​A Clean Clock

We Republicans had our clock cleaned in the recent midterms in California.  Explanations for this have included all of the following: (1) Identification with Trump who is hated by swing voters, especially “suburban women,” (2) A much better funded and sophisticated GOTV operation by Democrats involving billionaires, social media targeting experts, union workers and energized Trump hating party activists, (3) Democratic cheating and fraud, (4) Divisions between the establishment and activist wings of the CAGOP, (5) The continuing unfavorable demographic trends, and (6) the unpopularity of GOP positions on social issues.  

My Take: It Begins with Our Message

While there is truth to all of these explanations, the biggest problem is our message.  Our message must be more than our platform or a laundry list of correct conservative positions.  It is foremost what we sound like to people we are trying to persuade.  Our message of limited government, law and order, traditional values, low taxes and reduced regulations, is one made to preach to the converted, to a comfortable middle class that wants to hold on to what is has. But what does it sound like to those not already onboard that we need to reach and persuade?  Does it sound like an invitation to join us on the path to success and happiness, or does it sound like a bunch of already successful people just wanting to protect their privileged positions against those less successful?  Just how much does protecting Proposition 13 mean to people who can’t make rent and for whom buying a house is out of the question?

A successful message has to appeal to people other than dyed-in-the-wool Republicans yearning for the second coming of Ronald Reagan.

The Other Side’s Plan
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The historic way for someone to gain political power is to define people in a “victim, persecutor, rescuer” triangle.  They say, “you” are the victim, “they” are the persecutor, and “I” am your rescuer.  A narrative framed this way appeals to natural human psychological principles.  We all have a tendency to see ourselves as a mistreated victim, and look for someone to recognize this and be on our side.
 
Democrats have employed this approach in most of our large cities for at least a hundred years.  The most famous practitioner was James Michael Curley, an Irish mayor of Boston who drove the English out of Boston to consolidate his Irish power base.   California Democrats are following this playbook at a state level now.  Their target is the middle class, better known as “the deplorables.”  They drive industry and agriculture, and thus middle class jobs, out of the state in the name of the environment using racist rhetoric for emotional cover.  As more middle class jobs and people leave the state, the Democrats’ hold on power increases.  The question for Republican messaging is how to counter this.

​The Democrat approach has one major weaknesses and vulnerability. The elimination of middle class jobs hurts the very people it claims to help by cutting off their upward economic mobility.  They cut the middle rungs off the ladder of upward economic mobility, trapping their supposed beneficiaries at a level of permanent serfdom.  Serfs are not slaves.  They are legally free, but the economic system affords them no opportunity to rise above poverty.  This medieval system is the Democratic Party’s model for California.  Everywhere Democrats have established their one-party rule is characterized by this huge gap between the very rich and very poor.  Everywhere they have their way the middle class is eliminated. This is glaringly obvious and widely acknowledged, and it is the weakness Republicans should attack relentlessly.

The Structure of Our Message

              In the victim-oppressor-rescuer framework, we describe the working poor as the victims, the billionaires who run the Democratic plantation as the oppressors, and we God-fearing middle class   Republicans who share the values and aspirations of our working poor brothers as the rescuers.  This leads to talking points like the following:

The Democratic Party is the party of economic inequality and obliterated opportunity.  This is not a bug but a feature of their plan to be the masters of a society of serfs

The Democrats cut the middle rungs off the ladder of upward mobility so they can sit as masters and pretend benefactors of a captive people. 

The Democrats feed you useless hate speech about a supposed white oppressor racist middle class to distract you when they themselves are the true oppressors just like their party’s slave-owning founders long ago.

The Republican Party is the party of opportunity and upward mobility.  We are the party of shared prosperity, not based on income transfer but based on opportunity to better your own situation. 

The good society is not one where everyone gets the same benefits regardless of how hard you work, but one where doing the right thing is rewarded, where your success is primarily up to you and not some handout in exchange for your political loyalty.

The Democrat’s supposed concern for the environment is phony.  It’s just an excuse to eliminate middle class jobs and the middle class itself as a means to keep their power.  If they were really about climate change, why did they shut down our functioning zero carbon nuclear power plants?  Was it to eliminate their middle class jobs?

Their so-called “environmental justice” is a word game that really translates as “no decent jobs for people of color.”  They want the price of electricity and gasoline in this state to be double what it is elsewhere so no factories will ever be built here and bring middle class jobs with them. 

Republicans are not anti- immigrant.  We want a country with a growing economy, with lots of work and opportunity.  We want people who love this country and the opportunities it affords to come here.  If you are a law abiding person who embraces our creed of freedom and personal responsibility we want you.  This is the land of freedom, not the land of free stuff.  There just has to be a legal and fair process.  We don’t want to import the corrupt system people are running away from.

All of us, of every race, color and creed, who love the freedom and opportunity that America is all about are brothers and sisters.  Those who would enslave us to a one-party socialist police state are not.

Billionaire Democrats don’t need the protection of law and property rights.  These things protect the rest of us, the poor most of all.

Every billionaire who is also a Democrat wants you to be a slave.  Every one.

America is the land of opportunity, the land of the free and the home of the brave.  The sky is your limit.  Don’t settle for the crumbs Democrats offer you in their slave state.              

Note that talking points like these never attack the poor, or people on welfare, or even illegal immigrants or criminals.  Instead we attack the billionaire Democrats who are conniving to keep these victims enslaved.  We identify with the victims, because these wicked billionaire Democrat oppressors are trying to do the same thing to us.

This rhetorical approach has the added advantage of being true.

Social Policy

Keep it simple.  The Democrats have locked in the social liberals, Republicans have locked in the social conservatives.  Just stick to social conservative positions matter-of-factly and move back to our core message of upward economic mobility.  Taking squishy positions on the social issues just traps a candidate in endless discussions about them.  You don’t see any Democrats taking a moderate position from their side.  You will not win over any squishy people by being squishy yourself.

Immigration

Why do you think people from Mexico and Central America want to come here in the first place?  Because their own countries are already ruled by people just like Democrats, people who use the Curley Effect to divide people, keep them in poverty, deny opportunity and perpetuate their own rule.

You can’t blame people for wanting to come here for opportunity, but we can and must insist they do so on terms that strengthen our system of opportunity and not undermine it.  The principles that should govern immigration policy should include the following: (1) Immigration must be lawful and illegal immigration should not be rewarded, (2) Immigrants should not place an undue or permanent burden on our welfare system, and (3) Immigrants should not become voting citizens before a process of Americanization and demonstration of commitment to the American system of law and government.

Feelings are Important
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The ill-feelings toward “old white male” Republicans on the part of “young diverse people of color” are not without foundation and are easily exploited by the Democrats.  But the actual differences of beliefs may not be as great as we think.  What aggravates the feelings is isolation.  We each go to our own churches and other groups almost exclusively and seldom meet people outside our comfort zone.  If Republicans want to make a dent in that we need to take the first step.  Why not pick one or two Sundays a month to attend a black or Hispanic church?  Just be there, be friendly, and worship with them.  Seek out other similar opportunities in other venues.  Take a unionized Democrat co-worker to lunch.  Show them we are people too and not the devils the Democrats tell them we are.  Feelings are important.

    Two recent articles got me think about my major theme of the end of the Age of Enlightenment.  The first was “The Left Seeks to Return to Familiar Ground, Confident that 2016 Was an Anomaly” by Richard Fernandez, in which, as the title suggests, he observes that the left is trying to cope with the upheaval of 2016 and related shocks by interpreting them as anomalies, and their proper reaction being to try and get things back on their previous, proper course in accordance with their beloved “arc of history.”  Fernandez argues that these events may mark something fundamentally new, a lasting change rather than a blip.

    The other one which I can’t find now, since there are so many with a similar title, was one predicting that civil war in Europe was inevitable.  The theme was a ruling elite determined to increase Muslim immigration and a native citizenry opposing it.  The thing that struck me about this article was the author’s observation that the European elite showed no interest in modifying their policy in response to public discontent.  In much the way that Trump supporters here are dismissed ad deplorables, bitter clingers and now “dregs of society,” the response of European leadership to people upset with the ground-level impact of massive Muslim immigration is to dismiss them as neo-Nazi, “far-right,” and criminalize their dissent as “hate speech.”

    In other words, the problem here is that our politicians have ceased being politicians and become combatants.  Rather than listening to different groups pf people and try to work out compromise policies that keep the majority more or less satisfied like politicians do, they are picking one side and going for broke.  These, however, are not the Chinese rulers deciding to crush the people in Tiananmen Square, they don’t have that kind of power.  This is not likely to end well.

The Enlightenment

    The following is an over simplification, but you have to start somewhere in sorting things out.  One can divide history into large periods governed by a certain world-view, an over-arching paradigm.  We might call the period from 800 AD to 1250 AD the Middle Ages, the period from 1250 AD to 1500 the Renaissance, the period from 1500 to 1750 the Reformation, and the period from 1750 to now the Enlightenment.  Your history class probably called the period from 1750 to now “Modern History.”

    At its core, the Enlightenment exalted man and reason above God and revelation. The “Liberty, Fraternity, Equality” slogan of the French Revolution reflects three ideas of making man “God,” which is to say, the ultimate authority.  In Liberty, the individual is God.  In Fraternity, the nation or race or tribe is God.  In Equality, worldwide collective man is God.

    Fraternity gave rise to fascism which lost credibility after the second world war.  Equality gave rise to international communism which pretty much died with the fall of the Berlin wall, surviving mostly in university lounges.  Liberty is at the core of modern liberalism with its cult of the sovereign individual.  Today we see liberalism coming to some kind of end point with its fanatical pushing of feminism, homosexuality and transgender ideology, a terminal decent into madness.

    When you step back and look at this major rejection of the Law of God and Gospel of Jesus Christ by a civilization previously known as “Christendom” it is pretty spectacular.  The bloodshed, mayhem and death accompanying it has set records.  And although the Age of Enlightenment may be at its end as I believe, it’s not done yet.

​    All of this is to say that I don’t see the current Trump-Brexit-EU crisis as an anomaly.  I see it as the end of an age, and am at once moved to trepidation and hope.  Trepidation because these inflection points in history are often tumultuous with war and famine, hope because I see this as an opportunity to usher in a new Christian world order where the Law of God and Gospel of Jesus Christ are the foundation of our social order. 

Churches differ in the attitude they take toward America and patriotism in general.  On the one hand some churches go all-in for a red white and blue celebration of America even in church services.  In the extreme they virtually equate Americanism and Christianity. On the other hand we have churches that see such patriotic displays as borderline idolatrous.  In the extreme we have those that see America with its consumerism, militarism, and checkered history as the very antithesis of the gospel.
A fundamental question underlying such divergent views is our philosophy of history.  Through what lens do we view history and current events?  How do we see Christ’s “kingdom of God” materializing?  Is it other-worldly, something experienced only internally by believers and to be suddenly revealed at the end of history, at the second coming?  Do we see the kingdom of God as being just another name for the church, and if so, which institutional church?  Is history itself just random events pending a future divine intervention, or is history providentially ordered by God, with each nation rising and falling  just as each sparrow falls under God’s control?
When I read the Bible I see a consistent plan of God to redeem a fallen humanity and fallen creation through a “called out assembly of people,” an ekklesia.  I see this as his original purpose with Adam and Eve to “fill the earth and subdue it,” with Noah when he repeated this charge after the flood, with the seed of Abraham and the nation of Israel, and with the New Testament Church.  I do not see one group “replacing” the other but see it as a continuity, an unchanging purpose.  And I see all of history as providentially governed.
I view in particular the New Testament Era as a time of the progressive conquest of the world by a Holy Spirit led and empowered church, an ekklesia for King Jesus, its legitimate Ruler.  Christ’s Great Commission to this church was to make disciple of all nations, teaching them to obey all things he commanded them.  The Great Commission is thus both wide and deep.  It is wide in that it applies to all mankind.  It is deep in that it applies to all topic areas.
This is what we have seen happening over the past 2,000 years.  The gospel of Christ’s kingdom has been progressively converting all of mankind and its implications have been conquering all topic areas.  Like the stock market, when viewed in the short term it looks like random ups and downs, but when viewed for the long term the positive trend is clear.
One topic area it has impacted is the area of civil government.  Outside the gospel’s influence, all civil government takes the form of tyranny under a man like Pharaoh or Caesar pretending to be God, or perhaps better, as the sole mediator between earth and heaven.  With the coming of Christ, we have the advent of the one true mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ, fully human and fully divine, seated at the right hand of the Father as absolute Ruler of all things.  As such he invalidates the claims of all earthly rulers to absolute authority, reducing them to a ministerial role.
This reduction of human rulers to “limited government” was first formalized in the United States Constitution with its system of checks and balances which did not locate final sovereignty in any earthly institution, whether king or parliament, thus recognizing that sovereignty belongs to God in heaven alone.  From this has flowed the balanced system of order and liberty, the security of property, equal justice before the law, and the lack of recognized classes and legal privileges, all of which has made this “the land of opportunity.”  People may scoff at this description, but people from all nations are constantly “voting with their feet” to come here.
As was the case with Old Testament Israel, we may yet experience the loss of all of this blessing in our sin and rebellion, and like many nations blessed and used by God in the past, fade into a degraded state.  But the lessons learned here will not be lost, and the progressive total conquest of the world by and for King Jesus will continue.

A note about 2018
As we enjoy this Fourth of July, we survey our current events and think about how they relate to this picture.  The (Republican) elephant in the room is President Trump, whose unexpected victory and subsequent success in reversing decades of progressivism are nothing short of astounding.  He is either the result of or the cause of enormous division in the body politic, a division leading some to worry about a civil war.
But I don’t think so.  I think we are seeing a restoration of the constitutional order and its underlying Biblical world view.  I think God is giving us another chance.
Donald Trump may be, shall we say, an unexpected instrument of God for such a restoration, but perhaps no more unexpected than Samson or Jephthah or Cyrus.  In any event, God Bless America!

“The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink” – George Orwell, 1984

In that same spirit of Orwellian doublethink comes now the California Legislature’s “Healthy Youth Act” and its implementing “Positive Prevention Plus” sex-ed curriculum to a school near you.  As if encouraging early and varied sexual experimentation by children promotes “healthy youth.”  As if abstinence until marriage is “negative.”

Proponents of such programs regard abstinence as unrealistic.  They argue that programs with volumes on “how-to-fornicate-more-safely” with a passing nod to abstinence is “comprehensive.”  Of course the problem with “comprehensive” sex education is that it is not comprehensive, in that it excludes the spiritual and moral aspects of human sexuality.

Not satisfied with replacing abstinence based teaching with “comprehensive” sex-ed, the new and improved version goes further requiring (1) affirmative teaching concerning homosexuality and transgenderism, (2) non-promotion of any religious doctrine or associated moral teaching, (3) information on how to get an abortion, and on and on.
The law and curriculum are full of nice sounding phrases like “age appropriate,” and “medically accurate,” but leaves open the question “according to whom?”  A clue is found in a list of the law’s supporters which include the ACLU and Planned Parenthood.

Although this is mandated by the one party state in Sacramento, local districts still have the ability to resist the same way cities and counties are resisting California’s Sanctuary State law SB 54.  Local residents can pressure their school boards to do so.  Examples of resistance include: (1) public statements of disagreement, (2) lawsuits, (3) minimal compliance, (4) exposing the most objectionable material to the public, (5) maximizing notice and opportunity for parents to opt-out, and many other steps.  Call your local school boards and demand public comment opportunities.

Questions for your school/school board
The program content seems to contradict our family’s faith and morals.  Do you support that?  If not, what have you done, or what will you do to oppose this?

The law requires this indoctrination to be given “at least once.”  How often do you intend to give it?

The law requires parental notification with an option to opt-out, but only in writing.  How do you notify parents and how do you assist them in doing so?

What measures are you taking to ensure students whose parents opt-out are not singled out and embarrassed?

Do you include similar shaming of traditional and religious views and promotion of sex outside marriage in other parts of the overall curriculum?

​When are each of you up for reelection?

Links to further information
ACLU FAQ, ACLU Fact Sheet, Text of Law