America may soon make a massive turn to the Left.
In my comments on the culture I have studiously avoided partisan politics, but sometimes politics and essential issues of cultural, moral and religious identity become inextricably intertwined. This is one of those times.
Behind the daily headlines, a worldview conflict is taking place. Two iconic images evoke the on-going and unresolved ideological conflict that began in the troubled Sixties. One is the image of the young John McCain at death’s door in a Hanoi prison. The other is of “Weatherman” Bill Ayers, a radical opponent of the same war, recently pictured standing on a crumpled American flag. In the Sixties John McCain was bombing Vietnam; Ayers was bombing America.
Without raising the pros and cons of Vietnam, it is clear that two deeply conflicting worldviews, not just political programs, now vie for control of the most powerful political office in the world. McCain is a (not very convincing) spokesman for the long history of the Judeo-Christian worldview. His opponent, Barack Obama is a (not very forthcoming) contemporary proponent of the Sixties revolution, whose clearly-stated intention was to turn America on its head.
I agree with Colin Powell who said that an “African American president would be electrifying”-but not just any African American. Is Obama’s undefined program to “change the world” mere political rhetoric, or a deep commitment to far left political and spiritual revolution?
One does not have to look far to give this undefined vision real content. For the last sixteen years, I have written about the world-changing program that was conceived in the Sixties—the real American Revolution.
Though Obama was only eight when Bill Ayers blew up the Pentagon, he has been bathed in Ayers’ radical ideology. He worked for Ayers in Chicago for eight years, helping distribute $100 million dollars of the Woods Fund for educational programs. These programs did not promote better math and science but a radical political consciousness based on Ayers’ revolutionary, Marxist, anti-Christian, pan-sexual, pro-abortion theories. Obama’s laudable rejection of violence does not separate him from the ideas themselves. Many argue that his political career was launched in Ayers’ living room. We do know for sure that for twenty years Obama heard Marxist liberation theology, in a Christianized version, from his “mentor,” Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who is a very liberal minister, and a friend of Louis Farrakhan.
The real world-changer, however, is the Marxist philosopher, Saul Alinsky, perhaps the first ever Chicago “community organizer,” who sought to create a backyard revolution in the inner city in the 1930s, under the noses of the white power structures. His book, Rules for Radicals, published in 1971, instructed the Sixties revolutionaries how to take power. The mass of people, he said, “must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future [my italics].” To bring this revolution “requires that the organizer work inside the system” to undermine it and to hide his true goals by any means necessary, including lying and subterfuge, for the sake of the greater goal of undermining the dominance of the white establishment.
How successful was Alinsky? A convinced disciple, Hillary Clinton wrote her honors thesis at Wellesley on Alinsky, and while she presents herself as middle of the road politician, one senses that her radical views are just below the surface. She worked for a Marxist law firm after graduating from Yale, adopted the goal of liberating children from their parents, engaged in channeling in the white House with Jean Houston, and headed the American delegation to the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women, defending five genders.
Alinsky’s teaching has influenced Barack Obama, who worked in Chicago with community organizer, Jerry Kellman, an Alinsky protégé. Obama speaks in generalities, appearing as a middle of the road politician while actually having the most radical voting record in the history of the Senate. Has he chosen, with the help of a compliant media, to hide his true goals of radical utopian socialism, interfaith religion and omni-gendered moral relativism? We shall have to wait and see (see the sobering letter [Editors note: the original URL (link) referenced in this article is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.] from the America of AD 2012).
As an English citizen, I cannot vote in the USA, and politics is less important than the profound shifts in religious and moral convictions already taking place in Western culture. No matter who gets into the White House, the world is becoming more hostile to the Christian faith. We need to think clearly and speak with boldness about the real issues of truth, for the honor of King Jesus, for our true hope is founded upon the truth of Scripture: “kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations” (Psalm 22:28).
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Dr. Peter Jones is the founder of truthxchange.
Reprinted from InsideOut, a newsletter of truthxchange.com, which also includes audio [Editors note: the original URL (link) referenced in this article is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.] and a blog. InsideOut seeks to examine what is happening on the inside (or underside) of events, just below the surface of the culture, and bring out their real religious and cultural significance.