Posted on 04/17/2016 1:46:39 AM PDT by Jacquerie
I was a registered Libertarian for twelve years. While I probably still agree with much of what the party stands for, I left the Libertarians for the same reason I grow weary of the Republican Party: its philosophy, to the extent it has one, is sterile. By sterile, I mean its lack of appeal to higher law and our nobler passions. For instance, the libertarian assertion that my rights only go so far as to not impinge on those of others is all well and good. However, without at least introducing why this is so, that our rights are gifts from God, is to limit our spiritual understanding and ultimate happiness. I suspect the lack of spirituality is responsible for the LP’s slow growth.
As for the GOP, it was around long before it largely ceased to lift our hearts higher in love of nation and God.
Man has two natures: the material and the spiritual. Neither can be ignored.
The Left works to destroy our essence. It strives to “degrade human thought or reason to the pragmatic level of an instrument of material interests,” as if each of us were animals in search of nothing more than food and shelter.[1] Happiness isn’t a Section 8 voucher plus an EBT card. We are to be merely members of a class, and our thoughts and actions can only serve class interests. This strips men of their dignity and honor.
This isn’t to say the Left is without dogma. The Left entices our base, material motives through an unnatural secularism that is incapable of fulfilling spiritual needs. They guard abortion more fiercely than Christians defend the Trinity. They replace love of God with vacuous adoration of Gaia. The emptiness of the soulless Left is manifest in thousands of ways large and small. White privilege, black lives matter, disparate impact and ethnic diversity deny our individuality. You are just a member of a group, an insensible cog. Your group determines not just who you are, but whether or not you are a criminal opponent to a just society. Are you white? You are of course guilty of racism. Obama said so. Who are you to dispute His Word? Are you black? You cannot be a bigot.
On the other hand, which school teachers do we remember and admire, the boring ones who handed out an easy “A” or those who challenged us with difficult material we thought we could never learn? The first delivered reward without effort. The second and respected teacher enriched our souls.
As for the GOP, its approach is sometimes more uplifting and spiritual, yet it typically falls short. While the occasional candidate calls to our past culture, traditions, and first principles, their voices are overwhelmed in a congress that always subordinates the spiritual to the political.
A common GOP theme is “to cut the deficit and reduce the size of government.” By itself, that is a sterile, material plea. Sure, we know from the lessons of history that unlimited spending, fiat currency and expansive government are dangerous precursors to economic collapse and tyranny, but alone it isn’t an appeal to our better nature. For instance, a heartfelt argument would address deficit spending without intent to repay as a form of fraud and theft – a violation of the Eighth Commandment: Thou shalt not steal.
Conservatives rightfully oppose our destructive administrative state. However, these agencies provide hundreds of thousands of jobs. Its employees defend their work as doing “good” for the environment, housing, education, etc. Administrative diktats are usurpations of the Declaration’s “all men are created equal,” because administrators write, enforce, and adjudicate their regulations without our consent. We are slaves to these unknown, untouchable masters. “Slave” is a powerful term that should be used far more often to describe our relationship to executive branch agencies.
Republican Governor Nathan Deal recently vetoed a religious freedom bill. As dozens of corporations threatened to leave Georgia, he admonished the bill’s supporters to “take a deep breath and realize that the world is changing around us.” Once again, the spiritual yields to the political as transient material interests trump the timeless 1st Amendment and Natural Law.
Free republican government is ill-protected and likely to fail without the widespread spirituality of Christianity. It is why the Left has worked so diligently to destroy Christianity to the point of embracing an evil known as Islam. Can America rise above the forces of totalitarianism? Only if she awakens love of God-given liberty and its creative spiritual dynamism.
As recognized by our Founders, God is the source of Natural Law, civil society and authority among men. Our society is linked to Christianity not in the form of theocratic government, but in cooperation with Christianity by respecting the rights and liberties of each of us. Government should cooperate with Christian groups constituting civil society to promote virtue and the common good. Good Christians make good republican citizens.
The great American experiment was founded on Christian principles. If we want civilization to survive, free men must be imbued with courage by a genuine and living Christianity.[2] Government policy that rejects God as the prime source of civil society is destructive and sure to end in tyranny.
These and more are the concepts fit for American government. They aren’t difficult to understand and they are there to once again unite our nation in the common cause of liberty.
1. Eidelberg, Paul. On the Silence of the Declaration of Independence. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976. pg 82.
2. Maritain, Jacques. Christianity, Democracy, and the American Idea . Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2004. pg 24.
Very thoughtful piece.
I look forward to the attempt to recover some of the principles of Christianity that are applicable in a broader scope than religious worship.
At the same time, it is wise to be wary of the corrupted versions that adhere to dogma over principle, as well as the nihilistic hubris of the increasingly popular “we live in the end times” approach which abandons responsibility to posterity, and those that seek theocracy over liberty.
It will be a difficult balance to achieve given the corrupted nature of man. But, God willing, our higher natures will overcome the lower and we will one day hopefully not too far in the future have a nation where respect for God is not a despised minority position.
I get so angry at myself that I never searched out nor studied the thought processes of the men that are the genesis of our great Republic (as is true with most Americans these days)
I print you out and sit you on the ledge of my library table that I may glance and read and try to absorb the essence of what the American Freedom was/is meant to be
I was a registered Liberterian for about 20 years.
You are correct.
The purpose of a political party is not to develop our spiritual understanding and/or ultimate happiness - it is to achieve certain goals in the political realm. To introduce religious elements in the party platform, e.g., as the ultimate explanation for why the party advocates certain rights, is unnecessary (a simple "we hold it to be axiomatic that..." or "self-evident that..." would suffice) and perhaps even counterproductive (not everyone in the party has to have the same religious convictions, and you wouldn't want to exclude non-co-religionists unnecessarily, would you?).
If you want to develop your spiritual understanding and explore first-causes, etc., join a Church, take part in a correspondence course, or hold séances.
Regards,
Such great articles on here many times.
During the night and morning, when i’m not trying to get a post in quick before someone else steals it, lol, I love reading the whole thing.
Thank you!
Still, I stand by the overall thrust of my post.
The left does a bangup job of appealing to base emotions.
A real opposition party would also appeal to emotions, but those of the better sort which remind us of the first principles of our republic.
The Founders were aware that essential virtues germane to civil society were the natural extension of faith in God. They were also aware, as they had experienced the colonial era, that religious rivalry, factionalism and bigotry could divide the new nation and make the vision of "e pluribus unum" impossible. In fact, that is exactly what Colonial "Christianity" had wrought. . .13 separate colonies and 8 state churches, each asserting a state dogma that adherence to was a strict requirement for a citizen to maintain legal standing and the rights of citizenship.
The genius of the Founders is that, on the one hand, they absolutely recognized, as you have so eloquently pointed out, that faith in God is the well-spring of the essential virtues that underpin an enduring civil society, yet, at the same time, on the other hand recognized that having to establish the social contract upon a particular dogma. . .would divided the nation. Thus, they turned to the notion of "First Principles," "self-evident truths," "The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." This is key, and it is what has made America so alluring to the people of the world, of all faiths, who come to America (legally) to seek freedom and, regardless of religious affiliation, are full and equal members of the unique American social contract.
I'll leave you with this great quote from Rev. Samuel Cooper, "“We want not, indeed, a special revelation from Heaven to teach us that men are born equal and free; that no man has a natural claim of dominion over his neighbours, nor one nation any such claim upon another; . . . These are the plain dictates of that reason and common sense with which the common parent of men has informed the human bosom.”
bumpitus
“We would not want to exclude non-correligionists”?
Of course we should! You libertarians are free to join the conservative Republican party but that does not mean we should endorse YOUR secular quasi-Marxist materialistic view of the world.
Our party should not stop talking about spiritual matters. We are foremost the party of evangelicals, not dope-smokers. Like Ronald Reagan, we must not stop talking about faith of our Founding Fathers, our rights endowed by God, and our Judeo-Christian heritage. We as a party should not give up routine mentions of God in presidential speeches (as made by Reagan and FDR and Lincoln).
While you go off and do your wacky seances, true Republicans will talk about God and his wisdom.
Cooper got it right.
It is not supposed to be majoritarian will, but rather moral reasoning that is the foundation our our political system.
The other day when a talking head bimbette spoke approvingly of a “bipartisan” bill passed by congress, the implication was that was all that was required for just law.
As America 2016 illustrates, societies get into big trouble when they disregard the Laws of Nature and Nature's God.
That's a better thesis statement!
Just look at some of the rancor one can inadvertently stirr up here at FR by advocating "religiousity" or "non-religiousity." Heck - look at some of the venom spewed in this thread!
Trying to introduce elements of, e.g., the Nicene Creed, into a party platform would be a sure recipe for political self-destruction.
Regards,
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