When Mike Huckabee began preaching in the Presidential debates about the historic virtues of the vertical spectrum versus the horizontal political spectrum, the idea had already been in print and distributed to major media since the 2000 campaign of George W. Bush when that establishment candidate was viciously attacked by the media left for speaking at Protestant traditionalist Bob Jones University. The school appropriately dropped its ban on interracial dating, but was attacked unfairly over religion as allegedly "anti-Mormon" and "anti-Catholic."
I was acutely aware in 2000 that Christians of all persuasions are not second-class citizens to be marginalized based on a philosophically dangerous and relativistic flatworldview model. Rather, Christians defend the right to play a vital role in our self-governing republic, not only as moral philosophers, but also as critical thinkers and as faithful adherents to the Constitution and the rule of law.
Christian Constitutionalists are uniquely equipped to stand within what I referred to at the time as the vertical mainstream of the true American tradition.
Since 2000, things have only gotten worse. Ours absolutely is the New American Crisis in the exact same vein of Thomas Paine's American Crisis, published in 1776 during the American struggle for independence. Today, it is as if a foreign body has invaded the body politic all over again, and Dr. Ron Paul is the only candidate who is prescribing the only real antidote for saving a dying republic born 232 years ago.
The practical reality today is that "we the people" are all traversing leftward together along the modern sophistry that is the flatworldview paradigm toward an authoritarian socialist state. Christians who cannot see the light and who continue to support establishment candidates in-waiting become the unwitting enablers of this perpetual shift.
Those candidates are more than willing to use the natural idealism and enthusiasm of those who are animated by the life of Christ within us, but we never attain high office in sufficient numbers representative of our support in order to change the actual direction of the well-entrenched domestic and foreign policy establishment.
As a Navy veteran in communications, a former print journalist and editorial writer who also holds a master's degree in theology and who was raised Southern Baptist, I love the American republic as much as anyone else.
The flatworldview model is as mischievous an idea as it is dangerous, for several reasons. The sophistry itself is propagated by what I referred to in my February 19, 2000 Open Letter to George W. Bush as the Flatworldview Society.
First, the idea disconnects the sovereign people from their sovereign Creator as source of our inalienable birthrights to life, liberty and property. Those rights inhere in us and are as natural as they are sacred. We were born free and not in chains, to cite Rousseau.
Second, the flatworldview paradigm is a matrix through which people view the world, and which they cannot see past. It conditions our worldview, which determines our behavior. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," said the wise Solomon.
Third, it is schizophrenic. It divides the people for conquest. It is lunacy to place international socialists known as communists on the left and national socialists known as Nazis on the right, as they will both blow your brains out, or to put moderate socialists in the virtuous middle. The whole spectrum is socialist.
Simple logic requires that we put all authoritarian socialists on the left. The opposite of TOTAL government on the left, is NO government, or anarchy, on the right. Traditional Christians do not belong on the right, since we are neither moral nor political anarchists. Rather, we stand within the vertical mainstream as true centrists in the American tradition, not only of the true faith as we believe it to be, but also of the Constitution and the rule of law. Christian preachers and parishioners alike played a vital role for liberty in the first American Crisis, and various signers of our founding documents were ministers.
Fourth, it is a relativistic model that will always cause the American republic to drift leftward toward authoritarianism. Mike Huckabee and his unwitting enablers will be helpless to stop it. Huckabee's is the right message, but the wrong messenger.
The flatworldview model is the dialectic of German rationalist philosopher Hegel, who rejected Aristotelian opposites of thesis and antithesis. Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer popularized this analysis in his books in the 1970s and 80s. Hegel synthesized these opposites into a new thesis, against which a new antithesis would arise. This put truth in relative motion. The sophistical idea that everything is relative is an absolute statement, and contradictory of its own thesis.
Our Constitution is the Great Charter that the people did ordain and establish as creator, in order to limit the "government" from abusing our liberty in a self-governing republic that operates along democratic lines. It is a set of bylaws intended to be followed, yet it has become a mere touchstone and a caricature of a bygone republic. The Charter is as elastic as the process of amendment itself.
The people's representatives in Congress duly assembled spend money insanely in this crisis and pass laws they often do not so much as read and which they often do not write, yet which destroy the Constitution and the rule of law one sacred amendment at a time.
Meanwhile, the unitary executive attacks other nations unilaterally, condones the torture of prisoners, spies on Americans, and issues a thousand signing statements telling the people's representatives which parts of the Supreme Law of the Land he will enforce, and which he will not. This is lawlessness, by any reasonable standard. The people are in genuine peril from a dysfunctional, secretive, gargantuan, and unaccountable state.
The people constitute the sovereignty, not the mythical state. The state is the people, said the wise Aristotle. So say we the people. The state is all of us, not just some of us. It includes the theist and the a(h)-theist alike. The modern sophistry of the "separation of church and state" separates the free exercise of religion from the state based upon a divided worldview. A-theism is in actuality the most dangerous form of establishment.
The problem in 2008 is that too few people of traditional faith are aware that Dr. Ron Paul is their most natural candidate in this crisis, both in faith and practice. He does not wear his faith so opportunistically upon his sleeve as do some others who may invite criticism, yet he has introduced pro-life legislation in Congress. An obstetrician, he has delivered 4,000 babies and is uniquely qualified to prescribe the antidote for what ails the modern health care system.
The candidate with two first-names has voted consistently to restrict the federal government to those authorizations that are enumerated by law within the Constitution itself as the set of bylaws that our own Great Charter really is.
By contrast, the record of the second Arkansas governor from Hope on issues of government spending, illegal immigration, public and private education, 1,000-plus pardons, ethics investigations, and his incipient foreign policy statements and alliances, are prophetic on how he would govern, his many protestations of faith notwithstanding.
John McCain's record on illegal immigration is likewise dubious. Are we now to believe his quasi-conversion on the issue, when he originally campaigned so hard for amnesty? The border issue is manifestly a State issue.
Unlike Huckabee, I am one who sided wholly with the conservatives in the battle for the Bible and inerrancy which split the Southern Baptist Convention. Inerrancy absolutely is the true Southern Baptist tradition.
Without a fundamental return to fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law, our republic cannot survive the leftward drift toward an authoritarian state, and Christians become enablers of the shift, when we of all people are uniquely enabled by the one true God to do something to stop it. Dr. Paul is the only candidate in this crisis who is prescribing the real antidote for the lawlessness that is now killing America from within.
We profess to be those whose eyes and minds God has opened through the God-man, Jesus Christ our Lord. How, then, can we be so blind for so long to protestations of faith by candidates, who once they attain high office, govern as the establishment candidates in-waiting they truly are?
How could we have been so blind for so long to the enabler of the One World Order, George Bush of the occultic Skull and Bones Society?
The idea of the vertical model is too fundamentally important to become the stuff of political opportunism, or for gaining traction as a viable candidate with real polling numbers.
Dr. Paul's record, too, is prophetic on how he would govern.
So many young people support him, because it is their future he is defending. They understand his unencumbered message, because it is so pure and so simple. He diagnoses fundamentals and root causes. All else is treating symptoms. The youth are the ones whose financial future is at stake and who must fight the wars for empire and natural resources. They are the posterity, and we sin against them to shackle them with perpetual war and with this debt. Our youth are our best hope in this crisis.
I absolutely favor a strong national defense and control of the borders against those genuine extremists who enter the country biding their time to do us harm, as does 10-term congressman Ron Paul. But do we Christians not understand that the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians is on our hands through wars of liberation and the immoral abandonment of the just war theory?
Do we not recognize that Iraq is about the theft of natural resources that belong to someone else, done in the virtuous name of the American people? The perpetual war is about war profiteering and installing forward bases and puppet regimes. It is conducted in the name of "democracy," while the warmongers dismantle our Constitutional republic at home one sacred Amendment at a time. The founders refused to sacrifice liberty for security. Their warnings against this Faustian bargain echo ominously in this crisis.
A Christian Constitutionalist, Dr. Paul absolutely stands faithfully in one place within the vertical mainstream of the true American tradition.
Traditional Christians have a duty to defend the faith as a sacred trust that was "once for all delivered to the saints." It belongs to us. The Christian churches in general are not the "abomination," for example, that Mormon founder Joseph Smith said they were. Even so, we defend Mitt Romney's right to appeal to the churches for votes.
Nor are we unequal citizens to be marginalized off the spectrum by extremists on the pagan left, assuming we are the religious right. Who really stands in the virtuous middle?
Why should we the people who did ordain and establish the Constitution for the several States united be reduced to having to constantly scream and yell to our representatives to just, "Please, do us no harm!" over the lawlessness of illegal immigration, suspension of habeas corpus, spying on the American people, unsound paper money and fiscal policies that threaten all of us with a collapsing economy, or the insane threat of dropping nuclear bombs on the people of Iran? A true Constitutional order must emerge from this chaos, and not a One World Order and the end of the nation-state as we know it.
The modern sophistry can only be overcome by critical thinkers and by faithful adherents to our Constitution, despite suppression of the truth by the modern corporate Ministry of Propaganda, misnamed the mainstream media, and their illusion of objective reporting.
We must set upright the flatworldview model. For 200 years in America, the true political spectrum was vertical. If we do not replace the false idea with the true, the leftward drift will continue, and Christians will continue to serve as enablers, instead of wise and virtuous philosopher-kings we are supposed to be.
We have a unique opportunity to elect a man of such great hope for America who uniquely embodies not only traditional faith, but also fidelity to the Constitution.
If we fail to recognize that we also suffer from a divided worldview in the form of Christian dualism, as if the sacred is somehow separate from or superior to the secular, then we will continue blindly to be a part of the problem, instead of part of the solution.
A Methodist minister named Bob Jones Sr. said long ago, "There is no difference between the secular and the sacred. To the Christian, everything is sacred." In the 1960s and 70s, Christians actually believed that "politics is a dirty business," and that "a Christian has no business in politics." In view of the modern crisis, was that a dumb idea, or what?
Time is of the essence in this crisis. The unique candidacy of Dr. Ron Paul is perhaps the last best hope for America.
We, of all people, ought to understand that those who swear to protect, preserve and defend the Constitution are bound by a solemn oath, and we must hold them to their word. The Constitution belongs to us as creator. The thing created cannot be greater than its creator. It is incumbent on us in 2008 to run for office as true citizen-legislators.
"Sin is lawlessness," the Apostle John said. As salt and light, Christians play a redemptive role both in the general culture and in public policy. A self-governing republic is designed for a virtuous people, not the libertine, the founders said.
One thing is certain. We cannot survive the leftward drift any longer. Dr. Paul may truly be the last best hope for America as president. Read the Magna Carta. Read the Constitution. Let us quit the Flatworldview Society in unison and reclaim our roots, persuading the people. As Francis Schaeffer said, the whole world is watching.
February 1, 2008
