Right Wing versus Left Wing Radicals

In the last two weeks our nation has experienced a massive radicalization of our collective point of view, at least that point of view as represented by the media and by leadership in both of our major political parties. At issue is the supposed conflict between the left, today represented by “Antifa,” and the right, as purportedly represented by the “neo-Nazis” and “Fascists.”

Does anybody support the actions of any person or group of persons to take human life, or destroy property, in pursuit of a debate over the future of the country? If we can agree upon this point that our civil form of government, and our Christian legal system, are both in opposition to this form of “activism,” then we can begin a realistic discussion. There should be no need to “denounce” any particular group, whether they be from Antifa or the Nazi/KKK portions of our population. They are both equally outside the bounds of civil behavior and are attempting, when they use the tactics of violence, to force their beliefs upon other people through some form of intimidation.

The climate in the country today is highly polarized due in part to three factors moving in concert. First, the intentional misrepresentation of American history through an improper use of terminology which derives from carefully orchestrated teaching in our schools. Second, the power of the media to create a sense of dominant public opinion in agreement with the aforementioned distortion of history and language. Third, the general ignorance and apathy of most people. In this post I will concentrate on the clear misuse of language, particularly in the use of the phrase of right wing versus left wing in terms of politics and goals.

The popular use of these terms implies two ideological camps in the political spectrum which lie at opposite ends of a line, much like a teeter totter. At the one end is the left, progressive extreme involving goals of socialism, wealth redistribution, and social justice. At the other end is the right, conservative extreme involving goals of state sponsored capitalism, anti-immigration, and enforced control of job access to approved groups.

The problem with the left / right divide is that the extremes in both cases do not exist on opposite sides of a spectrum, they exist on the same side and differ only in the specific goals they value. The actual division, the one that sets the history of the United States apart from the history of the rest of the world, is the division between central governmental control (statism) and personal liberty.

Imagine for a moment that a Nazi / White Supremacist entity were to gain control of the government of the United States. What do you imagine their goal would be once they had power? Eliminate all Jews, suppress / repress all non-whites, restrict certain jobs for only white, heterosexual Protestant men?

Now imagine the Black Lives Matter (BLM), or Antifa (really?), or Occupy Wallstreet gain control of the government. What do you imagine their goal would be once they had power? Suppress white privilege by demanding reparations to the great great grandchildren of slaves from people whose entire family history never included slave ownership, eliminate economic injustice by eliminating capitalism and forcing complete wealth redistribution, ensuring social justice for persecuted sexual groups like the .3% transgenders or 2% homosexual population? Please feel free to fill in the blank for what the Nazis or the BLMs would do with power.

The reality is clear: to effect their goals, in both cases, these groups need the power of the government to enforce their point of view. In simple terms, they don’t represent two extremes but only one. They both want to control a powerful central government to exert their view on everyone else. You don’t have to agree with either set of goals to understand the “extremes” of left and right are mythological. Both groups, and a myriad of comparable alphabet soup types like them, want to dictate through the government. These are statists; those who see the power of the state as the supreme arbiter of right and wrong, for the enforcement of a particular point of view upon the entire populace.

Conservatives, more precisely Christian conservatives, believe in the limitation of the power of the state to a bare minimum necessary to defend the nation from external threats, and to maintain law and order internally. The pendulum doesn’t swing between “right” and “left.” It swings between centralized government control and decentralized personal freedom and liberty. Regardless of your values the conservative movement isn’t about capturing the powerful central government in order to enact an agenda. The objective of true conservatism is to reduce the central government to basic, bare bones powers in accordance with our founding document and principles. Let municipalities argue about whether or not a statue of Robert E. Lee is dangerous.

Within this context it is true that there will be and have been laws which favor one point of view or another. All law stems from an underlying religious faith and the laws of the United States have always been based on Christian values. As the dominant faith of the people shifts from Christianity so too do the laws shift from Christian based morality to those of other religious views. So there will be a debate about whether homosexuals can be legally married which will be emblazoned in a legal code, there will be a debate and a decision about whether taking the life of an unborn baby/fetus is murder or just a surgical procedure, there will be a debate about the right to own private property or not, and all of these will be incorporated into the law. But the power of the government to effect specific outcomes should be reduced and limited.

The United States is in a perilous time because too many of our citizens have never been taught the truth about our roots, slavery included, and how it is that our form of government was established on the base of a limited central government with a Christian foundation of law. The flood of words on Facebook, from Hollywood, and most especially from the elites of both political parties and the media, only serve to obscure the true dilemma. We cannot progress successfully as a country without a return to our Christian faith because it is the only basis for the survival of our form of government, without the education of our citizens about our own history, and finally without a reduction in the size, reach and power of our central government.