Posted on 03/03/2008 1:57:22 PM PST by Jim Robinson
William F. Buckley’s ‘Conservative Movement’ Still-Born, Dead-On-Arrival, Decades Ago, Because it Was Godless, Against Christ, Ignored God’s Word
Contact: John Lofton, 301-873-4612, 410-760-8885, JLof@aol.com
MEDIA ADVISORY, March 3 /Christian Newswire/ — Recovering Republican John Lofton, Editor of TheAmericanView.com and co-host of “The American View” radio show with the Constitution Party’s 2004 Presidential candidate Michael Anthony Peroutka, has issued the following statement:
“Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” – Psalm 127.
The Lord Jesus Christ did not build the “conservative movement” house. Thus, it was a house built on sand, it fell and great has been the fall of it, a recent example of this fall being the “conservative movement’s” support for President of George W. Bush who has given us the most Godless, unconstitutional, debt-ridden, big spending Federal Government in our history.
Even though most of its “leaders” claimed to be Christians, the “conservative movement” was dead-on-arrival because, from the beginning, it’s political plan was Godless, against Christ, and ignored the Bible. This “movement” vainly imagined succeeding without honoring Christ, succeeding through bread-alone, flesh-and-blood-only-politics when God tells us the REAL battle is a spiritual war which must be fought in the full-armor of God (Ephesians 6:10ff).
An example of the Godlessness I allude to occurred when I was on Bill Buckley’s “Firing Line” program June 24, 1987. Referring to him having told Malcolm Muggeridge that he (Buckley) did not believe there was a Christian means of organizing society, I asked Bill: “Wouldn’t God’s Laws, wouldn’t the Laws of Christ be a means of organizing a society?” Buckley said: “No. No….The consent of the governed in societies ruled by the people is the ultimate source of authority.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was once asked how just a few Communists could take over his country when it had a thousand years of being Christian? He replied: “We forgot God.” The leaders of the “conservative movement,” politically-speaking, forgot God. They forgot that the Lord Jesus Christ is Lord over ALL, including politics. They forgot that He is King of kings, Lord of lords, with ALL power in Heaven and on earth. They forgot Psalm 2:12 commands: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”
I know all of what I say here is true because, from the inside, I ran with this “conservative movement” from the mid-1960s to 1980 when God, by His grace alone, raptured me from among this Christless crowd – something for which, literally, I will be eternally grateful.
To hear much more on this subject, please click here to hear the latest “The American View” radio show http://www.theamericanview.com/dictator/media/997/show_145.mp3
If you’d like to interview John Lofton, you may reach him by calling: 301-873-4612; 410-760-8885; or by email: JLof@aol.com.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1979514/posts?page=5#5
Interesting viewpoint.
Agreed
My statement to the author would be, "You are criticizing, but offering nothing concrete, just sand castles in the sky."
My question would be, "Just how would conservatism have been built along the lines you prescribe? What do you want?"
I prefer the former.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner.
Let's cut through the code language.
The author wants the Mackerel-Snapping Papists thrown out.
BTTT
One of the most interesting and educational documents I’ve ever read was the Virginia Declaration, 1776.
Here are sections 15 and 16.
SEC. 15. That no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
SEC. 16. That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.
Thanks, Lofton. Now kindly STFU.
And pushing to divide Israel and honoring this strange god “allah” in our land does not help.
But I don’t know what, Constitutionally, can be done about the latter, except to declare it a fifth-column.
A simple case of the Calvinist trashing the Catholic.
It happens every day.
Some have not just forgotten God but have sided with the fanatics in America who have declared war against God.
Or England under Oliver’s Army.
Several of the key players at NR in the early days were Catholic or were converts to Catholicism. They included Wilmoore Kendall, Russell Kirk, L. Brent Bozell, Jr., and Frank Meyer (converted on his death bed).
Not only fish-eating papists, but JEWS, like that Goldberg fella. Probably supported flouridation.
(yes, sarcasm).
The repblic, and our civic duty, is Caesar's, and our principle of "separation of church and state" is there because politics corrupts religion.
None of these is a complete failure. None of these is still-born. None of these is in danger of collapsing.
So in what way is the conservative movement different that it should be DOA while these other major movements/institutions are still ongoing?
Those are some very bright men you have listed. Russell Kirk, a good Catholic, a very bright and kind man.
Perhaps he’s just a liar.
I think their Constitutional protection of freedom of religion extends to the point that they start demanding preferential treatment. When they start doing that, we don't owe them that courtesy any longer.
Should we be governed by clergy? And if so, whose clergy?
My Church (Catholic) argues, for instance, that since God is the Author of both the Book of Scripture (Biblical law, based on revelation) and the Book of Nature (Natural Law, based on reason), a fully accurate understanding will produce the same conclusions, the same result, for both (since Truth = Truth by either method.)
That means that in a nation like the USA where not everybody accepts the authority of Scripture, one can argue on the basis of Natural Law as the method for devising reasonable, God-pleasing policies and composing just, God-pleasing laws.
But that brings us back to where we are now, does it not? Because when we use the ordinary rules of evidence and reason to advocate just laws, we're contending via debate and persuasion just like we are now.
There would seem to be the two basic choices: government by clergy via decree, of government by citizens via persuasion.
So what we're doing now is debate and persuasion, a gradual and incremental process. How in effect would Lofton's process differ from Buckley's?
Buckley, Russell Kirk and Whittaker Chambers were men of very deep faith.
Kinda takes the idea of “Constitutionalist” (or Constimatooshunalist) and stands it on its ear.
http://www.catholicreview.org/subpages/storyworldnew.aspx?action=2963
He wrote an account of his Catholic beliefs in the 1997 book “Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith.”
This evangelical Christian agrees.
“I prefer the former.”
No, Lofton’s view of government is Washington’s America and Buckley’s is Payne’s America.
I have one comment:
The Calvinists AND the Catholics had better get their acts together - and I do mean TOGETHER - or the godless secularists and the Islamists are going to make sure we’re utterly destroyed.
The hour is late...
You think Buckley was a devotee of Thomas Paine!? Give me a break!
Perhaps the Calvinists ought to drop this sanctimonious “Whore of Babylon” crap.
UNalienable Rights given by God.. BUT if you allow your government to deport God.. then those rights can be alienated.. Americans are allowing God to be deported out of Politics.. any rights we HAD are in jeopardy.. The American is getting set up to alienate them.. Some are partially alienated already..
FDR was a student and disciple of Endicott Peabody, and look what that got us.
Touche.'
Lofton has confused WFB with Ayn Rand.
Are you doing two things at once?
I don’t know about Bill Buckley’s personal deal with Jesus- that’s between Bill and Jesus.
The movement, I think, had some elements in common with the Revolutionary bunch who founded the nation under, what I believe to be, the direction and inspiration of God. He invented freedom after all, and regularly moves on behalf of the oppressed and bound.
But conservatism was infiltrated by globalist operatives. Perhaps even some of the founders were globalists, I don’t know for sure. One explanation for the constant leftward drift and increasingly loose redefinition of ‘conservatism’ since it’s inception can be traced in the evil words of Quigley:
The chief problem of American political life...has been how to make the two Congressional parties more national and international. The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.”
~Carroll Quigley, ‘Tragedy and Hope’
Conservatism was doomed from the beginning by the rebuilders of modern Babel. God has nothing to do with such ambitions.
bookmark
Absolutely, but I think you left out the most famous one, Whittaker Chambers.
By Carol Zimmermann Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON – William F. Buckley Jr., a Catholic with an extraordinary gift for the spoken and written word who was dubbed the godfather of modern American conservatism, died Feb. 27 at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 82.
The commentator suffered from diabetes and emphysema, but the exact cause of death was not known. Buckley was found dead at the desk in his study where he reportedly had been writing.
“He died with his boots on, after a lifetime of riding pretty tall in the saddle,” his son, Christopher, was quoted as saying.
Funeral arrangements had not been announced as of Feb. 28.
Buckley may have been best known for his work with the National Review, a conservative political magazine he founded in 1955 and where he served as editor until 1990. He also wrote more than 50 books as diverse as spy novels and a book on sailing. He wrote an account of his Catholic beliefs in the 1997 book “Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith.”
He also was a television host for more than 30 years for the PBS program “Firing Line.”
Buckley was born in New York in 1925, the sixth of 10 children. His father, who made his multimillion-dollar fortune in oil, had his children educated by personal tutors at the Buckley family estate in Sharon, Conn., and Catholic schools in England and France.
Buckley served in the Army from 1944 to 1946, and then attended Yale University, where he studied political science, economics and history. In 1951 he published his first book, “God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of Academic Freedom,” accusing the university’s faculty of a bias against religion, individualism and capitalism.
In 1961, Buckley was criticized by the editors of America magazine, a national Catholic weekly magazine run by the U.S. Jesuits, over comments he had supposedly made that were critical of Pope John XXIII’s encyclical “Mater et Magistra” (“Mother and Teacher”).
An article critical of the encyclical appeared in the National Review with the quip “Mater, si, magistra, no!” attributed to Buckley. The quip was a pun on an anti-American chant, “Cuba, si, yanqui, no,” in the news at the time.
The comment generated rounds of complaint letters and editorials on the topic along with an opinion piece in The New York Times in which Buckley complained about America magazine’s coverage.
A month after the controversy arose, Buckley wrote a letter to America’s editor in which he stated the comment was a “flippancy pure and simple” that had not come from him, but from a Catholic scholar and journalist who turned out to be Gary Wills, a contributor to the National Review in 1961.
Almost 30 years later, Buckley was again featured in America magazine. Prior to Pope John Paul II’s 1987 visit to the United States, Buckley was one of 10 prominent Catholics asked by the magazine to respond to the question: “If you had five minutes alone with the pope, what would you say?”
In Buckley’s hypothetical address to the pope, he noted that he wished to pass along “apparently trivial complaints,” such as the failure of the Second Vatican Council to increase the “universal appeal of the church.”
He bemoaned the loss of the Latin liturgy as a “shared sense of historical transcendence” and said he had “subjective doubts about some of the doctrinal questions you have elected to stress.”
He also said he believed “the church is never so grand as when it defies the spirit of the age.”
In a 1973 interview with The Evangelist, newspaper of the Diocese of Albany, N.Y., Buckley called the English-language Mass a “catastrophe.”
“It isn’t in the Catholic tradition of the last 500 years,” he said. “Mass was a bilateral not a trilateral experience. It was between us and God through the priest. Now it seeks to be between us, the priest and whoever else is there.”
One of the major problems with the Mass in English, he noted, was the translation, which he described as “enough to make anyone with concern for the language wince.”
“It is a major penance to recite it aloud. I am tempted at times to wear earmuffs in church,” he said.
In the interview, Buckley added that he was proud of the church for its stance against abortion, something he reiterated in his National Review columns.
In a 1997 interview broadcast on the PBS program “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” Buckley was asked if there was one feature of the Catholic Church that kept him a Catholic. In response, he said it was “the centrality of the assumption that the Catholic Church is the church that was founded by Christ.”
When asked how he squared his conservative views with Catholic social teaching, he said, “There’s always a tendency in churches, as far as I can see, to say we’ve got to build one more gymnasium for the homeless. And I think we should build one more gymnasium – don’t get me wrong – but the attempt to suck spiritual energy into activity of that kind, in my judgment, doesn’t really pay off.”
Buckley’s wife of 56 years, Patricia Buckley, died in April 2007.
Besides son Christopher, an author and satirist who lives in Washington, Buckley is survived by two brothers, three sisters and two grandchildren.
I thought Chambers was an Episcopalian.
OMG. sorry about that.
WFB was hardly godless.
He was not a theocrat, but that is not the same as being godless. As far as I know, he was a faithful Catholic.
There are Catholics who are theocrats (mainly monarchists), but Buckley was not among them.
This guy (Lofton) seems to be a dispensationalist theocrat. Not my cup of tea. Takes all kinds, I suppose.
I think you might find that the Calvinists have a different view of eschatology. There is a significant difference in this area of theology between most Calvinists and evangelicals.
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