Mike Barnicle, broadcast journalist and political commentator, wrote this week, "The people, ordinary people, attracted to [Trump] share more than a few things in common. They have been left on life's daily battleground, wounded and untended to by a political system that simply does not work."*
Establishment Republicans, largely in charge of the Republican Party apparatus since Ronald Reagan's departure in 1988, lack the chart and compass used by America's Founders, those who established liberty and freedom. Establishment GOP, comprised mostly of social moderates, refuse to receive that God's loyalty and fidelity that guard the nation, its freedom and liberty, is dependent upon seeking virtue.
Alexis de Tocqueville clearly believed so, "I have known of societies formed by the Americans to send out ministers of the Gospel into the new Western States to found schools and churches there, lest religion should be suffered to die away in those remote settlements, and the rising States be less fitted to enjoy free institutions than the people from which they emanated. I met with wealthy New Englanders who abandoned the country in which they were born in order to lay the foundations of Christianity and of freedom on the banks of the Missouri or in the prairies of Illinois."*
Securing a Republican president in 2016 is not America's most urgent need. To think that way would be to ignore the real cause of the crisis facing America, which is distance from God. There is no safety in distance from God.
Let me be very clear. The very last thing America needs is another politician who promises to make America great again. Her greatest need is for spiritual leaders to transport biblical values to the public square. That is because righteousness and virtue are key components of freedom and liberty—a truth expounded by America's Founders.
The real battle in America—and in the Republican Party—is fought between Secularism versus Christianity. These distinct religions cannot coexist; their worldviews are in eternal and immutable conflict with each other. One will ultimately end in destruction, as the consequence of the elevation of the other.
This brings us to Donald Trump.
MSNBC reported last August that Gregory T. Angelo (president of the Log Cabin Republicans and an advocate for "gay acceptance among conservatives and people of faith throughout the United States") said this about Mr. Trump: "He is one of the best, if not the best, pro-gay Republican candidates to ever run for the presidency." Angelo said Trump would do no harm on same-sex marriage, and has a "stand-out position on nondiscrimination legislation."
Is Mr. Angelo's statement about Mr. Trump's position on same-sex intercourse and marriage a fair assessment, or merely a bit of wishful thinking by a secular influence peddler for homosexual right? Evangelical's need to discern such matters.
At best, Donald Trump's beliefs have been inconsistent over his career. If Trump is saying one thing to be elected in 2016 (like Barack Obama did in 2008), but then governs in the opposite direction, this will have terrible consequences on the nation.
This seems to be as good a time as any to comment on Mr. Trump's foul language on the stump, especially in front of small children.
A man must first be virtuous in private before he can represent virtue in the public arena. Charles H. Spurgeon, "Observe the accepted man's walk, work, and word. Walking is of far more importance than talking. He only is right who is upright in walk and downright in honesty."***
Seventeenth-century theologian William Secker commented, "There is no ascertaining the quality of a tree but by its fruits. When the wheels of a clock move within, the hand on the dial will move without. When the heart of a man is sound in conversion, then the life will be fair in profession. When the conduit is walled in, how shall we judge of the spring but by the waters which run through the pipes?"
Ordinary Americans have been disappointed and letdown by politicians over the last quarter century, "Wounded and untended to by a political system that simply does not work"—Mike Barnicle.****
Mark Steyn observed, "I describe Republicans as a party of seat-warmers—until the pendulum swings and the Dems come roaring back. When the left wins, they're in power; when the right wins, they're in office, and that's all."—i.e., McConnell and Boehner.
The rise of Donald Trump can be laid at the feet of Establishment Republican leadership of the last quarter century.
*"They Vote for Trump and Sanders to Feel Like Winners" The Daily Beast (02/09/15)
** Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
*** Charles H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David
**** Barnicle, Ibid.
David Lane is the founder of American Renewal Project.
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