restoring our biblical and constitutional foundations

                

The State Is Not Our Savior!

 David Alan Black 

Orwell tells us that “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” We can add: Big Government is God.

Today the state considers itself the Liberator of mankind, the agent of our salvation. The faithful in the pews believe this lie hook, line, and sinker. They freely give their children over to the state to educate them and to make them into good little citizens of the Empire so that they can rule and reign with Leviathan. As C. S. Lewis once put it in That Hideous Strength: “Man has got to take charge of Man. That means, remember, that some men have got to take charge of the rest—which is another reason for cashing in on it as soon as one can. You and I want to be the people who do the taking charge, not the ones who are taken charge of.”

As I noted in a previous column, America has been engaged in empire building for over a century, consistently ignoring our nation’s original foreign policy of noninterventionism as enunciated by Washington—a foreign policy that changed to interventionism with the Spanish-American War. I wrote:

William McKinley was not the first American president to use the argument of philanthropy toward other “less fortunate” peoples. Lincoln “heard” a similar call and responded with the emancipation of four million slaves—at the cost of 620,000 war dead. But that was within our own boundaries. McKinley saw that the time had come when the United States, no longer a weakling nation, but strong and able, should take to itself the apostolic injunction, “We that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves.” He believed that the unalienable rights that the nation’s Founders had so ardently desired for themselves were not the exclusive privilege of their own countrymen, but were part of the endowment of the people of Cuba, of Puerto Rico, and of the Philippines as well. When the events of history placed the destinies of these peoples within America’s hands, it was its duty to extend to them the same blessings of freedom that it enjoyed.

Since that time Americans have been only too eager to engage in messianic adventures. The invasion and occupation of Iraq is only the latest manifestation of this messianic impulse. In contrast with the Founders’ intent that Congress be vested with very specific and limited powers, our Savior-state now spends the taxpayers’ largess on everything from health care, food distribution, foreign aid, farm subsidies, space exploration, “family planning” (aborticide), and even inheritance rights for dogs. What’s more, federal judges now regularly usurp the law-making authority of Congress. The American republic has become a judicial tyranny.

My friends, we are in a war for the soul of our nation. Our country was birthed in the conflict between the rule of law and the rule of man. Our Founders appealed to the fixed law of God to challenge King George’s arbitrary rule, “appealing to the supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions.” Understanding that there is no Savior but God, and no King but Jesus, is the key to understanding why we must reject big government and its messianic claims.

We have two choices facing us this coming election. We can be what Lewis called charge-takers. A charge-taker follows the enlightened dictates of George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, and the powerbrokers of the messianic state. The alternative is to be submission-givers, following the Word of God and submitting ourselves unconditionally to the rule of King Jesus.

As for me, I shall join the remnant in refusing to bow my knee to the sanctimonious geniuses in Washington. And, whether or not anyone listens, I shall continue to cry out:

Congress does not have unlimited authority!

Judges are not lawmakers!

The United States is not a democracy!

And the state is not my Savior!

December 4, 2003

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com. His latest book, Why I Stopped Listening to Rush: Confessions of a Recovering Neocon, will be released next spring.

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