Christian Political Principles in the Age of Trump

Recent years have seen a resurgence of thought about the age-old topic of Christian engagement in the public square. This is true in the United States in particular, where a historically Judeo-Christian culture is rapidly shifting, church attendance is declining, and once largely shared civic convictions are deteriorating. The 2016 election added another wrinkle to the story, especially for conservative Christians who struggled to rethink political allegiances in light of new realities. All of these developments are necessitating new answers to old questions. Namely, how do Christians engage faithfully and prudently in a pluralistic—and at times, antagonistic—public square?

 

  • Property/Wealth Allows you to be self-governing.
  • Homestead Act, not Basic Income
  • Value Added Sales Tax instead of Income Tax.
  • Targeting Families with incomes 80,000-$200,000 for wealth accumulation (UPS Drivers, previously $150,000)
  • Divorce Tax
  • Anti-Pornography
  • Require Schools to teach biblical literacy.
  • Principle and Duty of Self Defense, Just/War (26 min)
  • The Issue is not Populism, but Management Society and Selfie Man (30 min)
  • Gay Marriage is the ultimate-one percent issue (R.R. Reno)  (51 min)
  • We should care most about the middle, not the bottom third. (R.R. Reno)
  • We are in the midst of the 3rd Great Awakening without Religion: Guilt, Debt, Fault without a Religious Architecture.  (56 min)
  • We have a world with rights, but without a need for each other/responsibility
  • The Freshman class at College realizes that something is wrong (1:07)
  • Foolishness of those Evangelical Leaders who value Proximity to Power (Falwell, Tony Perkins, Franklin Graham)
  • Black lives matters attacked the Democratic Party.
  • Identity politics is a betrayal of Martin Luther King
  • Slavery is the only Moral Claim.  Africans are not one group among many.
  • The African American Community has been decimated by Planned Parenthood, an organization that started out with a eugenics policies (Roe)  (1:29)

The revolution was betrayed! ‘Real’ socialism is a worthy goal! It’s never been tried!

The revolution was betrayed! ‘Real’ socialism is a worthy goal! It’s never been tried!

The problem is that there will never be a “true” socialist country because ruling classes are inevitable.

.. former Communists who understood that any attempt to create a “true socialist” society runs into the Iron Law of Oligarchy. Every organization requires some small group of people to make important decisions. They may use their special knowledge and power to help people, but it’s also a sure bet that they will use it to help themselves as well. A society without democratic institutions and market mechanisms by its nature will invest bureaucrats with enormous power to make choices about how other people will live.

.. It turns out that Russian meddling in the election wasn’t reserved for generating an army of MAGA Twitter bots: A social media campaign calling itself “Blacktivist” and linked to the Russian government used both Facebook and Twitter in an apparent attempt to amplify racial tensions during the U.S. presidential election, two sources with knowledge of the matter told CNN.

.. First of all, the notion that a totalitarian dictatorship that murdered and enslaved its own people actually cared about civil rights for Americans shouldn’t have passed the laugh test.

.. The Soviets, with the aid of useful idiots and even-more-useful agents, convinced large swathes of the world that the CIA created AIDS. During the Korean War, they fabricated “confessions” and other evidence that America used biological-warfare weapons. The Soviets undermined democratic societies — and developing countries throughout the world — with conspiracy theories planted in newspapers and TV shows and peddled by seemingly legitimate academics. Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba University (no really) granted Ph.D.s in Holocaust denial and anti-Zionist canards.

.. The Soviets loved black radicals in the U.S. not because they gave a rat’s ass about black empowerment or civil rights but because they wanted to sow unrest in America.

.. the campaign sought toThe revolution was betrayed! ‘Real’ socialism is a worthy goal! It’s never been tried!

sought to replace King with Stokely Carmichael, hoping a less pacifist leader would help spark a race war within the U.S.

.. the KGB approved a plan to release explosives in “the Negro section of New York,” with one KGB official suggesting bombing “one of the Negro colleges” as a back-up option. Following the planned bombing, KGB agents would then issue anonymous phone calls “to two or three black organizations, claiming that the explosion was the work of the Jewish Defense League.”

.. Second, for the conservatives out there who have suddenly developed a strange new respect for Vladimir Putin because he’s a “strong leader” or some other flaming garbage, you should keep in mind that the former KGB agent is an unapologetic creature of that evil empire, shorn of Marxist pretense. He is doing to America today what he was trained to do.

Study: Blacks’ Median Wealth Will Be Zero in 2053

That racial stereotyping hides the real cause and scale of economic damage to blue-collar and white-collar Americans families amid the rising wealth of the technocratic globalized elite which dominates the Democratic Party and at least half of the GOP.

.. That government failure is exemplified by the housing bubble, which destroyed a huge percentage of wealth held by black Americans.

2011 report by the Pew Research Center showed that the median wealth of black American households dropped by 53 percent because of the property bubble. The mid-point median of black American wealth crashed from $12,124 in 2005 to just $5,677 in 2009, according to the Pew report.

.. White Americans suffered far less from the bubble because many had already paid off their mortgages, because their debts were a small percentage of their income, and because whites had more assets in the stock market and other sectors outside the housing market. Still, the median wealth of white households also dropped by a huge 16 percent, from $134,992 in 2005 to $113,149 in 2009.

.. Meanwhile, wages for all men have remained flat for the past 44 years since 1973, according to the Census Bureau.

.. when Obama settled into the White House during the housing implosion, his economic policies helped very clever people invest their way back up to more wealth. The New York Post described the process:

The years 2008 through 2015 should be known as the Great Fleecing.

During that time, the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the world occurred. Some $4.5 trillion was given to Wall Street banks through its Quantitative Easing program, with the American people picking up the IOU … Who did this help? The 1%, and pretty much only the 1%.

.. The report does not discuss how technology is concentrating wealth among higher-skilled people, and it omits any talk of globalized outsourcing. It also avoids family stability and it ignores the topic of immigration, which has flooded the nation’s marketplace with cheap labor that effectively imposes a 5 percent tax on labor — and then transfers $500 billion a year to company owners and investors.

.. the report then lists a series of unrealistic demands, including a massive tax increase on the wealthy, a massive financial grant to children that could be spent when they become adults, more house-buying aid for poor people, a higher minimum wage, and “a federal jobs guarantee [that] would function similarly to the Works Progress Administration of the 1930s.”

.. But many people of all colors who cannot get through college are falling behind because technology, work, and business are becoming more complex. This increasing complexity ensures that an increasing share of income and wealth goes to people who are smart enough to arbitrage the increasing social and technological diversity, regardless of color.

 .. the Democratic elite prefers to import foreign voters rather than accept the equal social status of all blue-collar Americans.
.. four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs. However, the government imports roughly 1 million legal immigrants to compete against Americans for jobs.
.. That Washington-imposed policy of mass-immigration floods the market with foreign laborspikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up real estate priceswidens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.

Trump’s 7 months of self-destruction

President Trump, with at least two years of full Republican control of government at the national and state levels, has systematically damaged or destroyed his relationship with — well, almost every group or individual essential to success.

Trump’s undisciplined and incendiary style has left the most powerful man in the world with few friends — not onein the United States Senate, for instance.

  • The public: Gallup has his approval at 34%, down from 46% just after the inauguration.
  • Republican congressional leaders — Senate Majority Mitch McConnell in particular.
  • Every Democrat who could help him do a deal.
  • The media.
  • CEOs.
  • World leaders.
  • Europe.
  • Muslims.
  • Hispanics.
  • African Americans.
  • Military leaders.
  • The intelligence community.
  • His own staff.

And who’s happy?

  • Steve Bannon.
  • Saudi Arabia.
  • Breitbart.
  • David Duke.