The View From 1776

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Needless to say, once established, the power to limit personal savings will eventually be extended to all economic levels of society.

Forbes Magazine staff writer Robert Lenzner opines on the president’s latest socialistic attack.

Obama Goes Against the Grain of What America Represents

Liberal-progressive-socialist orthodoxy, articulated in Keynesian macroeconomics, preaches that recessions are caused by people who save too much.  According to Lord Keynes, it is the duty of citizens to spend all of their income.  If people fail to spend on consumer goods, it is the prerogative of government to fill the theoretical void with deficit spending and by increasing taxes. 

Following the Keynesian prescription, Federal deficit spending is financed with fiat money created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve.  As a powerful disincentive to saving, the Fed has reduced interest rates to levels below the rate of inflation.

From its earliest days socialism has promoted methods of taking from the wealthy and giving to the poor.  Henri de Saint-Simon, the first systematic articulator of socialism, believed that government should confiscate all, or a major portion, of a person’s wealth at his death.  Within a few decades, as Saint-Simon envisioned it, all wealth would have come under government ownership.  Government then would be able to redistribute wealth among its citizens as it saw fit, and no one would be able to resist, because everyone’s livelihood would depend directly upon the whim of the governing elite.

Judeo-Christian morality always has admonished individuals to deal fairly with the poor and to help those in need.  But only with socialism has the individual been pushed out of the way by government, which becomes the domineering and all powerful agent for redistributing wealth.  In practice, redistribution of income and wealth is a process of rewarding liberal-progressive allies and punishing the opposition.

Judeo-Christian doctrine does not counsel taking from the rich; it aims by moral suasion to induce all individuals, led by their churches and synagogues, to do the right thing and to help the poor and unfortunate.

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The socialist welfare state instituted by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s New Deal aimed society in that direction.  Liberal-progressives today are striving to complete the destruction. 

The issue of states’ rights vs Federal power was the nub of the whole debate between 1787 and 1789 about ratifying the Constitution.  Did it grant too much power to a potentially tyrannical Federal government?  In the Federalist collection of newspaper essays written to support ratification of the Constitution during that debate, James Madison was at pains to confirm that, in matters affecting everyday domestic policy, the states and local governments would exercise a greater bulk of the governmental power than the Federal government.  Only during times of war or other national emergency, he said, would the powers of the Federal government assume significant and broad regulatory proportions.

Since the 1930s, however, continual encroachments by the Federal government have upended the original ethos of the Constitution.

According to an Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) editorial (It Takes A Village Idiot To Say Kids Belong To State), Melissa Harris-Perry, an African-American professor at Tulane and an MSNBC contributor, has endorsed the concept that children belong to the political state, not to their parents.  Harris-Perry’s endorsement may not represent the majority view among liberal-progressives, but the ineluctable trajectory of liberal-progressivism is in that direction.

Children as property of the political state is a conceptual building block for imposing the idea that all of us are wards of the socialist welfare system, that we must look to the government for our daily bread and must, therefore, become become obedient servants of our elite rulers.  High taxes, control of the economy and the monetary system, endless regulation of every aspect of private life, and education as a socialist, materialist indoctrination system are the political state’s main tools.

Cass Sunstein, who was Obama’s Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, proposed to abolish traditional marriage as a state-sponsored institution.

Proceeding along that tangent, same-sex marriage has become a wedge to destroy the religious and political institutions of marriage and family.

Each new day brings to light additions to the torrent of liberal-progressive-socialist attacks upon the basic social and political institutions of Western civilization and its foundation in Judeo-Christian morality.  Reducing marriage to no more than issuance of a civil certificate acknowledging the partnering of any two people is exactly what the Soviet Union did.  The aim was, and is under Obama’s New New Deal socialism, to break down lingering vestiges of individual moral responsibility and to supplant them with servility under the supposedly classless socialist political state.

Sunstein’s proposal to degrade marriage to a civil license to any two people desiring to become partners is in direct opposition to a principal reason for the state’s sanctioning marriage. 

In a larger context, no political state can endure without stable families, which both produce the children necessary to perpetuate the body politic, and serve as the primary educational institution for all citizens.  It was in the home that children traditionally learned the principles of fair play, courtesy and respect for their elders and playmates, and the traditions and customs that foster patriotism and make each political society a distinct and enduring body.

Historically the state was concerned primarily with the welfare of children born from a marriage.  Fathers, as well as mothers, were to have responsibility for the welfare and acculturation of their children.  The plague of illegitimate births and single-parent families is only a foretaste of what is to come if marriage is abolished as a state-sanctioned institution that gives legal rights to children and parents.  The dissolution of marriage is inseparably connected to rampant drug abuse and violent crime to which single-parent children all too frequently fall victim.

Ancient Sparta, at the time of the Peloponnesian War with the Athenian city state, had for centuries a rigid communal political system that required families to surrender their children at an early age to the state for military training.  This was because the Spartan ruling class lived under constant threat of armed rebellion of their helots, who were subordinated in a state of semi-slavery.  Children with physical or mental deficiencies were killed by the political state.  Presumably that practice would find favor among people who today advocate unlimited abortion, though liberal-progressives profess to abhor military action to protect fundamental interests of the political state. 

As the IBD editorial reminds us, Adolph Hitler’s creation of the Hitler Youth organization was based on the same idea: the political state should exercise the power to brain-wash children to believe the state’s social and political propaganda and to place their primary loyal in the political state, rather than in their families.

V. I. Lenin in a speech to the Commissars of Education in Moscow, 1923, expressed the same policy:  “We must hate — hatred is the basis of Communism.  Children must be taught to hate their parents if they are not Communists.” 

For what other reason would liberal-progressives entertain the idea that children are the property of the political state? 

Today’s liberal-progressive education system attempts to displace the family as the source of fundamental moral and spiritual values and, instead, teach our children that capitalistic individualism and Judeo-Christian morality are crimes against humanity.

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Reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.
Gary Kelly
January 16, 2013

“For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” (Jesus, Matthew 24:24)

“One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.” -Thomas Reed 1886

“...while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” -Alexis de Tocqueville

“Son of man, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house, which have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a rebellious house.” (Ezekiel 12:2)

Christian conservatives can no longer look to Republicans, the “conservative” media, commentators, and pundits who appear to be only “preaching to the choir.” Christian conservatives must begin to confront family, neighbors, friends, preachers, and “Christian progressives” to “reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine” in righteousness and justice as defined by the Word of God.

Christian conservatives must also keep in mind that progressives do not respect facts and history, but reject these truths using unjustified diversions that Stalin and Hitler would be proud of. Progressives, who have no valid definition of how boundaries are to be determined will lie, distort, omit facts, attack and falsely accuse conservatives by deflecting from specific issues and facts. This plan to be evasive and redirect blame in an attempt to discredit conservatives has been greatly successful, due in large part by the willing collaboration of the Marxist media.

Recent headlines include: “Homosexual Group Releases ‘Queen James Bible’” and “Piers Morgan Scolds Pastor: ‘It’s Time To Amend The Bible.’”

“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle (iota) shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Jesus, Matthew 5:17-20)

“The grass withers, the flower fades: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.” … “So shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper as I intended.” (Isaiah 40:8, 55:11)

“And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him. These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaks great swelling words, having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage. But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit.” (Jude 14-19)

“And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” (Colossians 2:4,8)

Because many “progressives” on the left, the biased Marxist media, education administrators of indoctrination, Marxist politicians, and “progressive” judges, have been duped by “reprobate minds” as outlined in Romans 1, Christians need to return their focus on their calling.

The culture wars cannot be blamed solely on the left’s immoral quest for uninhibited sex with anyone, including young children, same-sex relationships, and criminalization of Judeo-Christian Biblical concepts and virtues. Christians, whether shepherds or layman must also take responsibility for having allowed this deprecation into darkness. While there are organizations and Christians that have honored Christ’s command to shine His Light and be the salt of the world, many Christian appear to simply be spectators, with no oil left in their lamps. This apathy has resulted in the myth of separation of church and state becoming an unwritten law of the land. Yet, separation of church and state does not exist in America’s Constitution or Bill of Rights.

The left has also been successful in deceptively redefining words like “normal, bullying, morals, values, bigotry, hate, tolerance, safety, discrimination, and diversity,” all in an effort to criminalize Christianity in the hopes of silencing God’s elect completely. As Jesus declared: “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that does evil hates the light, and doesn’t come to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that is truthful comes to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.” (John 3:19-21)

Without sufficient resistance, the left has advanced their agenda of obliterating America’s foundation of how “unalienable Rights” were to be “entitled,” only if they adhered to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

Progressives prefer selective laws as defined by progressives, even at the expense of health risks and dire consequences to our children. So long as it satisfies their self-pleasing impulsive vile unnatural pleasures.

Thus as the majority of Christians remain silent and do not “gird up their loins” like men, the immoral agenda of the left meticulously proceeds.

Therefore, as a reminder of our Christian calling in Christ, hopefully the Word of God will encourage more of His followers to take up the Armor of God instead of being spectators in this culture war and make use of the “sword of the Spirit” to engage and confront the darkness that is permeating this nation.

“I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” (2 Timothy 4:1-4)

Do not fall prey to those who say we are not to judge, another successful ploy of progressives. As “ambassadors for Christ,” are not Christians called to “reprove the world of sin,” to be the “salt of the earth” and the “Light of the World?”

“Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” (Jesus, John 7:24)

“Then said he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest. …Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be you therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” (Jesus, Matthew 9:37-38, 10:16)

If this is not the Christian calling, then Christians are essentially giving progressive’s free rein to have their tyrannical, Marxist way with the lives of their sons and daughters.

“Every branch in me that does not bear fruit He takes away: and every branch that bears fruit, he purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit.” (Jesus, John 15:2)

“You are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it gives light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” (Jesus - Matthew 5:13-16)

“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” (Ephesians 5:11)

“And whosoever does not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, sits not down first, and counts the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?” (Jesus - Luke 14:27-28)
 
“If the world hate you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love his own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” (Jesus, John 15:18-19)

Imagine if Jesus and His followers did not declare these teachings. If today’s Pastor, Preacher, Ministers, and Priest continue to ignore declaring these teachings, then you won’t have to imagine much longer.

“Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father has sent me, even so send I you.” (John 20:21)

“Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; And that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. …Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.” (2 Timothy 3:12-17, 4:2)

Gary Kelly’s web site is EarsToHear.net and the author of Lessons of The Holy Spirit: A Guide for Entering the Kingdom of God and Discover Why It Pleased God to Hide His Kingdom from the Wise.

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Self-centered mass slaughter of students in Newtown, Connecticut, as well as in movie theaters, shopping malls, and the work place, is a phenomenon unknown before the advent of student radicalism in the 1960s and 1970s.  It is an outgrowth of the moral corruption inherent in liberal-progressivism and its vision of social justice.

The overriding characteristic of liberal-progressivism’s conception of social justice is that individuals should not be required to take responsibility for their actions; the socialized political state exists to tell citizens, in every detail, how they should live their lives.  Comrades in such a society as it unfolds are not held responsible for anti-social or self-destructive actions.  Indeed, in order to destroy Judeo-Christian morality and clear the way for implementation of full socialism, people are encouraged by government, Hollywood, TV, and the mainstream media to reject as oppressive earlier standards of morality and to indulge in unlimited degrees of hedonism.

Before the ascendancy of social justice, school text books extolled the ideals of courage, wisdom, honesty, loyalty, patriotism, hard work, and temperance.  Students learned the primacy of self-denial and willingness to place the welfare of one’s family and political community above satisfaction of his own immediate pleasure.  They learned the importance of working hard and saving for the future betterment of their families.  Students expected to be judged by the quality of their individual work, which depended upon personal study, not upon membership in a protected social class.

Schools taught something called citizenship.  Pupils were expected to attend classes regularly, to arrive on time, to be polite to teachers and to each other.  They were expected to keep text books in good condition, to keep their desks and the school clean, without defacing either.  They learned that failing to do these things was a crime against all those who would follow them in the school system.  They learned that the future of America depended upon their willingness to think as much about the rights of others as about their own desires.  They were taught to revere the United States, its flag, and the principles of individual liberty for which they stood.

Social justice, in contrast, is a remarkably undemanding religion.  It requires nothing of the individual other than lip-service to currently-fashionable causes proclaimed by air-head Hollywood stars and rapsters.  Baby-Boomers and their progeny aren’t required to study or to understand any of this.  The media tell them what to believe.  The collectivized state will provide their needs.  Their only concern is to keep sex and drugs readily available.

Irresponsibility encouraged by the socialistic welfare-state is the precondition to horrors such as the Newtown massacre and to the murder of millions of babies every year in abortion labs.

Without moral codes, hedonism becomes the preferred life-style.  Simply by denouncing those who disagree with social-justice dogma, today’s believer in social justice can look upon himself as a good person, while indulging in rampant casual sex, unfaithfulness to his spouse, and use of addictive drugs.  Abortions take care of pregnancies that interfere with sexual promiscuity.  The Baby Boomer can feel good about himself while indulging in frequent no-fault divorces, with his children in day-care or in his former spouse’s latest home, on the rationalization that a sensually-gratified parent is a happy parent, therefore a better companion for his children on the limited occasions when he sees them.  The social-justice parent expects the collective “village” to take care of everything else, leaving the father and mother free to pursue “life styles.”

Belief that “it takes a village,” which is only a rationalization to evade personal responsibility, is the attitude that produces the illusion of more gun controls as an effective way to avoid repetition of Newtown.

As I wrote in The Liberal Jihad - The Hundred-Year War Against the Constitution:

Bill Clinton’s Baby Boomer generation became the first in history of whom a very large percentage attended college. For the first time, a very large percentage of the population was taught the secular religious doctrines of socialism and instructed that the Christian religion and the morality of their forefathers was unscientific value judgment. Many of them became the anarchist student radicals whose activities ranged from public demonstrations, to occupations of university buildings and destruction of computer centers, to underground organizations that murdered, bombed, and robbed in the name of solidarity with the Viet Cong. Today those student activists are disproportionately represented in politics, the media and the arts, the legal profession and the judiciary, and especially in the teaching profession. From these activists comes the virulent anti-Americanism that widely infects American colleges and universities today.

Prominent among the criminal underground activists were the Weatherman group, whose leaders— Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn— by 2008 were what the mainstream media described as prominent educators. As noted in other chapters of this book, both Ayers and Dohrn were close associates and advisors of Barack Obama before his election to the presidency.

Reacting to the domestic political turmoil caused by the Great Society and escalation of the Vietnam War, liberal-progressive students went on rampages in college campuses across the country. Public and private property was destroyed with bombs, and more than a dozen people were murdered in cold blood by student radical groups like Weatherman. They proclaimed allegiance to our Vietnamese enemies and to what they called the Black Colony within the United States. Their slogan was, “Death to Amerika! Bring the war home, kill your parents, and ice the pigs!”

1960s student radicals now hold leadership positions in politics, the judiciary, the media, and, most dangerously, in education. With liberal propaganda flooding movies, TV, and the print media, while liberal teachers radicalize young students, we have reached a point at which a significant percentage of Baby Boomers and young people believe that the United States is an oppressive, imperialistic power that must give way to a world government controlled by the socialist international or the UN.

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A typical statement of the new, radical left wing of liberal-progressive was in The Real SDS Stands Up, an article by Andrew Kopkind that appeared in the June 30, 1969, issue of Hard Times, a student radical publication.  Mr. Kopkind wrote,

But the most significant ideological force with SDS was a group of 11 New York and Midwestern activists and intellectuals who had drawn up an analytical and programmatic thesis called, simply, “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows” (the title is from Dylan…).  “Weatherman” was a 16,000-word paper which made the first and crucial attempt at defining an ideology and a program for SDS…it was the first major overhaul SDS has had since the “Port Huron Statement” and “America and the New Era”

…the paper presented this argument: Opposition to US imperialism is the major international struggle today……Those who are leading the fight are the guerrillas of the Third World (principally, now, the Vietnamese and the Latin American guevaristas) and those of the “internal” black colony within the US…

That central idea implies several consequences.  First, the black liberation movement in the US is the most important element of the whole process…Second, the way in which the various foreign and domestic colonies arrive at the revolutionary stage is through their own fights for “self-determination.”...Third, the youth movement did not spring full-blown from abstract idealism, but is a specific response to the black movement and the worldwide “war” against the American empire; it must now reach out of its middle-class origins to a base in the white working class and the permanent drop-out culture…Fourth, the several community “movements” should begin to think of themselves as cadres and collectives in the first stages of formation of a revolutionary political party.

From the same volume, Look At It: America 1969, which appeared first in New Left Notes, August 1969, amplifies on this outlook:

What’s new is that today not quite so many people are confused, and a lot more people are angry; angry about the fact that promises we have heard since first grade are all jive; angry that, when you get down to it, this system is nothing but total economic and military put-down of the oppressed peoples of the world.  And more: it’s a system that steals the goods, the resources and the labor of poor and working people all over the world in order to fill the pockets and bank accounts of a tiny capitalist class. (Call it imperialism)...

No longer will we tolerate “law and order” backed up by soldiers in Vietnam, and pigs in the communities and the schools; a “law and order” that serves only the interests of those in power and tries to smash the people down whenever they rise up…

We are expressing total support for the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam…We moved from individual acts of moral protest – remember the spring before, the draft card burning had been considered the very limit of the Movement – to massive attacks on the centers of military power in this country.  The Pentagon and the vast Oakland Induction Center were real; in Oakland the slogan changed from “:Hell No, We Won’t Go” to “HELL NO, NOBODY GOES.”

We had begun to realize that to stop the war we had to stop the United States government…Columbia transferred to a single campus the ideas of the Pentagon: Bring Home the War.  We hit where it hurts.  We had moved from individual protests to attacks on the centers of power, attacks on the home ground of the war machine.

Bill Ayers wrote in A Strategy To Win, appearing in New Left Notes of September 12, 1969,

...we’re going to bring the war home, we’re going to create class war in the streets and institutions of this country, and we’re going to make them pay a price…people have come to see the need to build collectives that can fight, the need to build collectives that are strong and tough, and in order to do that a lot of individualism has to be worked out of every one of us…we’re also going to make it clear that when a pig gets iced that’s a good thing, and that everyone who considers himself a revolutionary should be armed, should own a gun, should have a gun in his house.

We really are dealing with a matter of individual and national character.  And character is formed by religion and the resulting societal paradigm of “doing the right thing.”  Plato and Aristotle viewed it as lawgivers focusing upon the transcendental to understand true justice and then crafting laws that would orient people’s lives and the education of their children toward moral conduct and away from the sort of pragmatic philosophy (if a self-centered action gets what you want it is valid) advocated by liberal-progressives since the days of John Dewey.

What had been taking place in Athens as Plato and Aristotle looked back and endeavored to understand the degeneration of their city state is almost exactly paralleled in the moral degradation we in the United States have endured for the past forty years.

Since the 1960s, however, the lunatic fringe of liberal-progressivism (the student activists) have gradually won society to their views, as expressed by Weartherman leaders and Obama’s friends and advisors, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.  They and their Weatherman colleagues advocated abandoning the paradigm of family loyalty, plumping for loyalty only to the commune; they demanded that, if one did not already have a pistol, he had to acquire one, the aim being to “bring the war home and kill the pigs.” 

Newtown is the fruit of liberal-progressive, self-centered hedonism and its effort to push everyone into the socialist cesspool.

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Mr. Buchanan treats that danger in Christmas in an Anti-Christian Age

Darwinian evolution was enthusiastically endorsed, at the time Origin of the Species was published, by Karl Marx and his followers.  They viewed Darwin’s thesis as “proof” of their doctrine of history “evolving” from capitalism into a revolution of the proletariat that would transform human nature.  Thus liberal-progressive savagery directed against Christianity is intended to destroy spiritual religiosity, which stands athwart the path to “a good socialist society,” called in Orwellian Newspeak “science.”

As I wrote in The Liberal Jihad: The Hundred Year War Against The Constitution,

Chapter Seven excerpt:

Darwin’s hypothesis of biological evolution, when confined to natural selection as a means of modifying species, is just another interesting speculation. When, however, it is employed as Darwin intended— to deny God and morality— Darwinian evolution becomes a piece of heavy artillery for the liberal jihad.

Not only does it deny the truth of the Bible; more destructively it reduces the world of human habitation to a jungle of kill-or-be-kill amorality. Its doctrine provided a rationalization for the liquidations of tens of millions of people in the totalitarian regimes of Soviet Russia, National Socialist Germany, and Red China…

From high schools through college young students are taught that Darwinian evolution is the only scientific truth. Once having accepted that doctrine, students are only a step away from the doctrine that the Judeo-Christian morality underpinning the Constitution is ignorant nonsense…

One of Charles Darwin’s major champions was Thomas Huxley, who asserted that there is no such thing as morality; there is only the struggle for evolutionary survival.  Hence whatever kind of human conduct that enables one person or society to impose its hegemony on others is justified as evolutionary progress.  Enter Hitler and his master race theory…

Huxley’s dismissal of morality and sin echoes Thomas Hobbes’s version of the state of nature described in his 1651 Leviathan; or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil:

... In such condition there is no place for industry, ... and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Though from different starting points, Hobbes, Darwin, and Huxley were arguing, in effect, that the earthly sovereign (intellectual or military), not God-given morality, is the sole source of law and order in political society. Needless to say, this is a potentially totalitarian doctrine.

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America in Need of Revival
By Jeff Lukens

We live in and age of unbelief. We live with America in decline. We are no longer the America of our founders, or even the America that existed twenty years ago. Collectively, we are more secular, with ever-increasing faith in government, and decreasing faith in God. The consequences of which are already showing. The culture must change. We need a spiritual revival. We need a Third Great Awakening.

No education? No problem. The government will take care of you. Having a baby out of wedlock? No problem there either. Forty percent of babies are born that way. Gay marriage? Hey, who cares what the Bibles says. Victimhood trumps success. Nothing is right or wrong, because that might suggest a standard by which right and wrong would be defined. Personal choice is the new standard, which is no standard at all.

Freedom should be an easy sell. So why are conservatives and the people of faith who proclaim freedom the ones who are insulted and mocked? We are seen as the deniers of freedom. What so many are missing is morality, a self-governing limit to behavior. As the left sees it, they do not have to accept responsibility. They call it emancipation and enlightenment. Freedom means no obstacles on the road to what our grandparents called depravity.

Culturally, the nation is already broken. The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut is only the most recent example. We have reached a majority of people who do not think citizens should be personally responsible. In a clear choice of right and wrong in the 2012 elections, the voters chose wrong. With the Debt Clock ticking ever higher by more than a trillion dollars a year, it is a mathematical certainty collapse is coming. The government alone cannot fix it.

What’s needed is profound national revival. May God in his grace and mercy allow the American people to experience a Great Awakening. It is our only hope.

Two revivals were such game-changing events in American history that Christian historians where compelled to call them Great Awakenings. The first occurred in the early to mid 1700s, and the Second Great Awakening in the early to mid 1800s. Ministers proclaimed the Gospel with great care, passion, and conviction. These included Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, John Wesley and Charles Wesley. With their aid, people realized they needed to repent and get right with God.

In time, this national yearning for spiritual expression and moral leadership led to the desire for the nation to rid itself from the tyranny of King George III. While not every Founding Father was a devout Christian, many of them were, and they sought to establish a free society based on Judeo-Christian principles.

The First Great Awakening that created the moral climate for the Declaration of Independence and the founding of a new country, conceived in liberty, which would truly become a light to the nations. No country in human history has done more to liberate other people economically, politically, or spiritually than the United States.

The Second Great Awakening was even more powerful in the mid-19th century then the First Great Awakening had been in the 18th century. In his book, Implosion, Joel Rosenberg explains:

One piece of observable evidence in this regard is the explosive growth in the number of church congregations that were established in the wake of both Great Awakenings. At the same time, Christians during this period sought to put their faith into action to improve their neighborhoods and communities and the nation as a whole. They persuaded millions of children to enroll in Sunday school programs to learn about the Bible and pray for their nation. They opened orphanages and soup kitchens to care for the poor and needy. They started clinics and hospitals to care for the sick, elderly and infirm. They founded elementary and secondary schools for girls as well as boys. They established colleges and universities dedicated to teaching both the Scriptures and the sciences. They led social campaigns to persuade Americans to stop drinking so much alcohol and to abolish the evil of slavery. These Christians didn’t expect the government to take care of them. They believed it was the Church’s job to show the love of Christ to their neighbors in real and practical ways. They were right, and they made America a better place as a result – not perfect, but better.

This was not about collective salvation. One by one, people must accept Christ into their heart to receive salvation. But the people believed the church’s job was to show the love of Christ and to care for their fellow man. The Second Great Awakening culminated with Abraham Lincoln and the abolition of slavery.

Should people give up and say America, as passed down to us by previous generations, is no more? That was President Obama’s goal when he promised to fundamentally transform America. He’s been doing as he promised, and now a majority of people are happy to let him do it for another term.

Both government programs and charities can feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Government welfare, nevertheless, cannot reach people’s hearts. Christian charities can. Serving the needy in a loving Christian way serves the ultimate purpose of reaching the heart where the will for change takes place. Christ can only enter the heart of the humble. And we know enough changed hearts lead to a changed culture.

Abiding faith is unfashionable, and is considered an oddity. If you are going to exercise your faith with authenticity and courage, you will receive mockery, ridicule, and rejection. For patriots, it is the price that must be paid to save the nation.

The Bible says, “If My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14) Only a Third Great Awakening can save us now.

Jeff Lukens

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