Theocracy in America?

Many on the left obsess over this strange notion that the religious right is conspiring to turn America into a theocracy. A case in point was a recent guest on my radio program “Fairness Radio with Chuck & Patrick.” Our guest, the ultra-liberal author and columnist Frederick Clarkson, stated, in a very scholarly and suave tone that he was convinced, after decades of research, that the Christian right was plotting a takeover.

I asked him to name names and, after some hemming and hawing, he came up with Rev. Pat Robertson and the late Rev. R.J. Rushdooney. He darkly identified these two ministers as “dominionists” or as having embraced “dominionist ideas.” I responded that his incoherent rumblings reminded me of the language used to describe the communist conspiracy in the post-World War II years which employed terms like “subversion” and “infiltration.”

He stated as evidence that Robertson had referred to America as a “Christian nation” and that Rushdooney had advocated Biblical law in America including the implementation of the death penalties listed in Leviticus, death penalties that he scornfully recounted for the benefit of our listeners. I argued that Robertson and Rushdooney were strict constitutionalists and that, as such, their advocacy of public policies would be consistent with and not contradictory to the US Constitution. While I might share some of his dis-agreements with certain policies that they advocated, I nevertheless support their right to that advocacy.

I contended that these ministers were not conspiring to overthrow the Constitution and to replace it with rule by any particular religious denomination, that Robertson and Rushdooney did not believe that Americans should swear a loyalty oath to Jesus. I would argue that Clarkson and his friends on the left have either conjured up this bogey-man in their fecund imaginations or they deliberately and consciously promote this lie as a means to discredit and to silence the opinions of conservative Christians.

It occurs to me that left-wingers like Clarkson impose their own authoritarian values on the religious right which, generally, believes in limited government, that moral and ethical laws ought to be made by elected legislators on the local and state level, and that those laws ought to comport with the US Constitution. When Robertson, for example, talks of a “Christian nation” he is referring to his desire to increase the influence of Christianity on American culture. He is not calling for Christianity to be declared as the legal national religion. The left would, conversely, be oriented toward a hyper nationalist society in which the so-called progressives would run everything for the good of “the little guy.”

Clarkson attempts to impugn the integrity of the Bible when he rattles off the death penalties included in the Book of Leviticus. He fails to conceive of the fact that those death penalties, most of which were rarely if ever imposed due to the system of jurisprudence that the Bible also established, a system that called for high levels of evidence and a system of due process, were and remain a means of limiting government. Ancient nations, contrary to biblical law, lawlessly murdered their own populations at the whim of the ruler.

Likewise, many modern left-wingers turned a blind eye to “progressive” Soviet and Nazi socialism which implemented the death penalty without rules or evidence. Those “progressive” modern regimes re-introduced the ancient and pagan practices of mass murder against individuals who had committed political crimes. The American system, rejecting both the ancient pagan system and the modern so-called progressive example, embraced a biblical system of jurisprudence that utterly rejects the concept of political crimes.

It is obviously absurd to suggest that conservative Christians would seek to implement Biblical death penalties. Clarkson would stop noisy Christians by claiming that their opinions are un-constitutional because they are Christian. It is logical to assume, especially when one considers the record that, if Clarkson and his left-wing friends were ever God forbid enthroned in America, they would declare anyone expressing opposition to their views as acting against the Constitution. Those who dared to oppose their “enlightened” view would be declared as law breakers, as politically incorrect, and therefore as enemies of the state. This begs the question in terms of who actually advocates a theocracy in America.

There is nothing like consulting the Founders of this greatest destination for oppressed people which ever existed.

Suggest those who wish to read their words for themselves visit here.

Additionally, in April 1839, the son of John Adams, John Quincy Adams, who served in many capacities under our Constitution's laws, including as President, and then in his seat in Congress until his death there, was invited by the New York Historical Society to give the "Jubilee Address," celebrating 50 years under that Constitution.

Here is an excerpt from that lengthy Address in which he recaps and summarizes the history of the Republic:

"It has been my purpose, Fellow-Citizens, in this discourse to show:-

"1. That this Union was formed by a spontaneous movement of the people of thirteen English Colonies; all subjects of the King of Great Britain - bound to him in allegiance, and to the British empire as their country. That the first object of this Union,was united resistance against oppression, and to obtain from the government of their country redress of their wrongs.

"2. That failing in this object, their petitions having been spurned, and the oppressions of which they complained, aggravated beyond endurance, their Delegates in Congress, in their name and by their authority, issued the Declaration of Independence - proclaiming them to the world as one people, absolving them from their ties and oaths of allegiance to their king and country - renouncing that country; declared the UNITED Colonies, Independent States, and announcing that this ONE PEOPLE of thirteen united independent states, by that act, assumed among the powers of the earth, that separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitled them.

"3. That in justification of themselves for this act of transcendent power, they proclaimed the principles upon which they held all lawful government upon earth to be founded - which principles were, the natural, unalienable, imprescriptible rights of man, specifying among them, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - that the institution of government is to secure to men in society the possession of those rights: that the institution, dissolution, and reinstitution of government, belong exclusively to THE PEOPLE under a moral responsibility to the Supreme Ruler of the universe; and that all the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed.

"4. That under this proclamation of principles, the dissolution of allegiance to the British king, and the compatriot connection with the people of the British empire, were accomplished; and the one people of the United States of America, became one separate sovereign independent power, assuming an equal station among the nations of the earth.

"5. That this one people did not immediately institute a government for themselves. But instead of it, their delegates in Congress, by authority from their separate state legislatures, without voice or consultation of the people, instituted a mere confederacy.

"6. That this confederacy totally departed from the principles of the Declaration of independence, and substituted instead of the constituent power of the people, an assumed sovereignty of each separate state, as the source of all its authority.

"7. That as a primitive source of power, this separate state sovereignty,was not only a departure from the principles of the Declaration of Independence, but directly contrary to, and utterly incompatible with them.

"8. That the tree was made known by its fruits. That after five years wasted in its preparation, the confederation dragged out a miserable existence of eight years more, and expired like a candle in the socket, having brought the union itself to the verge of dissolution.

"9. That the Constitution of the United States was a return to the principles of the Declaration of independence, and the exclusive constituent power of the people. That it was the work of the ONE PEOPLE of the United States; and that those United States, though doubled in numbers, still constitute as a nation, but ONE PEOPLE.

"10. That this Constitution, making due allowance for the imperfections and errors incident to all human affairs, has under all the vicissitudes and changes of war and peace, been administered upon those same principles, during a career of fifty years.

"11. That its fruits have been, still making allowance for human imperfection, a more perfect union, established justice, domestic tranquility, provision for the common defence, promotion of the general welfare, and the enjoyment of the blessings of liberty by the constituent people, and their posterity to the present day.

"And now the future is all before us, and Providence our guide."

In an earlier paragraph, he had stated:
"But this institution was republican, and even democratic. And here not to be misunderstood, I mean by democratic, a government, the administration of which must always be rendered comfortable to that predominating public opinion . . . and by republican I mean a government reposing, not upon the virtues or the powers of any one man - not upon that honor, which Montesquieu lays down as the fundamental principle of monarchy - far less upon that fear which he pronounces the basis of despotism; but upon that virtue which he, a noble of aristocratic peerage, and the subject of an absolute monarch, boldly proclaims as a fundamental principle of republican government. The Constitution of the United States was republican and democratic - but the experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived; and it was obvious that if virtue - the virtue of the people, was the foundation of republican government, the stability and duration of the government must depend upon the stability and duration of the virtue by which it is sustained."

Bang-o, and that includes the Christian Left (such as it is.) Which group of Christians has been eager to have the government do what they consider to be God's work? Which group of Christians defend their political planks with direct reference to the Bible? Such as forced charity?

There are two reasons why left-wing secularists get away with labeling the Christian Right as the closet theocrats. First of all, as everyone knows, many of the early American colonies - particulary Massachusetts - had a conception of freedom that was radically at odds with what we know as freedom. Their "religious freedom" was the opportunity to set up their own established church, which was equated with "freedom to worship in our own way." All of them did except Rhode Island, and possibly the Catholic colony of Maryland.

While I'm on the subject, I want to note something a little odd. Despite the fact that the home base of the Puritans (namely Massachusetts) is notoriously liberal, the original Puritans have been pegged as "right wing." I wonder if they really were. Given their prediliction towards "forcing everyone to be free," with proper conduct at the heart of their concept of freedom, they might well have been the answer to today's liberals.

To get back from the digression, the second reason why the left-wing secularists get away with it is because conservatives aren't theocrats at heart. Thus, any rightist with theocratic tendencies sticks out. It's an easy bat-down for the secular Left, because they know that conservatives will not rally around any political figure that's a genuine theocrat.

Of course, the left-wing secularist can fall back with the cynical maxim, "All faiths aim at theocracy." Just add the fallacy of self-exemption (everyone does it, but we're not part of everyone) and the donkey derby continues.

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