czech Communist Party who were accused of being part of a “Trotskyite-Titoite-Zionist conspiracy.” Of the thirteen Czech leaders hanged, eleven were Jews, which prompted an international outcry in which the Kremlin was accused of anti-Semitism, a charge it was desperate to counteract. In other words, the “We Charge Genocide” campaign was not about black Americans at all. It was about using blacks as a battering ram against the United States as part of a Kremlin effort to neutralize the bad publicity Moscow was getting for its purges of Jews in Eastern Europe, which then spread to the Soviet Union itself.

The use of blacks as a battering ram against opponents of the left is a progressive tradition that lives on today in the Democratic Party, and the latest version of the Civil Rights Congress is the heavily funded organization called Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter is officially endorsed by the Democratic Party and Democratic funders like George Soros have raised tens of millions of dollars to create a professional army to support its divisive mission. A month before the 2016 elections 100 of Black Lives Matter activists gathered at the University of California Irvine to attack the Los Angeles police department with this chant: “LAPD what you say? How many people have you killed today? LAPD you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide.”

The protest was one of hundreds in the last couple of years conducted across the nation to attack police departments for an alleged “genocidal” war against blacks. There is no factual basis for this charge. According to the Washington Post, for example, police shootings make up 12% of all white and Hispanic homicide deaths, which is three times the proportion of black deaths resulting from police shootings. According to FBI data, over the last 10 years 40% of cop killers have been black, while police officers are killed by blacks at a rate 2.5 times higher  than the rate at which blacks are killed by police.

Equally preposterous is Black Lives Matter’s claim – echoed by many Democrats – that America is a “white supremacist” nation. This is a racist claim, implicating all whites, and particularly absurd since America – now completing the two terms of a black presidency – is perhaps the most tolerant nation on earth. Since the 1990s, America has had two black Secretaries of State, a black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, three black heads of the National Security Council, and thousands of black elected officials at state and municipal levels. Major American cities like Atlanta, Philadelphia and Baltimore are run by blacks, and many more are governed by black mayors, black police chiefs, black judges, non-white majority city councils and black superintendents of schools. How ironic that more than half a century after the end of segregation and the passage of the Civil Rights Acts, after the integration of America’s military and schools and popular culture, this racist incitement should be the emblem of a movement for “social justice.”

FPM: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/anatomy-lynching-david-horowitz/


David Horowitz is an American conservative writer. He is a founder and president of the think tank the David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC); editor of the Center’s publication, FrontPage Magazine; and director of Discover the Networks, a website that tracks individuals and groups on the political left.

Bill Lockwood: Mixing Politics and Religion 0 (0)

by Bill Lockwood

In a letter to his wife Abigail in May, 1780, John Adams famously wrote:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

To John Adams the most important element of life was family. His continual service to the nation included that he was a delegate to the Continental Congress, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, an official Minister to England on behalf of the United States, and the second President of the United States. But this service he considered a “necessary evil” in order that he might enjoy pleasures of family and that his own future generations might enjoy the same.

In our modern era where warnings against “mixing politics and religion” are memorized and repeated without any real deep thought as to why or even what this means, Adams teaches us a few things about it. His keen mind was able to probe the issues of life and distill the principles and realities involved.

In analyzing what Adams meant when he said “I must study politics that my sons may have liberty to study …”, note the following.

What is Politics?

First, what is Politics? Politics simply means the management or administration of society. The word “politics’ is from the Greek word ‘politika’ meaning the “affairs of a city.” It is “the process of making decisions that apply to members of a group” (Wikepedia). Frequently the word “politics” is used negatively, such as in “play politics.” The root idea of the word, however, refers to principles by which people are to be governed.

The question now becomes, by what set of principles shall we govern society? Shall we use biblical principles or humanistic ones? Shall we use God-inspired principles upon which to base human laws, or shall we simply drift off into allowing people to do “what every man thinks is right in his own eyes?” The only issue in our society therefore is whether or not we plan to manage ourselves according to Christian principles.

This applies to a wide variety of social levels: the workplace, the office, the team, the church, or cities and nations; there is even “international politics.” All policies that are adopted in these various groups are called “public policies” precisely because those policies effect others. Once again, these policies will either reflect Christianity or humanism (non-religion).

These facts being so, whence comes the idea that Christian people should remain free from “politics?” Is it somehow inconsistent with biblical values that Christians should not influence public policy?

Freedom Politics is Pro-Family

Returning to Adams’ quote above, note that he was interested in freedom for his family. He wanted to construct a society along Christian principles that by this framework of freedom his family in future generations might continue to enjoy liberty. Specifically, limited government would allow personal freedom to flourish while at the same time curtail dictatorships or top-down controls that destroy freedom.

A sidebar note: Many confuse Roman Catholicism with New Testament Christianity. Not only were the colonists almost 95% Protestant in their belief-systems, but were afraid of Catholicism. The reason for this is clear. Roman Catholicism is an unbiblical political system that was constructed through the centuries to mimic Old World kingdoms such as the Roman. It too, therefore, is dictatorial and stifles freedom. Its record as a tyrannical power is matched only by other forms of government absolutisms.

Adams was well-aware of all of this. This is why that during the tumultuous formation of the United States he felt that he needed to invest time in order to create a political landscape such that allowed freedom to ring—but this was in order that his children might be able to enjoy more pleasurable pursuits. The political machinery of a nation is a direct reflection of religious values and presuppositions that underlie the society. For future family freedom, Christian politics was necessary.

Politics was not just one “hobby” that Adams chose among others he might have chosen, even though that is the casual way people view politics today. Adams showed this by couching it in his word “must.” In other words, politics was his “duty.” It functioned as an obligation. Political freedom is foundational to other freedoms.

To illustrate, Adams used “war.” Those who enjoy freedom and liberty rely on the sacrifices of untold thousands who study war and become warriors. A warriors’ occupation is not like playing sports, or collecting old cars or antiques. Without a fight for freedom, there would be no games to play or antiques to collect. Someone must do this business of war if we are to have pleasures of life. If we were all running for our lives from enemy soldiers, who cares about playing games?

So also is managing people by politics. It is foundational to freedom at large. For this reason, Cicero, the ancient Roman statesman at the time of Julius Caesar, observed: “For there is really no occupation in which human virtue approaches more closely the august function of the gods than that of founding states or preserving those already in existence.”

So exactly. Christians, being correctly informed, can change the character of the political landscape. By bringing the moral standards of Christ into the civic arena, society itself is transformed. The gospel of Christ not only changes lives and hearts of men, but the course of civil government. Why should Christians not be involved in politics?

Raging War in America is about Morality 0 (0)

by Bill Lockwood

The war in Washington over the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh is a microcosm of the war occurring in America. It is a religious and moral battle for the soul of our nation. Our Republic was founded upon the one basic principle of the sacredness of life. This is why governments are instituted among men, wrote the Founders in the Declaration. But Democrats and many Republicans hate this honored cornerstone and are willing to bring the entire house of America down to defend the murder of the unborn.

That this is not overdrawn is seen in Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s tweet after her questioning of Judge Kavanaugh last week. “Brett Kavanaugh had no problem saying Roe v. Wade is ‘settled law’ but he refused to tell me if he thought it was correctly decided. His own email shows what he believes about the Supreme Court’s ability to overturn Roe.” Then she finished with this hashtag: “This is #WhatsAtStake, plain and simple.”

Jonathan Zimmerman, writing in USA Today (9-16-18), put it bluntly: “I don’t want Brett Kavanaugh to be confirmed for the Supreme Court. Based on what he has said and written, I fear that Kavanaugh will roll back reproductive rights, environmental regulations, and many causes that I hold dear.” Reproductive rights is lib-speak for killing the unborn. They demand the right to kill, but cannot say it very clearly lest the masses wise up.

The News Analysis of the National Catholic Register (9-27-18) headline that “Abortion politics are central to the dramatic and bitter political theater currently playing out in Washington.”

Killing the unborn is paramount to the Democrat Party. In the “Borking” of Robert Bork, then-Sen. Ted Kennedy infamously drew the battle-line. He stated that the America of Robert Bork would be a country in which “abortions would be occurring in back-alleys.” Translation: we are going to kill our unborn, lawful or unlawful; neither we will not give up our sexual immorality that leads to it.

Our Constitution—The Civil Bible of America

A collective statement signed almost a half-century ago by dignitaries such as Herbert C. Hoover, Alfred E. Smith; Mrs. William H. Taft, Mrs. Calvin Coolidge, Mrs. Benjamin Harrison, Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt and others, found in the fronts-piece of Judge Thomas James Norton’s handbook on the Constitution, reads,

Menaced by collectivist trends, we must seek revival of our strength in the spiritual foundations which are the bedrock of our republic. Democracy is the outgrowth of the religious conviction of the sacredness of every human life. On the religious side, its highest embodiment is the Bible; on the political, the Constitution. As has been said so well, ‘The Constitution is the civil Bible of Americans.’” (emp. added)

J. Evetts Haley, the late Texas historian, in his A Texan Looks at Lyndon: A Study in Illegitimate Power, prefaces the text with this observation among many which adequately describe the current populace: a “…healthy, moral people, even when denied the facts of national life—the truth essential to their survival—intuitively sense that something is wrong.”

Indeed, something is wrong. Wrong in America. And it is not Judge Brett Kavanaugh. It is the moral fabric that holds any people together and legitimizes the existence of government. The disunity at the national and local level is “a natural and inevitable result of illegitimate government.” And legitimacy in government can only be restored by principle: “principle based on moral character.” In other words, unless we can restore moral character to our governing principles, America operates with an illegitimate government.

By defalcation of Congress on the one hand and Judicial usurpation on the other [Roe v. Wade, bl]—with the connivance and ready support of the Executive Branch—the Federal Government has been corrupted into a vehicle of vast and unrestrained power over the lives, the effects and the affairs of the American people.

The legitimacy of our government can only be restored by returning to an ethical base. It cannot be restored by “false fronts” such as eradicating “hate” as the cause of national tragedy and stresses between people; or the preaching of peace “while appeasing evil” (see Jeremiah 6:14). These types of propaganda only exacerbate “instead of healing the malady.” America’s derangement can only be healed by returning to God and His moral standard. This fight in Washington and across America is about the sacredness of life.

G. Campbell Morgan was a leading British evangelist who preached from the pulpit of Westminster Chapel in London during the early part of the 20th century. In his summary of the First Book of Kings in the Old Testament he laid out the obvious; every human government that leaves God out is doomed to end in disaster. This is the message of 1 Kings. Even “religious forms and ceremonies are grave-clothes if the spirit be not right with God.”

A nation cannot be governed by insisting that it shall adopt religious forms or ceremonies. Neither can a nation be governed by internal development, or commercial treaties, or ships which ply to Tarshish to bring back apes and peacocks [reference to Solomon’s reign, 970-931 B.C.; see 1 Kings 10:22]….shut God out of the question and democracy will be the most awful tyranny the world has ever seen.

Raging war in America is about moral character. Not Brett Kavanaugh’s—but the people. If Brett Kavanaugh is not confirmed, it will be because we could not find enough substance in our own standards to withstand diabolical onslaughts spearheaded by Democrats.

Guglielmo Ferrero, the Italian historian, in The Principles of Power, captures the essence of the battle.

Authority comes from above … legitimacy comes from below. [This] … explains why democracy cannot be legitimized without an internal spiritual unity if all the people are not in agreement both on the principle of legitimacy and on the great moral and religious principles of life. If that unity does not exist, the right of opposition becomes the battleground for a struggle to the death. [as quoted by Haley].

Times may change, but the motivations of human nature; the moral and spiritual principles upon which the life of our Republic hang, do not.

The Christian and Politics 0 (0)

The Christian and Politics“Politics in America are a part of religion.”

by Bill Lockwood

Charles G. Finney was an old-school Presbyterian preacher revivalist who flourished in the pulpits of America during the period of 1825-1835. His leadership in what has been called the “Second Great Awakening” reminds American citizens today that what is needed is another awakening and that it is our Christian duty to influence the direction of our country. Seeing that many preachers and worshippers alike are avoiding the conflicts of our culture, listen to what Finney he has to say regarding confronting sin and the political arena:

The church must take right ground in regard to politics … the time has come that Christians must vote for honest men, and take consistent ground in politics, or the Lord will curse them. They must be honest men themselves, and instead of voting for a man because he belongs to their party … they must find out whether he is honest and upright, and fit to be trusted….And if he will give his vote only for honest men, the country will be obliged to have upright rulers … God cannot sustain this free and blessed country, … unless the church will take right ground. Politics are a part of religion in such a country as this, and Christians must do their duty to the country as a part of their duty to God.

Exactly. Politics in America are a part of religion. According to Webster’s 1828 original dictionary definition of “Politics,” it is a “the Science of government; that part of ethics which consists in the regulation and government of a nation or state …”

One cannot logically separate religion and politics. Politics is the extension of our ethical beliefs, which in turn are founded upon religious concepts. If Christians abandon the political arena, irreligious humanists lay the planks of secular godless government.

Regarding the foundations of our political system, Finney went on to say:

It seems sometimes as if the foundations of the nation were becoming rotten, and Christians seem to act as if they thought God did not see what they do in politics. But I tell you, he does see it, and he will bless or curse this nation, according to the course they take.

But our ethics in America are so weak and anemic that some wish to belong to a political party whose Party Platform includes the murder of unborn children (abortion) and the enshrining of sodomite marriages (homosexuality) as some kind of “right.” Yet, these wish to be known as “Christians.” God will not so tolerate the prostitution of the name of Christ by such ungodliness.

That Christians need to participate in the political arena, consider something else.

The Bedrock of Family

America is a “family-oriented” culture. “Mom, Dad and the kids” has been the hallmark of community life since America’s inception. From whence comes this cultural norm? It is solely due to the influence of one book—The Bible.

First, the woman is honored only by biblical teaching. “Honor thy father and mother” (Exod. 20:12) demands equal respect from children to the female partner in a marriage as well as to the male. “Ye shall fear every man his mother and father” Moses warned in Lev. 19:13. The New Testament is just as clear. “Children, obey your parents” (Eph. 6:1).

For those who long for “other cultures”—just which one honors the woman as does holy Scripture? Islam? Go to Muslim countries and witness the woman who cannot be seen on the streets except four paces behind her husband, or whose word, by Muhammed’s edict, is not counted as worthy as a man’s in a court of law.

Christianity’s elevation of womanhood is particularly noteworthy due to the fact that this week the world celebrated International Woman’s Day. The United Nation website has the following pertaining to this:

Over the years, the UN and its technical agencies have promoted the participation of women as equal partners with men in achieving sustainable development, peace, security, and full respect for human rights. The empowerment of women continues to be a central feature of the UN’s efforts to address social, economic and political challenges across the globe.

In view of the fact that the UN is primarily controlled by Muslim nations wherein women have no rights as compared to a man, this is a blatant propaganda statement. Perhaps people should once again turn to the God of the Bible.

Second, men and women are equal before God. “There can be neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, no male or female, for we are all one man in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). Equal access to God for men and women. Paul may here be alluding to Genesis 1:27 wherein it is stated that God made mankind “male and female.” Note in the Genesis passage that both man and woman were created “in God’s image” (1:26).

Third, God provides honor to the woman as well as the man by arranging a monogamous marriage relationship and rejecting polygamy. When Jesus was asked pertaining to marriage and divorce (Matt. 19:3-9) our Lord answered by recalling to our minds God’s original plan wherein God brought the woman unto the man and it was written, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” One man and one woman. The duty of husbands therefore is to “love his wife” (Eph. 5:25) and the wife is to honor her husband (Eph. 5:22).

The bedrock of family life is squarely rooted in the God’s Word and the true honoring of womanhood is rooted in biblical concepts. It is no accident that inimical forces in America such as the ACLU have as their agenda not only the institutionalizing of homosexual marriage, but polygamy as well. It is an all-out assault on our God-inspired biblical foundations. To save what is left of our Godly heritage, Christians need to engage in the cultural war.

What we need is another “Great Awakening” in America in which the family is honored and Christians participate in the political arena in accordance with their creed, the Bible.

Jesse Lee Peterson: ‘MADNESS’ AS POWER-CRAZY POLITICIANS FUEL BLACK MURDERS 0 (0)

‘Madness’ As Power-Crazy Politicians Fuel Black Murders- Jesse Lee Peterson exposes ‘evil game being played on unsuspecting people’

by Jesse Lee Peterson

“Nobody kill anybody for 72 hours.” That’s the plea from Baltimore residents who want a murder-free weekend in a city where 200 residents have been killed this year.

Baltimore has long struggled with violence. It went a decade with 300 or more killings each year in the 1990s before the numbers finally began dropping in 2000. But the homicide rate hit a high in 2015 after drug dealer Freddie Gray died in police custody and the city erupted in riots and looting.

That year, Baltimore had 344 homicides, the deadliest per capita in the city’s history. The next year marked its second highest, with 318 deaths. This year, the city with a population of 614,000 is on track to beat both records and top all other big U.S. cities. Meanwhile, Baltimore’s police force has shrunk from 2,900 officers to 2,700.

So what is escalating this madness?

According to reports, theories circulated about how Freddie Gray’s death contributed to the surge in killings. Some people say the use and sale of drugs from looted pharmacies contributed to the violence. Others say the riots ignited old turf wars between gangs.

Some residents say police have changed how they patrol for fear of getting in trouble. We had the Ferguson effect following the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Now, it appears the Freddie Gray effect – fear of being labeled “racist” and losing their jobs – is causing Baltimore police to hesitate in going after criminals.

The city’s former prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby, an overzealous and inexperienced black attorney, charged six officers in Freddie Gray’s death, but her case was weak, and all the officers were acquitted. Barack Obama, former Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the Congressional Black Caucus and Black Lives Matter activists all came down hard on the police – especially on white officers. These people falsely accused police of “racism” and encouraged anger toward police.

Order Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson’s book, “The Antidote: Healing America from the Poison of Hate, Blame, and Victimhood

The Baltimore Police Department was the subject of a scathing Justice Department report that accused the department of racial discrimination on Baltimore’s streets. The department is now being overhauled under a consent decree with the federal government.

Since the Freddie Gray situation, even if you call the police and give a description, they can’t touch” the criminals, a Baltimore business owner told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “They know they’re untouchable. That’s the key.” Baltimore and other predominantly black communities desperately need policing. Liberal Democrats and black “activists” claim they can police their own communities, but without police presence, we have violence and carnage.

The destruction and evil in Baltimore has nothing to do with “racism” or poverty. It’s rooted in the hatred and anger that starts in the single, black, female-headed household. More than 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock. The violence we see is caused by the anger that most blacks have toward their impatient mothers and the yearning for absent fathers. Until black Americans face this truth and drop their anger, things will only get worse. A weekend ceasefire won’t hold.

The liberal media, career politicians (from both parties) and black preachers (who are not called by God, but called by their mama) don’t want this truth to get out. Most politicians use their “power” to control and keep the masses dependent to feel good about their own insecurity. Power-hungry lawmakers want people stressed, angry, dependent and fighting with one another.

All angry people are weak people. They don’t have any power or authority. They have fear and doubt, and they are not free. They use this false sense of power to stay in denial about their own weakness. Instead of encouraging blacks to drop their anger and forgive their parents so God can forgive them and set them free, false “leaders” encourage blacks to blame and hate whites. It’s an evil game that’s being played on unsuspecting people.

All angry people feel like victims, and they blame others for their anger and circumstances. Once you let go of anger, it’s apparent that the battle is not physical. It’s not black versus white, or Democrat versus Republican – it’s good versus evil.

I am calling on President Donald Trump and HUD Secretary Ben Carson to intervene in Baltimore to stop the carnage. It’s not acceptable for this level of violence to continue in the greatest country on earth. We need emergency action to protect the decent and law-abiding people trapped in these communities.

The Baltimore ceasefire is like putting a Band-Aid on a victim hemorrhaging from a wound – it’s just a matter of time until the patient dies. Black-on-black violence will never cease until blacks forgive and drop their rage.

 

WND: http://www.wnd.com/2017/07/madness-as-power-crazy-politicians-fuel-black-murders/#PgBsiIUwYJKsxi54.99

Read Jesse Lee Peterson’s Biography

Divine Science Part 2: Why Christians Should be Involved in Politics 0 (0)

Divine Science Part 2: Why Christians Should Be Involved in Politics- “Christianity is neither a scientific system, nor a philosophy, it has yet a world view of its own… ”

by Bill Lockwood

John Adams was not the only Founding Father to classify the realm of politics as “Divine Science.” Another signer of the Declaration of Independence as well as the Constitution, James Wilson, explains to the modern generation why it is that Christians should be interested in the political sphere.

Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed these two sciences run into each other….All [laws], however, may be arranged into d=tow different classes. 1) Divine; 2) Human….But it should always be remembered that this law, natural or revealed, made for men or for nations, flows from the same Divine source: it is the law of God….Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that which is Divine.”

Wilson was of Scottish descent who attended universities in Glasgow, St. Andrews, and Edinburgh before immigrating to America at the age of 21. He studied law under John Dickinson, another signer of the Declaration of Independence. Wilson served as the original justice of the Supreme Court.
Religion and Law: Twin Sisters

It is clear from Wilson’s writing, that his view of Christianity and the Bible would be greatly shocked to hear modern-day Bible students opine that the doctrine of salvation has nothing to do with any view of man or government. Quite the opposite is the case. There are only two systems of laws. God-based or Man-based. A third alternative does not exist.

One has only to ask the question: Whence arises the rights of man? From God or man? Right to life, property and liberty do not stem from a human-oriented worldview wherein man alone determines what is right and what is wrong. Misguided are masses of Christians at this point which believe that religion and law are on two separate planes and never intersect.

From the vantage point of a God-centered worldview, Wilson notes: “All men are by nature equal and free. No one has a right to any authority over another without his consent. All lawful government is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it. Such consent was given with a view to ensure and to increase the happiness of the governed above what they could enjoy in an independent and unconnected state of nature. The consequence is that the happiness of the society is the first law of every government.”

If the above be true, it naturally follows that no governing authority has the right to remove the labor or property of one person and give it to another. On an individual basis, this is slavery. On a society basis, this is socialism. Both systems are built on beliefs that contradict both Divine and Natural Law.

The socialistic principles that govern much legislation today is as antagonistic to a God-centered worldview as is slavery. Just as well argue that the issue of slavery is off-limits Christian thinkers on the grounds that it is an “economic theory” of government and Christians should have nothing to do with economics. Socialism is nothing more than slavery at a civic level.

An Entire Worldview

All political systems flow logically from a particular worldview. The great theologian James Orr (1844-1913) when discussing the worldview of evolution, observed the following in his The Christian View of God and the World, “What now, it may be asked, has Christianity to do with theories, and questions, and speculations of this sort? [evolutionary concepts] As a doctrine of salvation, perhaps, not much, but in its logical presuppositions and consequences a great deal indeed.

Christianity, it is granted, is not a scientific system, though, if its views of the world be true, it must be reconcilable with all that is certain and established in the results of science…. Christianity is neither a scientific system, nor a philosophy, it has yet a world view of its own, to which it stands committed, alike by its fundamental postulate of a personal, holy, self-revealing God, and by its content as a religion of Redemption—which, therefore, necessarily brings it into comparison with [other] worldviews…” (p. 8).

Earlier he noted, “He who with his whole heart believes in Jesus as the Son of God is thereby committed to much else besides. He is committed to a view of God, to a view of man, to a view of sin, to a view of Redemption, to a view of the purpose of God in creation and history, to a view of human destiny, found only in Christianity” (p. 4).

Christianity is much more than a doctrine of the salvation of mankind. It is an all-encompassing conception of the world that includes a doctrine of mankind. Logical consequences proceed from it, including the nature of man and how he is to be governed. It incorporates an entire worldview that is entirely in contrast to philosophical opinions such as anarchism or economic theories of man’s development such as socialism, Nazism, communism, fascism or philosophical speculations such as the general theory of evolution posing as science.

With the same vigor a Christian must stir to oppose evolution or communistic philosophy or slavery is the same sturdiness which must withstand a socialistic system. Christians who shy from these tasks are not viewing it in a correct light.

Much of America’s current woes stem directly from either non-involvement by Christian people who have deserted the field to atheists, humanists and the like; or to the swallowing of the false doctrine which supposes that socialistic redistribution is somehow taught in the Bible. One has only to peruse the National Council of Churches website to witness how this lie has corroded pure biblical truth.

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