The media describes the upcoming political race as the most polarized in political history. Some have disputed this by pointing to the 1828 election that pitted Andrew Jackson against John Quincy Adams. Conflicts in politics are nothing new to our Republic. However, one significant difference today is the issue of multiculturalism. While Jackson and Adams shared the same basic worldview, such is no longer the case today. Modernism has changed all of that.
According to the dictionary, the term “modernism” can denote things that are happening in the present, that is, in modern times. It can also refer to a religious movement characterized by interpreting the Bible’s accounts of miracles in a “scientific” way. However, as a philosophical term, the word “Modernism” refers to a period of time in which scientists, philosophers, theologians, etc. sought to devise comprehensive systems of thought that would solve all of the world’s problems. Humanism, communism, existentialism, socialism, rationalism, empiricism, and a whole host of other “isms” were the product of this mentality. One by one, these different systems of thought took hold of various governments throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. The early 20th century witnessed the maturity of these various systems of thought in the two great World Wars and in the subsequent Cold War. The basic underlying philosophy of modernism, though, was that through man’s reason alone, a single system could be devised to solve all of the world’s problems.
By the middle of the 20th century, many were contemplating the shortcomings of modernism. The period of thought that produced the likes of Stalin and Hitler had obviously failed. All of the various philosophical systems that came out of that period were subjected to excruciating and rigorous evaluation under the deconstructive eyes of the postmodernists. Each humanly devised system was found by the postmodernists to be internally inconsistent—self-contradictory. Of course, the Bible had declared many years prior that the fundamental premise behind modernism would result in failure when Jeremiah opined, “O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps” (Jer. 10:23).
The postmodernists were not keen on seeking to replace these systems with any other, either, because to do so would admit the same fundamentally flawed assumption that the postmodernists had identified in modernism, namely, the notion that human reason could, in and of itself, develop a system to resolve all of man’s problems. Instead of turning to God to find the solution, postmodernists declared that pluralism/multiculturalism was the solution. Since there is no one solution, they reasoned, we must respect all solutions equally. (This really is just another humanly devised system of thought like the one fostered by the Modernists, a point which postmodernists have failed to divine.) Our day and time has witnessed the failure of multiculturalism as well, because when you regard all solutions and cultures as equal, the cultures seeking to impose their belief system on others through violence will prevail.
Unwilling to turn to God, postmodernists and multiculturalists continue to ply their thought system upon the American public. Like those in Jeremiah’s day, they have said to God, “We are lords; we will come no more to thee” (Jer. 2:31). Our current sitting president and his political party reflect this system. The effort to remove all traces of God from government and to embrace the notion that man is supreme has been seen in many areas of his administration such as his insistence that religious symbols be covered at speaking venues, and his employ of a humanistic slogan on his presidential carpet. In many ways his administration harks back to modernist times when secular ideologues like Marx, Lenin, and Stalin had their way. He has exercised unprecedented government control over private banking and manufacturing (via Central Planning), expanded government control over health care services to an unprecedented level, and returned the nation to a hapless welfare state where Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards (the modern way of getting food stamps) may be used (in some states) to purchase cigarettes and alcohol. In so doing he has incurred debt the likes of which the nation has never known.
He has sought to wage a Marxist-style class war against the “rich” by inflaming jealousy and covetousness among the “poor.” In truth, both the rich and poor will ultimately pay because as Margaret Thatcher famously said, “Eventually, you run out of other people’s money.” The bankruptcy problems that are occurring in cities like Stockton, California where Police and Firefighters cannot get gasoline for their vehicles and where the murder rate is higher than it has ever been are harbingers of what is on the horizon for our entire nation if this “hope and change” lasts much longer.
His moral policies reflect his secularism and multiculturalism. Not very long after his inauguration he issued an executive order to permit taxpayer money to fund abortions overseas, reversing the Mexico City Policy, and when his voter base clamored to permit homosexuals to serve openly in the military, he capitulated. He had to sign an executive order banning the use of tax-payer money for abortions after his health care bill was passed. Is such power within the hands of the Executive now instead of the Congress? More recently, he has come out to support same-sex marriages, reversing the stance that he took while campaigning in 2008.
The point here is not to tell anyone who to vote for, but primarily to show that a candidate’s worldview (whether good or ill) affects the decisions that he makes while in public office. Those who hold to a postmodernist and multicultural worldview are going to advance secular humanist-derived solutions to the challenges that each of us face in life. Under such a worldview, God-ordained solutions will not be given any consideration. Those who place God’s answers to life’s problems at the forefront will guide and govern based upon those beliefs. Desiring a government that “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” is not the same as a government that purveys and promotes tax-payer funded secular-humanist principles and solutions. Liberty from secular-humanist government solutions permits God-ordained religion to function as it ought. In our upcoming political election, we should choose wisely considering not only what a candidate has said, but what he has done and the worldview that his words and actions reflect.