Word Weld

The Republican National Convention happened, and the principles around which the party had been built were forgotten. There was no talk of liberty, or the constitution, or conscience, or right and wrong. There was only a lot of liberal propaganda which, when coming from the Republican or “Right Wing” side of the political, seemed out of place. But it really isn’t out of place, if you think about it. The Republican party has been gradually distancing itself from its principles for years now, beginning with the first Bush administration, and possibly earlier than that. Now it is merely a facade for liberalism, as evidenced by the talking points of the RNC: “transgender” support, the mythical women’s “wage gap,” and other ideas once thought the purview of the DNC. Of course, the centerpiece of the RNC was Donald Trump, a man who epitomizes what the Republican party has become. A “former” Democrat, Trump has said a lot of things during his campaign for present. Many of the things he has said have conflicted with what he had said before, and many of those things he said just didn’t make sense at all. He says he is for conservative values but only a little, because when he is pressed he will spout whatever dogma is most required at the time. But in one thing he has proven himself consistent, and that is in his lack of character, constantly using tabloids, spreading lies, and slinging mud in general doses, enough to make even G.W. Bush and Al Gore blush.

Everyone at the RNC was in agreement, as I understand it. They all basically agreed to stand for whatever-it-is that Trump stands for, which, by the sounds of things, are the standing stones of the Democratic party. So the Republican party has voted to openly become a reskin of the Democratic party, which brings its existence at all into question. After all, we already have a party full of communists and extremists interested in gutting America’s liberties, shredding the Constitution, and doing away with all conservative values. Why do we need another one? Well, to give people the illusion of a choice, of course. The Republican party is now the safety net of conservatives around the country, a place where we can go during election time to find the lesser of two evils. It’s now a place where we can go to find that candidate that says, “Hey, foolish conservatives, I’m basically my opponent, but I say just enough borderline stuff before the election to make you believe having me would be reasonably better than my Democratic opponent!” And no one is foolish enough to not vote Republican or Democrat, right? Of course, if all the conservatives stopped saying that Cruz couldn’t win, and just voted for him, then he would have won, but let’s not talk crazy.

Speaking of Ted Cruz, why is everyone so hot about his speech at the RNC? I mean, regardless of whether you believe he broke his word, or if it matters that the man you want him to endorse tried and tries to drag his wife and family through the muck, he’s just one guy, all by himself. No one is standing with him. Why did Trump even want him to speak at all? “Well, he wanted his endorsement,” you say. But why? If it was inevitable that Trump win the nomination (and it seems it was) then what difference would Cruz’s endorsement make? “Well,” you say, “Cruz can get conservatives to vote for Trump, so he can beat Hillary!” Well, then why is Trump now saying he doesn’t want Cruz’s endorsement, and won’t accept it if Cruz happened to abandon his principles now, because of all the pressure?

For that answer, let’s go back to the 1600’s. Let’s take a little journey back to 17th century Europe. Here we find that the Catholic Church has dominated almost every country in Europe for some time, and this corrupted version of Christianity has literally destroyed thousands of lives, often directly. Much of England is weary of the oppression of the Catholic Popes and their inquisitions, so King Henry VIII takes it upon himself to capitalize on that unrest. You see, he hasn’t managed to marry a woman who will give him a male heir, so he needs to get rid of his current wife and get another one so he can try again for a boy. The problem is the Catholic church has rules about that (one of the few things they retained from actual Christianity), and won’t let him get rid of his wife. So Henry hatches a plan. Using his own people’s disgust with Catholicism, in a bold move he renounces England’s ties to the Vatican and declares that England has a new state religion: The Church of England. This is great, because he immediately appoints new people to run the church, people who will make certain that the rules of this new church allow him to get rid of his wife and remarry.

His plan was a tremendous success.

Well, except for one thing:

The only reason Henry really broke with the Vatican over was his ability to remarry. The rest of Roman Catholicism didn’t bother him in the slightest. He wasn’t really interested in religion, he was just interested in politics. So, when the people of England discover that the Church of England is essentially just a reskin of the Roman Catholic Church, now with more King Henry-friendly marital rules, they get upset. This resulted in two groups of people splitting off from the Church of England. One of these groups was called the Separatists, who wanted to abandon all forms of Catholicism and go 100% Protestant. The other group was called Puritans, because they didn’t want to break with the Church of England, they wanted reforms to take it away from Catholicism and toward Protestantism. They wanted to “purify” the Church of England. By the time of King James, the Puritans had mostly become Separatists and many of them had departed England to find religious freedom.

What in the world does that have to do with Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, or the Republican party? Well, it’s a parallel. In my analogy, the Democratic party is the Roman Catholic Church (Oh! The irony of using a religious organization to represent the Democratic party!), and the Church of England is the Republican party. The Republican party doesn’t actually stand for anything, anymore. They haven’t for a long time. They just use the natural division of the American population to try to get their candidate elected, and he can then pretty much do whatever he wants. Just like King Henry, they don’t really care about principle, they just want what they can get out of their constituency. But within the Republican party there are those who remember what it once stood for, and who still hold those principles dear. Just like in the Church of England, there are dissidents in the Republican party who want to “purify” it… they want to get the liberal influences out and bring it back to being the true conservative party. And at the head of that crowd is Ted Cruz.

Cruz is a Republican Puritan. Despite everything that is now true of the Republican party, Cruz believed with all his heart that conservatives would stand on principle and take back the party from the hypocrites and Henrys that now have control of it. Cruz believed that with a sweeping grassroots platform he could purge the liberal corruption from the party, and take it back for true conservative, constitutionalist, Christian values. And I’m here to tell you that he was wrong. The Puritans discovered the same thing when King Henry revealed his true intentions with the Church of England. It persecuted those well-meaning Christians as violently as the Roman Church had done before. The Puritans discovered that no matter how hard they tried, they could not cleanse the Church of England. Cruz vowed to run under a Republican banner, and to take back the old fortresses that traitors to the cause (like Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity, to name a few) had handed over to the enemy. But he could not.

Cruz believed that with a sweeping grassroots platform he could purge the liberal corruption from the party, and take it back for true conservative, constitutionalist, Christian values. And I’m here to tell you that he was wrong.

That, my friends, is why Cruz’s endorsement matters. It matters because Ted Cruz is the leader of the Resistance. He represents the last tiny corner of the Republican party that did not sell out to the enemy. Cruz and his followers in the Republican party are the last Republicans who have not abandoned their ideals and ideology for money, power, or out of fear. Trump is enraged that Cruz stands against him from within the same party, for he represents a fierce, dogged, outspoken minority in a party that has sold its soul to the Devil. And that is why Trump and the Henrys of the Republican Party will do whatever they must to destroy Cruz and his supporters.

What can I say, then? Well, the answer is found at the end of my analogy. When the Puritans could not achieve their goal, they didn’t lie down and recant. They didn’t go back to the Church of England and bow before Henry, and nor should we as true conservative Christians bow before King Trump. We are few, but we can see what Trump is. We can see past the fear-driven narrative of “If Trump doesn’t win, then Hillary will, and she’s worse!” We realize that there is no difference between Trump and Hillary from the point of ideology, and just as the Puritans would not choose between the Church of England or the Church of Rome, we will not choose between Hillary and Trump. No, we will do what the Puritans did: we will be Puritan no longer.

We realize that there is no difference between Trump and Hillary from the point of ideology, and just as the Puritans would not choose between the Church of England or the Church of Rome, we will not choose between Hillary and Trump.

We will become Separatists. It was the Separatists who decided they had done all that they could for the Church of England, and that the time had come to depart-to separate-from it. It’s time for Christians to abandon the Republican party, and sail across the Atlantic. Maybe there’s another party somewhere over there… maybe there isn’t. Maybe we need a new party. Regardless, we trust in God, not in the false hope of men like Trump, who we can only say will lead us into destruction at a slower pace than our enemies, and even then, we can’t say for sure. We may be few, but we are true to our principles. We see the truth of Donald Trump and we see the truth about the party he has conquered, and we know it’s time to go. I will be #RepubicanNoMore. Will you join me? I suspect that few will, but we have to be brave, just as the crew of the Mayflower, and fight against all odds to remain true to our principles, even when all chance of safety is lost.

We trust not in Trump, who stands for nothing but himself.

We trust not in Cruz, who is but a man.

We trust not in any politics or strategy.

We trust in God.

“Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his: And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding: He revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him.”
-Daniel 2:20-22

“Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the Lord‘s side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.”
-Exodus 32:26

“And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
-Joshua 24:15

Finally, I leave you with the words of Spurgeon, which are easily far better and more eloquent than my own.

“Of two evils, choose neither. Christians must turn from the endless cycle of voting for the lesser of evils and expecting an unrighteous act to produce a righteous result. From a communist to a cultist, choosing the lesser of evils is still evil, and never should we do evil that good may come.”  -Charles Spurgeon [Emphasis Mine]