I'm beginning to think that politics is a woeful means of promoting traditional values in a society. The scriptures, which, hopefully, inform our values, tell us, "The king is not saved by a mighty army; a warrior is not delivered by a great strength. A horse is a false hope for victory; nor does it delivery anyone by its strength...Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield...Let Thy lovingkindness, O Lord, be upon us, according as we have hoped in Thee." (Ps. 149:5-9) And again: "Unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unles the LORD guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain." (Ps. 127:1) And again: "Many seek an audience with the ruler, but it is from the Lord that a man gets justice." (Prov. 29:26) I'm beginning to think that the reason we are not seeing conservative social values washing over this nation is that those of us who have revered those values most have looked toward the agency of men -- politicians, parties, the ideologies of men -- to bring us victory. Maybe there hasn't been enough trust in One through whom true victory comes.
I think what we're seeing in the frustration of conservative values in politics is the inherent inability of politics to produce the kind of results we desire. We've attempted a "top-down" strategy of reforming society. At best, I considered the election of Geo. W. Bush in 2000 as a holding pattern....To stop the bus from going over the cliff and into the abyss, and to give those of us with conservative social values the time to work to rectify much of the damage produced by 40 years of liberal courts and reverse the corrosive effective of secular humanism on the nation. After six years, we haven't made much progress. In fact, "conservatism" began to sour on me when I saw many here on FR supporting Michael Schiavo and Judge Geo. Greer in their efforts to murder a helpless woman, loved by her family, all under the auspices of the laws of the state (Terri Schiavo was sacrificed on the altar of "states rights," if I correctly read many of the posts here on FR during that horrible few weeks in 2005). Political conservatism has largely failed in its effort to reform society. Maybe we should stop looking to politics, and politicians, and platforms, and ideologies to save this nation. (Certainly screaming "God, guns, gays!" at the top of our lungs at those who should be our allies isn't very effective; the pathetic state of conservatism at presenent is probably best seen in the fact that we do a pretty good job of eating each other for breakfast.)
I don't claim to speak for anyone other than myself. But if my opinion represents a significant portion of the conservative Christian community, we may end up bailing out on politics in 2008, not because Rudy Giuliani or John McCain is the nominee, but because for all our efforts to right the ship, we haven't seen much progress, and we've reached the conclusion that politics has proven to be a false hope.