On Christians Who Refuse To Join A Party

If one more person reminds me that God does not have a political party I think I am going to scream. 

I think it goes without saying that showing more loyalty to a political party than to God is unacceptable. 

Almighty God has placed us in a Democratic Republic with a two party system. Getting involved in politics and choosing a side is transforming the culture. The more we pretend that we are above the system and above politics, the farther we get from actual transformation. The reason we have a sub-par nominee in the Republican Party is because too many Christians sit on the fence and declare that their allegiance is to God and not a party. 

With all due respect, OF COURSE your allegiance is to God and not a party. Membership in a party does not in any way detract from your loyalty to God. Last time I checked, when you register to vote you don't sign a document saying you will never disagree with or question that party's platform or practices. Membership in a party gives you the ability to have a voice in the party. 

Option #1: Disconnect from the political atmosphere by declaring you are a member of "God's party" while the two real-life, actually existing parties go toe to toe in the culture war (very convenient...).

Option #2: Analyze both parties and determine which one is more in line with God's will. Which one advocates the breaking of the 10 Commandments? Which one is more supportive of the family unit (the building block of society)? Which one rejects the very God you claim loyalty to? Which one supports grave moral evil? Which one alludes to the disbelief in objective Truth? (Notice that which one your great uncle John always voted for is not one of the criteria).

Does the party which is most in line with God's will have to be 100% perfect? No. And perhaps the reason it is not more in line with God's will is because Christians are sitting on their hands waiting for a perfect option to be handed to them when it is their duty to be the salt and light they are so anxiously awaiting.

Communism in America

Listed below are the Communist Goals of 1963. Take a quick look and compare these goals to our present day circumstances. You will notice that most of them have been fulfilled.

Communist Goals for America (1963)

Documention below Congressional Record--Appendix, pp. A34-A35

January 10, 1963

Current Communist Goals

EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Thursday, January 10, 1963

Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, 

Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier,which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America. At Mrs. Nordman's request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following "Current Communist Goals," which she identifies as an excerpt from "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen: [From "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen]

CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.  

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.(Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations whichare under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."  

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness,repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the groundthat it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a world-wide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who hadno concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.  

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ["]united force["] to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.

Note by Webmaster: The Congressional Record back this far has not been digitized and posted on the Internet.  It will probably be available at your nearest library that is a federal repository. Call them and ask them. Your college library is probably a repository. This is an excellent source of government records. Another source are your Congress Critters. They should be more than happy to help you in this matter. You will find the Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto interesting at this point. Click here to see them listed with brain-challenging comments. 

Documentation

 Webmaster Forest Glen Durland found the document in the library. Sources are listed below.

The quote starts on page 259.

Microfilm:

 California State University at San Jose 

 Clark Library, Government Floor

 Phone (408) 924-2770 

 Microfilm Call Number: J11.R5 

 Congressional Record, Vol. 109 88th Congress, 1st Session 

 Appendix Pages A1-A2 842 Jan. 9-May 7, 1963 Reel 12 

 The book was found in the off campus stacks, was ordered and checked. The quote below was checked against the original and is correct. The few errors in the copy from the Congressional Record are shown in [ ] .The quote starts on page 259. 

Stalin knew the vulnerable underbelly of America is the good heart of her people, which could be used against her to subvert the very principles upon which she is founded.

Class Warfare Makes For Rotten Economics

Class warfare may make for really good politics (if you're a Marxist), but it makes for rotten economics. - Rep. Paul Ryan

Papa Benedict XVI on Socialism

By Rev. Robert A. Sirico posted in Crisis Magazine

One doesn’t usually expect a thorough-going reconstruction of the history of socialism in the late 19th century from the pope, but Benedict XVI delivered to us a wonderful — and oh-so-needed — reminder of what socialism was (and is), and why it went wrong. One can’t but marvel at his intellectual power: He has discerned the essential problem that has evaded vast numbers of academics for 100 years.

What’s more, he has done this in a time when socialism as an ideology seems to have been unfazed by the collapse of the communist experiment. Visit the philosophy and English departments on most college campuses, and you will still find intellectuals waxing eloquent on the glories of socialist theory. Students are still encouraged to imagine that it could work.

What about the Soviet Union? We are told that this wasn’t really socialism. And what about Nazism — the German word for national socialism? Oh, that’s not socialism either. What about the growing impoverishment in once-rich countries with social democratic governments? The failure of micro-socialism in the United States, where entire communities have lived on government subsidies and are plagued with frightening levels of social pathology? They say that this is not socialism either.

Large swaths of American academia are in denial. So too are major parts of the American and European clerical class, which is still under the impression that socialism represents a gospel ideal that has yet to be tried. One suspects that the entire history of the 20th century passed them by, for they have learned nothing from the poverty, despotism, and vast suffering wrought by the socialist ideology.

Not Benedict. He wants to talk about it. It fits his message of hope precisely. Are we to discover our hope in salvation from God or from some material transformation?

The passages occur in his great encyclical Spe Salvi (“in hope we are saved”). He addresses this core Christian virtue and explains what hope is and what it is not, what salvation is and is not.

History is strewn with intellectuals who imagined that they could save the world — and created hell on earth as a result. The pope counts the socialists among them, and Karl Marx in particular. Here was an intellectual who imagined that salvation could occur without God, and that something approximating the Kingdom of God on earth could be created by adjusting the material conditions of man.

History, in Marx’s view, was nothing but the crashes and grinding of these material forces. There was no such thing as a fixed human nature. There was certainly no God who is the author of history. There are no permanent themes that follow along moral lines. Rather, we are all merely pushed around by large and impersonal forces. But it is possible to wrest these forces within our control, to our advantage, provided we take the right steps.

And what are these steps, in Marx’s view? The expropriated working classes must take back what is rightfully theirs from the exploiting capitalist classes. Call it mass thievery, if you like — the point is to gain power over the production forces of society. This is where history is headed anyway, said Marx; we only need to give it a shove in the right direction to achieve the bliss of socialism. How will it work? Well, Marx never thought much about that. Why should he? The large and impersonal forces of history would hammer that out. It was only his job to describe the great events that lead to the revolutionary environment. What follows after is not really a matter of bourgeois science; we must simply accept on faith that somehow, somewhere, sometime, socialism will begin to work brilliantly.

Bizarre? It’s not so strange. We can look to the ancient world and see that many of the greatest intellectuals imagined that there would come a time when the problems of economics — scarcity, ownership, calculation, money — would vanish and utopia would appear. You might say that this is a longing for the Garden of Eden, but it neglects a critical fact: Human nature is the same now as it always was. There will always be a need to advance beyond a state of nature. The economic problem is intractable. Simply asserting that the new world will magically appear begs critical issues, such as how we are to feed, clothe, and house people.

Benedict sums the problem up neatly:

Together with the victory of the revolution, though, Marx’s fundamental error also became evident. He showed precisely how to overthrow the existing order, but he did not say how matters should proceed thereafter. He simply presumed that with the expropriation of the ruling class, with the fall of political power and the socialization of means of production, the new Jerusalem would be realized. Then, indeed, all contradictions would be resolved, man and the world would finally sort themselves out. Then everything would be able to proceed by itself along the right path, because everything would belong to everyone and all would desire the best for one another.

Socialism included no plan for the post-revolutionary world. Once economists discovered this central flaw, they seized on it and pointed out that socialism had no system in mind for solving the core economic problem of allocating scare resources among unlimited needs, and certainly no system for creating the new wealth that would be needed to sustain a rising population.

Nonetheless, the revolution happened:

Thus, having accomplished the revolution, Lenin must have realized that the writings of the master gave no indication as to how to proceed. True, Marx had spoken of the interim phase of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a necessity which in time would automatically become redundant. This ‘intermediate phase” we know all too well, and we also know how it then developed, not ushering in a perfect world, but leaving behind a trail of appalling destruction. Marx . . . omitted to work out how this new world would be organized — which should, of course, have been unnecessary.

The “appalling destruction” referred to here is a reference to war that occurred soon after the revolution. Millions died in famine and wholesale slaughter. It became clear to Lenin that he had to back away, lest there be no one left to rule. That he did — and just in time, with the New Economic Policy. But the dictatorship continued. So too did the poverty relative to capitalist nations.

So why did Marx never explain how socialism would work?

His silence on this matter follows logically from his chosen approach. His error lay deeper. He forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and he forgot man’s freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains also freedom for evil. He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a favourable economic environment.

And so the pope has put the problems of economics exactly in the right light: the practical issue that needs to be settled within the framework of a sound morality and understanding of human nature. Socialism fails for a precise and practical reason: It has no system for pricing factors of production to make economic calculation possible. Prices come from the exchange of the very private property with which socialism dispenses.

And yet the moral problem with socialism is more profound: It exalts theft as an ethic and overlooks the human right of freedom.

Would that every Catholic interested in economics would read this encyclical. Some are getting the message already: The Catholic Church in Venezuela worked against Hugo Chavez’s dangerous plan for nationalization and regimentation of economic life. Someday, the world will come to learn the lessons that the history of socialism has taught. In the meantime, Benedict XVI is proving to be a wonderful teacher.