Those who stand for nothing fall for anything

I first heard the quote above in the late 1970s from a friend, the author/preacher Leonard Ravenhill. Unlike Alexander Hamilton, who first penned those words in a political context, Ravenhill was speaking about Biblical knowledge...and I got a firm grasp on Christian theology (Arminian) in my late teens and early twenties thanks to him and many other terrific authors and teachers.


But being young and swept up in the Jesus Movement, I paid scant attention to politics. Besides, I couldn't vote because we were living in a foreign country, and the Nixon-Ford-Carter era featured very little debate about political philosophy. And, perhaps most importantly, we didn't have children yet. So there I was,  politically adrift "like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind...double-minded and unstable." I recall watching a 1980 Jimmy Carter campaign ad on TV and actually wondering if it might be better to re-elect him rather than taking a chance on Reagan. 


Until I recognized and acknowledged my conservatism, I was among the 40% of folks in America who were "undecided" about the epic struggle between liberal statism and limited-government conservatism. But even after deciding I was conservative, I knew I needed to base my civic views on more than just gut-instincts. I was up against artfully-worded editorials in the New York Times, and smug articles in Harper's and The Atlantic...not to mention the urbane assertions of Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel on TV. 


Swimming against the tide required me to figure out why conservatism was right. I had to understand how my intuitive preference for lower taxes and my natural opposition to abortion fit into a systematic political philosophy. So I read a lot conservative books. The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek, The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Restoration by George Will, The Housing Boom and Bust by Thomas Sowell, Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg,  Meltdown by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. and Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin.


But by far the most important book I read was Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators by David Chilton--a rebuttal of Ron Sider's 1977 Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. Chilton demonstrates in great detail why Statism is unbiblical and why it saps initiative, enslaves the poor and corrupts morality. I have never read a better, more scriptural explanation of how everything governments do beyond basic maintenance of law and order tends to corrode individual responsibility and societal well-being.


We live in a consequential time.  The post-WWII wealth built by the Greatest Generation is gone--and the phrase "full faith and credit of the United States" has become a John Stewart joke. Our governments have racked up a debt so high that the next straw on the camel's back could make the housing bust look like a picnic. America will surely have to pay the piper, but if our governments will humble themselves and turn from their spend-crazy ways, we may yet avoid a financial tsunami.


If you really think the $787 billion stimulus was too small; if you really think unemployment benefits are the best way to boost the economy; if you really think government confiscating more of your employer's income will cut the deficit; if you really think that envy- and class-based politics can uplift the downtrodden...then I urge you to honestly look for the roots of your beliefs to discover the system you are endorsing.


And even if you don't believe those things, my challenge to you is this: figure out where you stand and why.