Paul's Passing Thoughts

“There is an issue that is so important in American politics that frankly I don’t care who gets it whether conservative or liberal, and Powers almost got it right.”

Kirsten Powers is a political pundit and Fox News contributor who appeared on the Sean Hannity show last night. Hannity was having a group discussion with a mixture of conservatives and liberals regarding Paul Harvey’s If I Were the Devil speech.

At some point, one of the conservatives verbally bemoaned the usual “God has been taken out of the schools” mantra. I am 57 years old and have been paying attention to politics since I was 9 when my parents hosted a campaign party for Barry Goldwater, and in reply to the often repeated mantra, liberal Kristen Powers replied with one of the most significant political statements I have ever heard. The following is a paraphrase:

How was it working for us when God was in the schools?

Ultra liberal Judith Miller aped approval adding to the shock value. However, and disappointingly, Powers was only partly right. Was I disappointed because I am a liberal and I want liberals to be right all of the time? Hardly, in fact, I think Ronald Reagan was a conservative sissy compared to Barry Goldwater. There is an issue that is so important in American politics that frankly I don’t care who gets it whether conservative or liberal, and Powers almost got it right.

Her idea was spot on, but she missed the right application by 200 years. She pointed to a time in the 50’s when our public schools were segregated which opened the door for Sean Hannity to make a comparison between the challenges in public schools then versus now. How strange, a conservative such as myself with face in hands, crying out, “She almost nailed it! She almost nailed it!”

Conservatives are completely ignorant about what really matters, and I will use public schools as the primary example. But as an aside: Dr. Ben Carson may be one of the most significant political players since our founding fathers because he states the following (again, this is a paraphrase):

We have to rediscover who we are and educate accordingly [i.e., what is America really about?].

And there you go, and Powers touched on it regarding public schools. The true history of public schools reveals the pervasive ignorance among conservatives and conservative Christians in particular.

This necessarily requires a discussion about the founders of the public school system, the Puritans. “Pilgrims” is a soft term for “Puritans” who are the ones who originally brought Europeanism over the pond and settled on the east coast of the American continent. And they were political refugees, not innocent souls braving the Atlantic to find religious freedom in a new land. Before the American Revolution, politics and religion were of the same soul. To say that the Puritans were religious refugees is not telling…as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story.

And “Puritan” is a soft term for “Calvinist” as well. The first Bible to ever make landfall in America was the Geneva Bible, as in, John Calvin’s Geneva. Do you want to know what Geneva was like during Calvin’s rule there? See: American colonial history. Things like the Salem witch trials didn’t just happen; such was a European theocratic family tradition.

The American colonies were ruled by a Puritan theocracy completely intolerant of religious and political dissention. Oddly, though it is fairly well known that Puritans hanged Quakers for their beliefs, and partook in superstitious persecution that would shame cannibal witchdoctors, the Puritan as American religious hero continues to be a historical anomaly. Even Rush Limbaugh wrote a children’s book extolling the virtues of the Pilgrims. Good grief!

This brings me to my point. The Puritans founded the American public school system. Yes Kirsten, God, at least the Puritan version of Him, ruled the public schools and the government; now you may ask, “How did that work for us?” Actually, pretty good—the American Revolution, in large part, was a direct pushback to Puritan tyranny. Separation of church and state was not to protect religion from government, the working word here is, SEPERATION. The two need to be kept apart. The founding fathers grew up under the heavy hand of Puritan tyranny, and upon further evaluation of human history concluded the following:

Experience witnesseth that eccelsiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.

What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people.

James Madison: Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments; 1785

The fact of the matter is God Himself has never said that He wanted one of His representatives ruling a government because God knows mankind all too well. In case anybody hasn’t noticed, people can have some misguided ideas about what God wants. There seems to be some confusion here; Christ said His kingdom is not on earth, but many conservative Christians believe they have a mandate to take over the world, starting with the public schools, for God. Yes, the Puritans were in total control of the public schools, and were kicked out after the American Revolution because among many other reasons, the Puritan-controlled public schools were taking children away from parents and boarding them separately. Yes, those were the good ole’ days when “god” was still in the schools.

But unfortunately, liberals have something wrong as well. Unwittingly, they worship the same god as many conservative Christians. Again, Puritans came from a culture where religion and politics were the same soul, and the ideology that drove those politics was belief in the inherent inability of man. The Puritans were driven by the same spiritual, social, and political caste systems that dominated Western culture from ancient times. This is the crux of what the founding fathers rejected; the total depravity of the individual and the assertion that his sole purpose for existing is the ability to contribute to the collective. Dr. Ben Carson gets this, and that’s what makes him invaluable in our day.

If one wants to talk about the Bible, we can do that. Eventually, God is going to come back and raze the whole earth and set up His own kingdom. He hasn’t called conservative Christians to take over the world with their supposed moral superiority and then invite God back for a reunion. God is not in exile, He is simply going to clean house and move here when He chooses. Really, no need to prepare things for Him ahead of time. By the way, that’s Islam’s gig as well. Alarmingly, many political conservatives in our day are of this theological persuasion known as Dominionism.

Carson is right. The Answer is to rediscover America and educate Christians and heathen liberals alike in regard to her founding principles: individualism and separation of church and state. According to Carson, we need to forget about all of the divisions being created and focus on those two principles.

Sure, as a Christian Goldwater conservative, I would that all men be saved, but God still created a capable human race and we will stand before Him individually—no one will stand in for us. We are responsible for the sum and substance of our own lives. Read history, the clergy was not in charge of the Nuremberg trials. Man knows right from wrong as a matter of God-given conscience. When caste systems aren’t crazy enough, just add religion and superstition. That’s when history is like a movie that you could never make up in your wildest imagination.

When it gets right down to it, you can invoke “one nation under God,” but the question quickly becomes, “Which god?” And what does that God believe about man? Is man capable of governing himself, or does he need a government that controls every nuance of his life? Powers is almost right, but Carson has it right, we must reeducate Americans about who we are: a government by the people and for the people.

And how has that worked for not only us, but the world? Very-well-thank-you.

paul