The Democrats Declared War: Do You Believe Them?

Sometimes, one of the most difficult hurdles for a people to cross is to begrudgingly embrace reality. Few people want to acknowledge when they are at war until they are forced to accept the fact.

This often happens in traumatic, life-altering events like Pearl Harbor or September 11. Events like this jolt us into reality.

At other times, it is a slow revelation. It requires context that only time permits. Hitler marched into the Rheinland in 1936 in violation of the Treaty of Versaille. He annexed Austria in March 1938 and in October, German troops marched into Sudenland portion of Czechoslovakia. On November 9, 1938, a night that would become known as Kristallnacht, Nazis burned and destroyed Jewish business and synagogues throughout the Reich hundreds were murdered and more than 25,000 arrested. Yet, it was not until September 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland that the world finally, regretfully, begrudgingly accepted that they were at war with Nazi Germany.

This is what is happening in America right now. The Democrats declared war days after Donald Trump became president in 2017. They have openly and aggressively prosecuted their war against Trump and his “basket of deplorable” ever since. They have attempted an open coup d'état using the FBI, Department of Justice, and US Intelligence services. The House of Representatives has continuously carried out their open coup in front of our eyes. The Leftwing American Media have conducted an open war of information, disinformation, and outright propaganda.

Still, for most of us, we refuse to acknowledge we are at war. We’re waiting for a Pearl Harbor kind of event or a September 11.

When we look back, we will see the atrocities line up and understand what was happening within the context of this war. The Brett Kavanaugh hearings. The phony impeachment, Russiagate, the Riots, coronavirus. Economic lockdowns. Each one by themselves didn’t make sense, but in the context of the war, they all make perfect sense.

What I don’t know, today, is whether the election is another in a string of what appears to be unrelated events or if this will be the Pearl Harbor event that will jolt Americans into the reality that we are in fact at war.

Right now, America is like a ship sailing through rough seas to a destination unknown. There are storm clouds on the horizon, but we don’t know what lies beyond the horizon. It is too late to turn around. We cannot outrun the storm or avoid the storm, we must go through it.

For the Christian, we take comfort that our Lord Jesus Christ is the captain of the ship and while He can calm the waves, it is often not His will to turn His church away from the storm, but instead be with His church as it goes through the storm.

"Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the LORD your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you." - Deuteronomy 31:6.

Election Fraud Is Not New

Election fraud is not new to American politics. In Passage of Power, LBJ biographer Robert Caro describes how the Democratic political machine in Texas delivered the state for Kennedy-Johnson in 1960. As you read, you will see many of the same tactics at work in 1960 that are at work today: slowing the counting, mysterious ballots appearing out of nowhere, little accountability, strong party bosses in control. There's nothing new under the sun.

From the Passage of Power, Chapter 5: The "LBJ Special":

In the Valley border counties, the results were even more dramatic. For decades, as I wrote in Means of Ascent, the results reported from the “ethnic” towns had little to do with the preferences of the Mexican-Americans. The overwhelming majority of their votes had been cast at the orders of the Anglo-Saxon border dictators called patrones or jefes, orders often enforced by armed pistoleros who herded Mexican-Americans to the polls, told them how to vote, and then accompanied them into the voting cubbyholes to make sure the instructions were followed—if indeed the votes had been actually “cast” at all; in some of the Mexican-American areas, the local border dictators, in Texas political parlance, didn’t “vote ’em,” but rather just “counted ’em.” In those areas, most of the voters didn’t even go to the polls: the jefes’ men would, as one observer put it, simply “go around to the Mexicans’ homes. Get the numbers of their (poll tax) receipts. Tell them not to go to the polls. Just write in a hundred numbers, and cast the hundred votes yourself,” or, after the polls closed, would simply take the tally sheets and add to the recorded total whatever number was needed to give their favored candidate the margin he desired. “You get down on the border, and it didn’t matter how people (the Mexican-Americans) felt,” Ed Clark would explain. “The leaders did it all. They could vote ’em or count ’em, either one.”

Between 1948 and 1960, little had changed. In the latter election as in the former, George Parr counted them for Lyndon Johnson. The first sign was the pace of the counting. By the evening of election day, several hours after polls had closed, veteran reporters had noticed what one called the “slow-motion count of votes” in Duval—they knew what that meant; that the Duke was holding back a final tally until he saw whether the race was close, so that if it was, he could give his allies the votes they needed. At midnight, only one of Duval’s ten precincts had reported a final tally. Then, finally, came the count itself. The Duke controlled not only Duval County but Starr County as well as a personal fiefdom. Duval voted for Kennedy-Johnson by a margin of 3,803 to 808, Starr by 4,051 to 284. In a petition for a recount filed with the state canvassing board three days after the election, Republicans charged that pistols were carried by “election judges and others in Duval County so that voters were intimidated and coerced.”

Then there was Jim Wells County, or to be precise, the county’s Precinct Thirteen: “Box 13,” the precinct, already legendary in Texas political history, that in 1948 had provided the decisive margin for Lyndon Johnson by giving him two hundred new votes—the votes that were cast in alphabetical order and all in the same handwriting six days after the polls had closed. The Mexican-American reform movement had taken control of most of Jim Wells from Parr, but not the thirteenth precinct, the poorest Mexican district in the county seat of Alice. In 1960, that box gave Lyndon Johnson’s ticket a margin of 1,144 to 45, or twenty-five to one, so the ticket came out of the heart of the Duke’s Rio Grande domain with more than 88 percent of the vote—and a plurality of more than 7,800 votes.

The results were almost as lopsided in the counties controlled by Parr’s allies, who followed his lead. In Webb County, it was 10,059 to 1,802, more than five to one; in Jim Hogg County, 1,255 to 244, more than five to one; in Brooks, 1,934 to 540, almost four to one. The nine counties controlled by Parr and his allies reported a total of 37,063 votes to the Texas Election Bureau. Almost 30,000 of them—29,377, or 79 percent—were for Kennedy-Johnson. The Democratic ticket therefore came out of those counties with a plurality of 21,691.

Source: Caro, Robert A.. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson IV . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

How does a nation go from a democratic republic to a dictatorship? The answer: quickly.

Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. The intention was to control him. As this article states, that was a fatal underestimation.

By the end of March 1933, the Nazis used a national crisis (the burning of the Reichstag Building) to pass legislation that would give Hitler the authority needed to deal with the crisis. This law, known as The Enabling Act, became the legal basis for the Nazi dictatorship that would govern Germany until the end of the war in 1945.

By mid-1933 (less than six months after gaining power), the Nazi government began a process called Gleichschaltung which systematically removed from civil service anyone who was Jewish or disagreed with them. (NOTE: Dachau, the first German Concentration Camp, was opened in March 1933. The first prisoners at Dachau were political enemies of the Reich.)

The average German voter never intended to take their first step as a nation towards what would become the atrocities of the Third Reich. In early 1933, they just wanted the turmoil to end and they wanted a government that could provide what every one of us desires: peace and security. By the time the average German realized that the Nazis were carrying out the threats they had been publicly advocating for since 1923 (10 years), it was too late. Nazi control was complete. You either fell in line and openly agreed with the party policies, or you were arrested and imprisoned.

Why is this relevant to today? We have a similar threat standing at our door. The Socialists that have taken over the Democrat party of 2020 have made their plans clear. They will follow Hitler's plan: gain power, create a crisis, implement legislation to give them full legal authority, destroy their enemies. This legal process to turn a democratic republic like the United States into a Socialist authoritarian state could happen within months.

All the pieces are in plain view.

Let's pray the American voters do not make the same mistake the Germans made in 1933 and fatally underestimate the truly evil intentions of a political party. Not unlike the Democrat Party in 2020, the Nazis did not hide their political agenda. Hitler published his political manifesto, Mein Kampf, in 1924. It was all there in plain view. The German voters simply did not believe him.

PS: One of the things that has perplexed me most in 2020 is the selection of Joe Biden as the Democrat nominee. I don't believe we have seen a more inept and unqualified candidate for president in the two-party era.

Moreover, with Biden's weakness as a candidate, the clear objective would be to put a running-mate on the ticket who is without question a person of great competency and political skill. That didn't happen. Of all the candidates running for the Democratic nomination in 2020 (I think there were 24 at first), Kamala Harris is one of the weakest. She dropped out of the race prior to the Iowa caucuses and even performed badly with African-American voters. She comes from the state of California, which the Democrats will carry regardless of who is on the ticket, and she is declared "the most liberal senator in the US Senate" by GovTrack, a non-partisan organization. She brings zero political advantage to the Democrat ticket, and, instead, brings a lot of political baggage with her.

As I have thought about this, I want to believe the best about the leaders of the Democrat party in 2020. Knowing that the radical left was surging and they were unable to control the rise of Socialism in the Democrat party, they nominated Joe Biden with Kamala Harris as his running mate as a poison pill. Yes, he will carry the party banner in 2020, but they will do as little as possible to get him elected. Their hope is that Americans will reject Biden as a candidate and thus put an end to the rise of Socialism within the Democrat party.

Of course, if you want to believe the worst about the Democrat party leadership in 2020, you have to argue that they put likeable, old "Uncle Joe" up as their candidate to serve as a trojan horse, and once he gets elected, they will push him aside and the radicals will quickly take over the government. In that case, re-read the first part of this article to understand their playbook.

God help us.

My Response to John Piper

John Piper wrote an article providing insight into his perspective on the current political climate. While I agree with his initial premise that Christians error when they justify the sins of one party's personality in order to condemn the sins of the other party's policies, I disagree with his overall conclusion.

Piper places the sins of personality on a balance scale against the sins of policy and concludes that in God's eyes, both are sinful and wrong, and that one does not outweigh the other. He states, "it is baffling and presumptuous to assume that pro-abortion policies kill more people than a culture-saturating, pro-self pride."

I agree with his initial premise: sin is sin in God's eyes, and one sin does not justify another. I respectfully disagree, however, with his conclusion.

In his argument, Piper commits a logical fallacy. He boils down today's complex political discussion into an either/or statement: you either tolerate the sin of personality found in Donald Trump or you condemn the policies of the Democrats and Joe Biden.

He appears to place everyone together into one of these camps.

Piper states, "Therefore, Christians communicate a falsehood to unbelievers (who are also baffled!) when we act as if policies and laws that protect life and freedom are more precious than being a certain kind of person. The church is paying dearly, and will continue to pay, for our communicating this falsehood year after year. The justifications for ranking the destructive effects of persons below the destructive effects of policies ring hollow."

He then concludes that the proper perspective for Christians and pastors is to prepare to suffer for the cause of Christ. "Imagine that America collapses. First anarchy, then tyranny — from the right or the left. Imagine that religious freedom is gone. What remains for Christians is fines, prison, exile, and martyrdom."

To pastors, he asks, have you prepared your congregation for this outcome? Piper states, "Have you shown them that they are 'sojourners and exiles' (1 Peter 2:11), and that their 'citizenship is in heaven,' from which they 'await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ' (Philippians 3:20)? Do they feel in their bones that 'to live is Christ, and to die is gain' (Philippians 1:21)?"

Will pastors and Christians not conclude from this article that we should simply disengage from the political dialog? Should we not conclude that to engage we must openly tolerate the sins of personality found in Donald Trump in order to condemn the policies of death in which the Democrat party platform is founded upon?

I respectfully disagree with this conclusion.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer found himself in a similar dilemma. He could resist the policies of National Socialism, or he could stay quiet. In his magnum opus, Ethics, Bonhoeffer argued that Christians do not live in a separate, insulated sphere from all earthly relationships. That in a real sense, we are "Dual Citizens" of both our earthly existence and our heavenly destination.

Bonhoeffer argued that our existence is defined by our bond to fellow human beings and to God, and that the outcome of this interwoven bond is what Bonhoeffer described as "vicarious representation or responsibility."

This concept is first illustrated by the Lord Jesus Christ who, as God, took on the nature and form of a human being in order to vicariously represent us in death and to atone for our sins on the cross. Jesus stood in our place and bore the wrath of God upon Himself.

Bonhoeffer then argues that we, too, as Christians are called to a life of vicarious representation and responsibility as we stand for those who are unable to stand for themselves.

When I stand in opposition to the policies of abortion advocated for by the Democrats and Biden/Harris ticket, I am doing so on behalf of the unborn who cannot advocate for themselves. As a Christian and a pastor, I am a vicarious representative for them, and this is my responsibility to do so.

When I stand in opposition to the policies of childhood transgender surgery and hormone treatments advocated for by the Democrats and Biden/Harris ticket, I am doing so on behalf of small children who are unable to advocate for themselves. As a Christian and a pastor, I am a vicarious representative for them, and this is my responsibility to do so.

In his article, Piper does not accept a vicarious responsibility. He sees two contradicting narratives (sins of personality vs. sins of policy) and concludes his only option is to embrace one or the other, a proposition he cannot accept, so he taps out. That is wrong.

Please hear me: I am not condoning the sins of personality Piper describes, but I do not accept his argument that this is an either/or proposition for the Christian. I believe we have a vicarious responsibility to be a voice and a vote for those who cannot or those who are unable to have a voice.

Legacy Journalists Become Agents of Disinformation

One thing about the Trump presidency—it has torn the mask off of the demonic zeitgeist that possesses the leftist elites in this country.

We used to talk about media bias, but during the Trump presidency we have witnessed outright propaganda not unlike you would see from Chinese or Russian state-owned media. It is impossible to accuse someone of simple bias when they are repeatedly sharing easily proven false information. This is propaganda and ideologically-driven misinformation.

As Bari Weiss noted in her open resignation letter to the New York Times, journalistic integrity has been sacrificed at the altar of propaganda. There are no journalists left at the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, or any of the legacy media entities. Those who dare question the approved party line are publicly shamed and discredited.

These media entities openly point to each other when they “Fact Check” any narrative that contradicts the party line. NBC News will point to “an anonymous source” referenced in a New York Times article as proof that a narrative they disagree with is “wrong.”

The reality is, the legacy media in the United States is all owned by large entertainment companies. They are no longer independent news organizations. Disney, which owns ABC, for example, is more concerned about its market share in China than it is in performing real journalism. Disney cannot afford to have ABC News publish a story that counters a narrative China may find offensive or that the corporate oligarchy might disagree with. Financially, there is no advantage for Disney to permit ABC News to have an independent voice. So, instead, we get a lot of anti-Trump disinformation (party line) and links to stories about Britney Spears’ latest bikini instagram post (click bait).

Where can you find real journalism? It is out there, but you have to search for it. I go to sites like Real Clear Politics because they provide an aggregate of top news stories from a variety of sources. I also visit AllSides.com because they provide headline stories and then show you how media organizations from Left, Center, and Right are covering the story. I also scan British and Australian news organizations because they will provide insights to US News you will not find in American Media.

I also read some of the legacy media organizations (ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.) simply because you can often discern what is a real story by observing how they are propagandizing a story and what they are NOT saying.

As Pontius Pilate is fond of saying, “truth...what is truth?”