It’s last call for the election.
There is no doubt God has provided us two distinctly challenged candidates. It is hardly the first time, of course, that God in His Sovereign plan has placed before us choices that don’t line up with what He has taught us about righteous character in His Word. Yet He has done so often – and now He does again.
From the human perspective, in just in the last fifty five years we have had ten Presidents, and five of them, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Clinton, and now Mr. Obama, were or are spectacularly corrupt and morally challenged. With the exception of Nixon, the five had or have enormous sexual issues and infidelities and three of them were, or are, not even on the band-width of sexually “normal.”
Mrs. Clinton would fit right in with these five men. The recent revelations concerning her personal and campaign emails only confirm her staggering personal corruption, and new details on her not-so-private life only repeat what members of the Arkansas State Troopers, the Secret Service and her own husband had already disclosed about her extracurricular activities and proclivities.
She is in no position to cast even the tiniest pebble at Mr. Trump.
For his part, Mr. Trump is a different type of candidate, no question. He certainly lacks some of the nuances and subtleties of what we have come to expect from a modern politician, with the possible exception Ronald Reagan. He comes to the national stage without political portfolio. And while the most recent accusations since the Billy Bush tapes went public have been debunked, he is nonetheless on his third marriage and carries the baggage of an erstwhile playboy.
In other ways Donald Trump is more out of the eighteenth century mold than the twenty-first. He is a New Yorker from Queen’s and wears its bluntness and drive like Lincoln wore Springfield; or like Teddy Roosevelt wore his inspirational life; or Ronald Reagan his aspirational Americanism.
This is not to compare him to these other men specifically, but to suggest that history has presented us with this type of candidate before. These men were all change agents that swam against the strong currents of self-interest, endemic corruption, cronyism, and ideological tyranny that grows like algae in the nation’s capital – a contamination that always threatens the Republic and the cause of human liberty.
Every few generations it seems the nation is searching for a leader to emerge who has the will to fight – to confront the arrayed interests of those who don’t see the Republic as “the best, last hope of mankind,” but a burden to be shucked away like a husk from corn.
In our lifetimes the ideal of human liberty and self-government was all that stood between the socialist-communist death cults and their Stalinist masters in Moscow; and in our parents lifetimes all that stood between the German and Japanese national socialists – fascists – that dragged the world to war.
Today, these related ideologies have co-mingled and morphed into a cabal of corporatists, bureaucrats and assorted globalists who crave a world without the bothers of self-government, borders, nationalism, or the capacity for individual opposition.
Most importantly, the new globalism wants a world without a God whose very Distinction demands devotion.
What couldn’t be done through armed force in the last century, the EU and WTO and TPP are poised to do with paper in this century.
The hatred of Donald Trump is fixed on this; he rejects the maturing globalist worldview that sacrifices nationhood, borders and individualism over which the ruling class would be the masters. Just last week, Mr. Trump put it bluntly:
“For those who control the levers of power in Washington, and for the global special interests they partner with, our campaign represents an existential threat. This is not simply another four-year election. This is a crossroads in the history of our civilization that will determine whether or not ‘We the People’ reclaim control over our government.”
In his campaign summations in the last several weeks, Mr. Trump has been largely ignored by the national corporate media complex, as have his detailed and generally excellent conservative policy positions. But he has been relentless in his attack on the “establishment:”
“This is a struggle for the survival of our nation. This election will determine whether we are a free nation, or whether we have only the illusion of Democracy, but are in fact controlled by a small handful of global special interests rigging the system.
This is not just conspiracy but reality, and you and I know it.
The establishment and their media enablers wield control over this nation through means that are well known. Anyone who challenges their control is deemed a sexist, a racist, a xenophobe and morally deformed. They will attack you, they will slander you, they will seek to destroy your career and reputation. And they will lie, lie and lie even more.”
There is one more thing the ruling class hates and fears about Donald Trump. While he isn’t an outwardly devout man by many contemporary standards, there is an honestly and frankness in his approach to faith that makes him especially dangerous.
First, and foremost, he is the only national candidate now that has pledged to appoint pro-life judges and has been unfailingly pro-life in his public announcements. It was Mr. Trump in the final debate that boldly pushed Mrs. Clinton into silence as to whether she “even objected” to partial birth abortion, where a baby only days away from birth can be killed.
Frankly, Mr. Trump has actually been far more vocal on the issue of life, than many evangelicals.
In the primary campaigns and in the general election, Donald Trump has also been virtually alone in condemning the plight of persecuted Christians in the Middle East, and alone in calling for the removal of the “Johnson amendment,” an addition to the tax code in 1954 that threatens IRS action against political speech from the pulpits of churches (unless you are a liberal church, of course).
Evangelical leaders who have spent time with Mr. Trump in person report that he is gracious and curiously humble in private meetings, as well as a good listener. He also has a grasp of modern Christian predicament. He is quoted in a December, 2015 meeting in the Trump Tower with a large group of evangelical leaders saying:
“Every other ideological group in the country has a voice. If you don’t mind me saying so, you guys [Christians] have gotten soft. I mean, we, myself included, we’ve had it easy as Christians for a long time in America. That’s been changing.”
Following up on this line of thought, Dr. James Dobson, Founder of Focus on the Family and noted author has written that, “[A Trump Administration] would unleash Christian activists to fight for their beliefs.”
In a June meeting, Dr. Dobson reported that he told Mr. Trump:
“Our Supreme Court has struck down Bible reading in schools and even prohibited prayer to an unidentified God. Then, they banned the posting of the Ten Commandments on bulletin boards. From there, the limitation on religious liberties has become even more egregious.
Most recently, President Obama and Hillary Clinton have been referring to ‘freedom of worship,’ rather than ‘freedom of religion.’ Do you understand their motive? They are suggesting that Americans are free to worship in their churches and synagogues, but not in the public square.”
Dr. Dobson quotes Mr. Trump as replying that it was an “outrage that Christians have been deprived of their rights to speak openly on behalf of the values and principles in which they believe,” as well as his reaffirming his pledge to end the Johnson Amendment.
President Obama, of course, talks about his faith in high tones, when in fact he comes from twenty years in a radical Liberation Theology church, steeped in hate and racism, and has pushed the meme in public policy that the American church is an agent of obstruction. Hillary Clinton speaks antiseptically about faith institutions (when at all) as though they were there exclusively to be used to further the goals of massive government and open immigration.
What a strange contrast it would make if the new President, a man who did not posture about his piety in public, became this century’s biggest defender of the Christian faith and the intrinsic value of each individual, God-ordained life.
The case for Donald J. Trump is clear.