Posted on 03/03/2008 1:57:22 PM PST by Jim Robinson
William F. Buckley’s ‘Conservative Movement’ Still-Born, Dead-On-Arrival, Decades Ago, Because it Was Godless, Against Christ, Ignored God’s Word
Contact: John Lofton, 301-873-4612, 410-760-8885, JLof@aol.com
MEDIA ADVISORY, March 3 /Christian Newswire/ — Recovering Republican John Lofton, Editor of TheAmericanView.com and co-host of “The American View” radio show with the Constitution Party’s 2004 Presidential candidate Michael Anthony Peroutka, has issued the following statement:
“Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” – Psalm 127.
The Lord Jesus Christ did not build the “conservative movement” house. Thus, it was a house built on sand, it fell and great has been the fall of it, a recent example of this fall being the “conservative movement’s” support for President of George W. Bush who has given us the most Godless, unconstitutional, debt-ridden, big spending Federal Government in our history.
Even though most of its “leaders” claimed to be Christians, the “conservative movement” was dead-on-arrival because, from the beginning, it’s political plan was Godless, against Christ, and ignored the Bible. This “movement” vainly imagined succeeding without honoring Christ, succeeding through bread-alone, flesh-and-blood-only-politics when God tells us the REAL battle is a spiritual war which must be fought in the full-armor of God (Ephesians 6:10ff).
An example of the Godlessness I allude to occurred when I was on Bill Buckley’s “Firing Line” program June 24, 1987. Referring to him having told Malcolm Muggeridge that he (Buckley) did not believe there was a Christian means of organizing society, I asked Bill: “Wouldn’t God’s Laws, wouldn’t the Laws of Christ be a means of organizing a society?” Buckley said: “No. No….The consent of the governed in societies ruled by the people is the ultimate source of authority.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was once asked how just a few Communists could take over his country when it had a thousand years of being Christian? He replied: “We forgot God.” The leaders of the “conservative movement,” politically-speaking, forgot God. They forgot that the Lord Jesus Christ is Lord over ALL, including politics. They forgot that He is King of kings, Lord of lords, with ALL power in Heaven and on earth. They forgot Psalm 2:12 commands: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”
I know all of what I say here is true because, from the inside, I ran with this “conservative movement” from the mid-1960s to 1980 when God, by His grace alone, raptured me from among this Christless crowd – something for which, literally, I will be eternally grateful.
To hear much more on this subject, please click here to hear the latest “The American View” radio show http://www.theamericanview.com/dictator/media/997/show_145.mp3
If you’d like to interview John Lofton, you may reach him by calling: 301-873-4612; 410-760-8885; or by email: JLof@aol.com.
http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/buckley200312191325.asp
Lofton has company in his worldview:
Democracy is based on the principle that the people are the source of all authority, including the legislative [authority]. This is carried out by choosing representatives who act as proxies for the people in the task of legislating and making laws. In other words, the legislator who must be obeyed in a democracy is man, and not Allah. That means that the one who is worshiped and obeyed and deified, from the point of view of legislating and prohibiting, is man, the created, and not Allah. That is the very essence of heresy and polytheism and error, as it contradicts the bases of the faith [of Islam] and monotheism, and because it makes the weak, ignorant man Allah's partner in His most central divine prerogative – namely, ruling and legislating. Allah said: 'Sovereignty is Allah's alone. He has commanded you to worship none but Him' [Koran 12:40]. 'He allows none to share His sovereignty' [Koran 18:26]...
--Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi statement, 1/23/05
Anti Catholicism. The one true bigotry on which the Left and large elements of the Right can always agree.
All religions are collectivist by nature. They demand the suppression of the individual to the collective ideal. Not unlike socialism except with a God. Modern conservatism is more akin to classical liberalism based upon “individualism”, “individual rights”, “individual initiative”, “individual responsibility” Inalienable rights endowed to us by pour creator.
We must not confuse religious conservatism, with in some cases the penchant to also preserve what is negative about religion with political conservatism which is the pillar of modern (classical)liberal democratic societies.
Now, wait just a minute, Hoss!
If that were true, Marx would not have understood it as his chief obstacle, nor would Gramsci have needed to infiltrate it.
Oh for Pete sakes.
Thank GOD Buckley wasn’t a theocrat.
Utter nonsense.
Look at the Bible...
As Buckley sees it, four main issues in the church today "strain reason as well as faith": clerical celibacy, women priests, contraception, and the indissolubility of marriage. He accepts Rome's position on all four, although he is troubled by the reasoning behind the ban on birth control, hopes for a tad more flexibility on remarriage after divorce, and sees no doctrinal barrier to the eventuality of a married priesthood (which exists in the church's Eastern rite). Not surprisingly, the conservative Buckley has a lingering nostalgia for the Latin liturgy of old. Dripping scorn, he describes a nuptial Mass celebrated "according to the current cant, with everybody popping up and kneeling down." To Buckley, the jazzed-up ritual with its implicit boosterism ("Who do we appreciate--Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!") is "awful." - LINK
America is a nation that holds freedom of the individual as one of it's First Principles. In a political 'movement', the philosophical separation of religion and politics ('church and state') must be clear, or else, the conservative movement would simply have been an evangelical movement and gained little traction with the body politic. Citizens don't want to be preached to, they want political leadership and the freedom to choose both their religion and their political party without being told that one political philosophy is God-centered and thus, unassailable. Such is not the case with conservatism. It reflects much of God's law, such as being anti-abortion, but does so in a manner that uses political persuasion as much as an appeal to emotions or playing the 'religion card' to win adherents.
Cloaking the conservative movement with the mantle of God, as if conservatism were God's chosen political vehicle, would have likely stymied the nascent movement, even back in the 1950's, when Christianity was not yet a dirty word in the leftist-controlled mass media. Even so, the left has always mocked conservatives as 'holier than thou' and basically claimed that the religious right wants to seize political power in order to force all Americans to attend church. Absurd, yes, and easily dismissed as 'loony left' hyperbole but in America, even though a political movement may be only tangentially associated with religion, that fact can easily be manipulated to it's disadvantage by poisoning the public perception of what the movement is about.
The so-called 'religious right'- of which I proudly count myself a member - has been very effective in recent years by taking their Christian values and working to promote laws and political candidates that reflect those values as well as working to defeat proposed laws and political candidates that oppose those same Christian values. From being the established pro-life party to attempting to constitutionally establish the definition of legal marriage as being the union of one man and one woman, I believe the conservative movement has basically adhered to Christian principles. Of course, if viewed from a strictly theological standpoint, one can always cite flaws and errors of omission. I see no point to that kind of futile exercise, except to tear down what others have built, beginning with the late William F. Buckley, Jr. Mr. Lofton serves little purpose in his condemnation of the conservative movement as being essentially 'Godless'. He is also basically in error with that characterization, but has a right to express his opinion, just as we have a right to dispute it here on FR.
Today, conservatives are at a crossroads. Unfortunately, the national Republican party has steadily drifted leftwards and is all too ready to compromise on values, laws and candidates. Conservative Christians have had it and are drawing a 'line in the sand' over the candidacy and very likely nomination of Senator John McCain as the GOP candidate for president in 2008. I believe McCain will be soundly defeated in the general election. In part due to conservative voters abstaining from voting or, as I intend to do, voting for an independent candidate instead of McCain. The Senator, if he runs true to form, will no doubt blame conservatives for his defeat. Let him. That will signal to the 'moderates' and their like-minded cronies now in positions of power at the GOP, that Christian conservatives are not going away or be manipulated out of power in the Republican party.
I respect John Lofton's sincerity as it applies to his belief that the conservative movement has stumbled because it hasn't put God at the center, and there may well be a modicum of truth in that belief. However, conservatism is and always will be a political, and thus, in America, secular movement, even though God's law is well represented within that movement by the active presence of Christians, known to many as 'the religious right', as opposed to the atheist left we have and always will contest for the 'hearts and minds (and votes) of Americans.
Why not post something by an author we can take seriously?
Over the years, since beginning my subscription to NR and NR Bulletin (better than the magazine, IMO) in the early 70s, I have had to take the position of the Roman Catholic Church many times in debates against my evangelical friends. Finally, when the last one came up, I just said that I was having nothing to do with it--give me how YOU are a Christian, but not how someone else is not. It's ludicrous. Same goes in discussions of Mormonism.
“After the Medici were expelled, he was pretty hands-off, preferring religious reform to the daily grind of politics.”
He still believed in a Theocracy regardless how benign. I have to pick up that book, sounds interesting.
I don’t believe a Theocracy can/will tolerate “Religious Freedom” since the Theocrats running things will always believe that God is only talking to them.
I should have prefaced it as meaning all organized religion. The problem with Marx and Gramsci, as well as Lennin, Kautsky, Stalin, Mao is that they wanted top replace God with themselves.
And Buckley was, of course, correct here. Externalities and public display, not internal worship of and communion with God. And as the Roman Catholic Church goes, so do the Protestant denominations, to the point that it is hardly bearable to attend a church service.
The U.S. government treats Muslims the same way they treated the LDS all those decades ago: change certain tenets of your religion or you’re not welcome in the U.S.
The LDS had to change their laws vis a vis polygany, and the Muslims must change their laws vis a vis permitted killings.
I would still take issue with it. It was organized religion which Marx saw as an obstacle to his collectivist philosophy. I suppose it comes down to how one defines “collectivism.” If it is defined as simply any case where large numbers of people share a belief, well, then, anything is collectivism.
“because it makes the weak, ignorant man Allah’s partner in His most central divine prerogative”
We can’t have that can we. We have plenty of weak, ignorant voters, but I would rather trust them than a group of “true believers”, who have a direct line to God, with my freedom. “True believers” scare the ^^#^ out of me.
The Buddhist of Tibet had no political involvement?
The entire country for centuries was ran by Buddhists with the Dalai Lama whom they considered to be the Buddha reborn being the head of state.
Collectivism was around well before Marx, it existed in utopian socialism as well, in any organized form or
organization or group where the individual was to subjugate his interests to those of the collective. Islam, fascism, Nazism are collectivist endeavors. The idea that there must be conformity of thought and action is not new. Modern conservatism based upon the founding principles of this nation was based upon individualism.
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