Liberals & Conservatives: Winning the Battle for Our Country

In the minds of the ill-informed the political struggle in the United States has always been viewed as a struggle between Republicans and Democrats.
...the idea that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.- Carroll Quiqley (1966), Mentor of President William Jefferson Clinton.

Revered GU Professor Carroll Quigley

I recently received an email (with this article by Bill Burch attached) claiming that third party conservatives benefit liberals and that Jesus was not on the ballot. The implication being that we should not waste our time getting righteous men elected to office because that only benefits liberals. Rather we should work to get "electable" conservatives in office because it is always better to have a conservative than a liberal.

Well, I disagree.

Popular notions notwithstanding, the battle for our country is not a battle between conservative ideals and liberal ideals or between Marxist democrats and liberal democrats. It is a battle over whether we, as a nation, will recognize King Jesus as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords that he is. Isaiah describes the Messiah as a King, saying “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth, even forever.” (Isaiah 9:6-7)

In the New Testament, John adds, “And out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.” (Rev 19:15-16).

All kings, not just Christian kings or nations are commanded to acknowledge the kingship of Jesus Christ. King David warns his peers, “Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, …” (Psalm 2:10-12)

God humbled Nebuchadnezar, a King of a “non-Christian” nation, until he too acknowledged the Lord’s kingship saying, “And at the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the most High, and I praised and honored him that lives for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation:” (Dan 4:34). When Pilate asked Jesus if he realized that he had power to either crucify him or let him go, Jesus told Pilate that he could have no power at all against him, except it had been given to him from above. As Romans 13 clearly indicates, the Civil Magistrate is God’s servant who exercises authority entrusted to him by God.

Yet in our day, many Christians want to separate God and State. They are willing to acknowledge his kingdom and his rule in the church, but not in the civil realm. They are willing to recognize his law when it pertains to the government of the church and their individual lives, but not when it pertains to the civil law of our land. But as foreign as such ideas sound to our ears today, this recognition of Jesus Christ as King of Kings is not only Biblical, it is our national heritage. The first state constitution of our land opens with this preamble:

For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God by the wise disposition of his divine providence so to order and dispose of things that we the Inhabitants and Residents of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield are now cohabiting and dwelling in and upon the River of Connectecotte and the lands thereunto adjoining; and well knowing where a people are gathered together the word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent Government established according to God, to order and dispose of the affairs of the people at all seasons as occasion shall require; do therefore associate and conjoin ourselves to be as one Public State or Commonwealth; and do for ourselves and our successors and such as shall be adjoined to us at any time hereafter, enter into Combination and Confederation together, to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess, as also, the discipline of the Churches, which according to the truth of the said Gospel is now practiced amongst us; as also in our civil affairs to be guided and governed according to such Laws, Rules, Orders and Decrees as shall be made, ordered, and decreed as follows…

These people, the founders of our country, set up a government not simply because they thought it was a good idea, but because they understood the Word of God required it. The primary purpose of the civil order they established was to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The second purpose was to maintain the discipline of the churches, and the third purpose was to guide and govern the civil affairs of the land – transactions of property, marriage, trade etc.

We could look to Pennsylvania’s government established by William Penn. His Frame of Government required all civil rulers to possess faith in Jesus Christ. Part XXXIV reads:

That all civil rulers, shall be such as possess faith in Jesus Christ, and that are not convicted of ill fame, or unsober and dishonest conversation, …”

In his commonwealth, free exercise of religion was granted only to those who professed the one Almighty and eternal God to be the Creator, Upholder, and Ruler of the world. That excludes any who hold to evolution, or deny God to the Ruler of the world – most people in America today! In other words, the civil government recognized no right of people to freely practice false religions in violation of the first commandment.

XXXV. That all persons living in this province, who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and eternal God, to be the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the world; and that hold themselves obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly in civil society, shall, in no ways, be molested or prejudiced for their religious persuasion, or practice, in matters of faith and worship, nor shall they be compelled, at any time, to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place or ministry whatever.

After all, worshipping something other than Jehovah is a sin. While righteousness exalts a nation, sin is a reproach to any people [Proverbs 14:34]. That proverb doesn’t limit the sin that brings reproach to just murder, adultery, and theft. Any sin is a reproach to any people. All people, regardless of their faith or lack thereof, Jew, Muslim, or Gentile, were obliged to cease from labor on the Lord’s day.

XXXVI. That, according to the good example of the primitive Christians, and the case of the creation, every first day of the week, called the Lord's day, people shall abstain from their common daily labour, that they may the better dispose themselves to worship God according to their understandings.

Or a hundred years later, the Constitution of Delaware, 1776 in Article 22 required that all civil officers – and that would extend down to notary publics – take the following oath:

ART. 22. Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust, before taking his seat, or entering upon the execution of his office, shall take the following oath, or affirmation, if conscientiously scrupulous of taking an oath, to wit:
I, A B. will bear true allegiance to the Delaware State, submit to its constitution and laws, and do no act wittingly whereby the freedom thereof may be prejudiced.
And also make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit:
I, A B. do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.
And all officers shall also take an oath of office.

Saying that all these documents are from another day and that things are different now, misses the point. Yes, things are different today. We live in a nation under judgment and all that that entails. Those people, on the other hand, saw their nation go from a few huts to one of the greatest nations in the world, one that many gave everything to get to. We should be asking Why are things different today? Might their understanding and acknowledgement of the present Kingship of Jesus Christ over all nations have anything to do with it? We should be seeking to determine if God is on our side, or even better, Are we on God’s side?, instead of simply assuming it. Do the views expressed by Bill Burch espouse a God honoring view of political and historical reality? If not, how can we expect God’s blessing on our labor? Without his blessing we labor in vain as David says in Psalm 127.
When examined in this historical and Biblical context, Bill Burch, however influential, politically astute, and strategically adept at winning elections he may be, is fundamentally wrong, historically ignorant, and therefore part of the problem.

A few examples are in order:

Burch Espouses Ideas Based in Darwinian Evolution
The idea that the harsh weather conditions forced the Europeans and North Africans to move from being hunter gatherers to farmers and that because of this shift their cultures prospered and those of Central and South America did not, is pure Darwinian evolution. According to God, farming, domestication of animals, music, and metalworking were advanced skills by 3500 BC , long before Europe was settled [See Genesis 4:20-22]. We know these skills were passed on through the Flood, because Noah not only planted a vineyard, but got drunk on wine from its grapes. Britain was settled by 1104 BC (about the time of King David) by Brutus and his wife, Ignoge, daughter of Greek King Pandrasus who arrived by ship after stopping at a number of other places. Clearly they were not ignorant hunter-gatherers who only know how to swing clubs and throw rocks. They could sail the ocean and navigate by the stars from the day they arrived in England.
Burch also believes the indigenous people of South Americans have been blocked by their environment from reaching their true potential. But once again this is gross historical error. For example, the Lacandon people who live in the modern day Mexican state of Chiapas were indeed, some of the crudest people anywhere on the earth following World War II. But despite recent claims to distance them from the Maya’s, they are most undoubtedly a remnant of the Mayan culture. They dressed like the Mayans, shaped their babies heads like the Mayans, spoke almost the same language, and esteemed the same holy cities.

Far from being a people who never prospered, they are descended from one of the most advanced civilizations the world has known. The ancient Mayan civilizations of Central America were extremely competent in civil engineering, mathematics, and astronomy. The Dresden Codex contains a repeating calendar that could predict solar eclipses over a 23-year cycle. They were able to compute the synodic period of Venus with an error less than 1/400th of a second per day. The celestial mechanics required to do this are beyond the capabilities of most graduates of American colleges. The Mayans developed the concept of zero over a thousand years before European civilizations learned of the idea from the Hindi of India. But also among the records etched in stone are the depictions of great abominations. Brutal human sacrifices mercilessly butchered tens of thousands of people made in God’s image. Why are they the pitiable, ignorant, brutal people we see today? In the light of passages such as Deuteronomy 28, which spell out awful consequences of rejecting God’s ways, one would have to say they fell because their culture was an abomination to God. Cortez arrived to find a decadent society that had crumbled within and, with a handful of men, was able to conquer a vast but rotting empire. Is the Locandon primitive? No, he’s actually a decadent. Their plight today is the result of a long tragic descent from an advanced civilization.

The same can be said of the Chichua, descendants of the Peruvian Incas. They are content to live their lives as little more than cocaine addicted slaves. But at one time the ancestors of these people were able to perform successful brain surgery as evidenced by skulls showing cranial holes with bone regeneration. Similar surgery with the same tools has been successfully duplicated in recent times. They built massive stone structures without mortar by fitting the stones so tightly together that even today, a millennia later, it is still impossible to stick a piece of paper between the stones.

The concept of primitive man is a creation of Darwinian evolution, a pagan religion whose adoption has brought America to her knees with problems remarkably similar to those described in Deuteronomy 28. Granted, there are numerous means that have been instrumental in this collapse, just as there were secondary means in the collapse of the Incas, Mayas, Phoenicians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans. But ultimately, as Job understood , these causes are but the servants of Almighty God, sent by his decree of wrath and withdrawn by his decree of mercy.

Burch Advocates Blind Straight Ticket Voting
Burch writes elsewhere:

Since Republicans believe in freedom, regardless of whether they are liberal, moderate, or conservative, it is best to vote straight ticket than to vote for the individual in a general election.

But for a Christian, our goal cannot be to win elections. Our goal must be to honor and obey the King. Winning an election is useless if we have to compromise the Kingship of Jesus Christ to do it. Our duty is to obey God’s law, to declare his righteousness, and to take every thought captive for his glory, not to promote the less wicked over the more wicked by blindly voting a straight ticket to keep a certain party in power, as Bill Burch claims.

While Jesus may not be on the ballot, he has told us who should be put on the ballot. There are at least 20 such qualifications in Scripture gleaned from 2 or 3 times that many passages (Exodus 18:21, Deuteronomy 16:18-19; 17:15-19; Proverbs 31:4-5 are a few of the more well known). Voting for people without regard for these qualifications is to disobey God and not walk is his ways as surely as surely as ignoring the flashing red and blue lights in your rearview mirror. The logic that rejects third party voting is discussed in more detail at an earlier blog.

Nowhere in scripture does civil restoration depend on getting the right person elected or the right laws passed. In fact, it is just the opposite: electing good rulers requires civil restoration. Civil restoration results from confession and repentance. God told Solomon:

“… If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people; If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. … And as for thee, if thou [you singular meaning Solomon] wilt walk before me, as David thy father walked, and do according to all that I have commanded thee, and shall observe my statutes and my judgments; Then will I stablish the throne of thy kingdom, … But if ye [you plural meaning the people] turn away, and forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you, and shall go and serve other gods, and worship them; Then will I pluck them [plural referring to the people] up by the roots out of my land which I have given them; and this house, which I have sanctified for my name, will I cast out of my sight, and will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations. And this house, which is high, shall be an astonishment to every one that passes by it; so that he shall say, Why hath the LORD done thus unto this land, and unto this house? And it shall be answered, Because they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods, and worshipped them, and served them: therefore hath he brought all this evil upon them. 2Chronicles 7:12-22.

Good rulers, and the good laws they enact, are the fruit of turning back to God, not the cause of it. William Penn concurred with this concept, saying in his Form of Government: “Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.”

Burch Assumes a Marxist View of Our Nations Origins
The idea that our country was founded by Europeans who moved here because they were not getting their just compensation from the collective could not be more wrong. There may have been such people, but they were not the basis of our culture. More often then not, they were sent packing back to England. Even a cursory reading of any of our founding documents will refute this outrageous assertion. A statement much closer to the truth would be the Europeans who were unwilling to accept anything less than the Kingship of Jesus Christ over all earthly authority came to America. See The Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford or this article on the Collapse of Our Culture for some additional information regarding the purpose and motives of those who first established the law and order in America.

Burch Believes the Marxist Democrats Are Throwing Away America
In a less obvious example of being off base, Burch belittles conservatives who “have been staying home in greater and greater numbers because they could see little difference between the two Parties.” He supposes that now, following the election “everyone can see a difference” between the parties, insinuating the stupidity of those who failed to see the difference before the election.
Well, I for one still don’t see much meaningful difference between Bush’s conservatism and Obama Marxism. One tacks right and the others tacks ninety degrees to the left. But at the end of the day, they are both going the same direction. Wherever they have a chance to really make a difference, they follow the same course. The anti-war Senator Obama has become the pro-war President Obama. The conservative, pro-life Governor Bush became a sodomy-promoting President Bush, as well as a bigger deficit spender than all of his democratic predecessors.

I am not alone in drawing this conclusion. In fact I’m in rather prestigious company. Professor Carroll Quigley, an authority on 20th century history and the only mentor President Clinton recognized by name in accepting his second democratic nomination, asserts that the Eastern Establishment has been the dominant element in both parties since 1900. He claims that this establishment, which he describes as Anglophile, cosmopolitan, Ivy League, and internationalist, is above parties, being more concerned with policies than party victories.

He goes on to say that “in the minds of the ill-informed” the political struggle in the United States “has always been viewed as a struggle between Republicans and Democrats at the ballot box in November.” [Emphasis added.] Given Clinton’s respect for him, it is obvious Quigley is no fan of the Republican right. So this is not some right-wing conspiracy nut. This is liberal scholar who is not at all concerned with the concepts he has just articulated. In fact, in his opinion the idea “that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical so that the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.” [Quigley, Carroll, Tragedy and Hope: The History of the World In Our Time, (Macmillan Company: New York, 1966) p. 1245-7, Emphasis added.]

Incidentally, many of Obama’s supporters are seeing the same thing. See Maureen Dowd’s recent op-ed in the New York Times, Thanks for the Memories, especially some of the reader comments.

For all these reasons, it’s my opinion that the idea that third party conservatives benefit liberals is itself misguided. I am not advocating third parties or that all Christians should exit the Republican Party. Quite the contrary, we need principled Christians in places of influence. What I am advocating is that we evaluate candidates by the absolute and unchanging standard of God’s Word and have a complete pragmatism in regards to all parties. If Ron Paul is running in the Democratic Party, vote Democratic. If he is running in the Republican Party, vote Republican. If he is running in the Whatever Party, vote in that party.

Our objective must be to uphold the Crown rights of Jesus Christ, to acknowledge his rule, his law, and his authority. We can only do that when we vote for people who are equally committed to upholding the crown rights of Jesus Christ and who meet the scriptural qualifications for civil rulers. If we fudge on obeying these portions of God’s Word in order to help the “better” of two bad candidates win the election, we are no different than Saul, who fudged just a little on obeying God’s commandment to destroy the Amalekites in order to offer more sacrifices to God. The Lord was angry with him and rejected him as King.

And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices (i.e. winning elections), as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king. (1Sa 15:22-23)

If voting for the Ron Paul candidate in the Whatever Party allows Mr. Bad Dude to win the election, than so be it. Obedience is more important than winning because God blesses obedience and judges disobedience. That judgment begins with the house of God. But if we honor God first, who knows, it just might be that through our obedience maintaining the crown rights of Jesus Christ, the Lord is pleased to bring victory. That is, after all, what he has promised.