Title: 13
Author: Joe Griffin
Last saved by: Paul J. Davey
Company: GDC

Clanking Chains

		08-03-30-A.CC02-877 /

Some Means Used to Achieve Socialism; Goldberg: “The Limits of Hope”; Different Standards for Progressives than for Traditionalists: Dodd & Lott; Obama & McCain

Whatever the crusade, its pseudo-philosophical rhetorical veil conceals while advancing the hidden agenda of Satan’s plan which is a globalist dictatorship under his control.
The present “hidden agenda” among some in the current political campaign is the conversion of the American culture to one that is egalitarian, secular, and collectivist.  It will include larger and more intrusive government but profess to offer citizens more freedom.  However, this freedom has to do more with removing the restraint of basic principles of morality while imposing restraint on what defines a truly free society: speech (if it is politically incorrect), media (through the unfair Fairness Doctrine), keeping and bearing of arms (the coup de grâce of totalitarians), personal wealth (through heavy taxation to sustain engorged government programs since each one of us must sacrifice for the good of the many), private property (by abuse of eminent domain to increase a community’s tax revenue) or capitalism (through the lie of “global warming” imposing carbon credits, first on corporations, later on individuals).  Each of these is a means designed to achieve ends desired by those who subscribe to principles of secular liberation theology.
Goldberg, Jonah, “The Limits of Hope,” National Review, April 7, 2008, 33-36:
Obama recruiters are encouraged to proselytize not by talking about “issues” but by testifying about how they “came to” the candidate, in much the way born-again Christians testify about how they “came to Jesus.”
Obama’s apostles include his wife, Michelle, who insists she is “married to the only person in this race who has a chance at healing this nation.”  And why does Obama need to lay hands upon America?  “We need a leader who’s going to touch out souls because, you see, our souls are broken.”  He will demand much of us, she says.  “The change Barack is talking about is hard, so don’t get too excited, because Barack is going to demand that you, too, be different.”
Much of the messianic language is more New Age then New Testament.  “He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians,” says Gary Hart, who describes Obama as “the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century.”  Prominent “leadership coach” Eve Konstantine assures us that the highest expression of the collective American soul has finally materialized: “Barack Obama is our collective representation of our purest hopes, our highest visions and our deepest knowings.  He’s our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence.”
Most famously, Oprah Winfrey insists that Barack is The One—because we don’t simply need politicians who can tell the truth, “we need politicians who know how to be the truth.”  Winfrey claims that Obama will help us “evolve to a higher plane.”  She loves Obama because “he is an evolved leader who can bring evolved leadership to our country.” (p. 33)
This conviction that Obama will take America to the next level, that he will hasten the march of progress, is infectious.  The excitable Ezra Klein speaks for many who’ve been ignited by Obama’s spark, writing for The American Prospect: “Obama’s finest speeches do not excite.  They don’t inform.  They don’t even really inspire.  They elevate.  He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair.”  …he can “create a kingdom right here on earth.”  (pp. 33-34)
As creepy as all this is, it’s hardly unprecedented.  When Obama won the “Chesapeake primary,” he held a victory rally at the University of Wisconsin, where a century ago the progressive movement was born?” Obama proclaimed.  He may not have realized how fitting his rhetorical question was.  The progressives, too, believed they were poised to transcend.  They too spoke of politics in religious terms and of religion in political terms.  Richard Ely, the most influential progressive intellectual, long ensconced at the University of Wisconsin, believed that redemption was not longer an individual enterprise but a collective endeavor dependent upon the actions of the State.  “In Ely’s eyes,” writes historian Jean B. Quandt, “government was the God-given instrument through which we had to work.  He thought of government as God’s main instrument of redemption; and he defined the needed ‘religious revival’ in the cities as a deepening sense of ethical obligation on the part of the citizenry.”  Ely’s post-millennial “Christian sociology” allowed him to cherry-pick both the Bible and Darwin to forge a kind of Marxist messianism in which both science and Scripture endorsed his “new nationalism.”
In a complementary way, Walter Rauschenbusch, the leading social-gospel minister of the progressive era, came to his understanding of economics through religion.  “Our disorganized competitive life must pass into an organic cooperative life,” he insisted.  “Unless the ideal social order can supply men with food, warmth and comfort more efficiently then our present economic order, back we shall go to Capitalism.  The God that answereth by low food prices, let him be God.”
These were not fringe views among progressives.  This vision was central to the new age of collectivism that both priests and professors saw arising either from the cold impersonal forces of history or with the guiding hand of God.  “We believe,” a social-gospel organization announce confidently in 1914, “that the age of sheer individualism is past and the age of social responsibility has arrived.”  Herbert Croley, the founder of The New Republic, prophesied that adherents of the ”scientific method” would need to join with the “ideologists” of Christ, in order, “to plan and to effect a redeeming transformation” of society whereby men would look for “deliverance from choice between unredeemed capitalism and revolutionary salvation.”
Compare all of this with Obamania.  His followers believe that he will be the instrument by which we evolve to a higher, more cooperative level.
Obama himself promises to close the “empathy deficit” by requiring Americans to do more for each other.  “Unity is the great need of the hour—the great need of this hour.  Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it’s the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country.”
The mechanism for this new era of cooperation is not civil society, but the Obama administration—or, more accurately, the Obama “movement.”  “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” is one of Obama’s stump refrains.  We can arrive at this new state of consciousness by—what else?—believing in Obama.  (p. 34)
The messianic nature of progressive politics in general and Obama in particular has gotten a thorough airing of late, but less discussed is why progressivism has that nature.  A good place to start such an investigation would be the pages of National Review during the Cold War.  For decades, many of this magazine’s greatest contributors—Willmoore Kendall, Russell Kirk, and, of course, William F. Buckley, Jr.—debated the extent to which liberalism was a political religion kindred to the totalitarianisms of the 20th century.  These writers were deeply indebted to the German émigré philosopher Eric Voegelin, who argued that progressivism—the more precise label for modern liberalism—was part of the same ideological garment as Europe’s authoritarian movements.  (pp. 35-36)
Voegelin argued that progressivism, like other political religions, manifested itself as a form of Gnosticism.  In both its ancient and modern forms, Gnosticism has two core assumptions.  First, it condemns the existing world as broken and alienating, plagued by evil forces preventing a complete and happy restoration of man’s spiritual and material life.  In other words—Michelle Obama’s in fact—the world is a place of broken souls.  But the Gnostic promise, to borrow a phrase from John Edwards, is that “it doesn’t have to be this way.”
The second core assumption: Gnostic political religions promise (in Russell Kirk’s words) “a mode of deliverance or salvation from the prison of the world for man through a secret gnosis.”  That is, with just the right mixture of abracadabra words and prestidigitatory politics we can create a “kingdom of heaven on earth”—not coincidentally, a phrase invoked by Bolsheviks, progressives, fascists, and every other variety of utopian collectivist.
What is this gnosis, this secret knowledge that can usher in a perfect world?  For progressives, the trick was giving ourselves over to the social planners and Gnostic “ideologists of Christ.”  And today, the secret is Barack Obama.  For some that is quite literally true.  A group called Bring Us Change has released a video in which children testify about the dire state of the world.  “In this time of great despair has come a great gift,” explains a narrator, who appears to be about six or seven years old.  When she says this, the video cuts to a baby opening a copy of The Audacity of Hope [Barack Obama.  (New York: Crown Publishing, 2006)], complete with a whispery spirit voice promising a “secret.”  The video concludes with one child after another announcing that the secret is—Barack Obama.  (p. 36)
Rules for changing the status quo from individualism to collectivism are found in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, first published in 1971, but still a major reference for radicals and those that follow its Progressive ideology.  
The book gives a radical all the instruction he needs to be successful in whatever crusade he wishes to engage.  Alinsky provides comprehensive how-to guidelines for transforming a disorganized group of “Have-Nots” into an effective collective of trained troublemakers.
I recommend the book, for by reading it you will find a clear explanation of how Progressives have systematically taken over so many categories of our cultural landscape:
http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Radicals-Saul-Alinsky/dp/0679721134/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206938132&sr=1-1
The one example I will draw from Rules for Radicals gives insight into why Traditionalists and Progressives are held to different sets of moral standards.  For example, this article from the USA Today Web site:
“Dodd Apologizes if Byrd Tribute Offended Anyone,” USA Today, April 18, 2004 (© 2005, The Associated Press):
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Christopher Dodd said Wednesday he was sorry if anyone was offended by his tribute to a fellow senator who once voted against civil rights legislation. 
Dodd, D-Conn., has been criticized by some conservative commentators for saying April 1 that Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., would have been a great senator and leader at any time in history, including the Civil War. 
Byrd, who at one time was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  He has repeatedly apologized for his brief KKK membership and said his vote against the civil rights vote was one of only two votes that he regrets having made during his 45 years in the Senate. 
"Words can sting and hurt," Dodd told The Associated Press Wednesday. "If in any way, in my referencing the Civil War, I offended anyone, I apologize." 
He said he was trying to make the point that Byrd would have been a good senator at any point, and "I was not thinking of the KKK or his vote against the Civil Rights Act." 
Some commentators said Dodd's remarks were similar to those of Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who lost his leadership post after making what many considered racially insensitive comments during a 100th birthday celebration for the late Sen. Strom Thurmond. 
During the 2002 party, Lott specifically endorsed Thurmond's candidacy for president in 1948 on a segregationist platform, saying, "We wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years" if the country had voted for Thurmond. 
Lott stepped down as his party's leader after his remarks were criticized by President Bush, former Vice President Al Gore and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. Lott remains in the Senate.
Why the double standard?  The same reason that John McCain’s association with Rev. John C. Hagee, pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, will possibly become an issue for McCain in the general campaign and that Barack Obama’s with Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois, might not.  Obama could skate; McCain most likely won’t.
In his defense, Obama used a rhetorical veil that contends that he has never heard Rev. Wright make any controversial statements on the occasions he attended his services and had he heard them he would have condemned them.  I don’t believe him.  Here’s why.

© 2008 by Joe Griffin Media Ministries.  All rights reserved.	www.joegriffin.org