Socialists are notorious for claiming that all problems are fundamentally economic in nature.
If only they can spread the wealth around a little, place the means of production into the hands of the workers, tax the rich and make sure everyone pays their "fair share," they suggest, we'll all be a little closer to utopia.
Socialists are materialists. Government is their god. The universe is physical only. The idea of One True God who revealed Himself through the Bible is just silly superstition.
In fact, socialists from Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels to Vladimir Lenin to Antonio Gramsci all wrote passionately about the need to attack the "myth" of the Judeo-Christian God to make way for their workers' paradises on Earth.
The great experiment in freedom and self-government we know as America stands in stark contrast. The founders, even the least devout of them, spoke and wrote just as passionately about their deep and abiding faith in that God. It was on that foundation of faith that America was built.
TRENDING: To DEI for
Yet, today, too many Americans who say they are trying to restore America's promise have bought into the materialistic arguments of the socialists. They say tea partiers and conservatives and Republicans should stick to economic issues and avoid what they euphemistically call "social issues."
In other words, some of the opponents of socialism have bought into the most fundamental tenet of socialism – materialism.
In my new book, "The Tea Party Manifesto: A Vision for an American Rebirth," I explain how that strategy represents a recipe for a stillborn, impotent movement.
When you hear someone telling you the only winning issue is the economy, understand that you are listening to a materialist. Understand also that a materialistic vision can never return America to greatness and to the principles upon which it was founded.
I'll go further and add that you cannot build a winning movement to restore America to greatness and to the principles upon which it was founded by rallying around any collection of issues – materialistic or not. It's not necessary. It's a tactical error. It's foolhardy.
What the tea-party movement needs to do is to get back to the vision that set America apart. You can see it clearly and concisely in the Declaration of Independence, a copy of which I reproduce in "The Tea Party Manifesto" along with the Constitution. Read those documents with what I am saying about the dead-end materialistic worldview. The founders didn't buy into it. Neither should we.
These documents are not out of date. Many of the problems we confront in America today are a direct result of elected officials and cultural institutions ignoring these documents or perverting them.
I feel very confident saying that there is not enough intellectual firepower in America in 2010 to improve on anything written in those documents. We are neither morally nor spiritually equipped to come up with a more articulate vision of a self-governing nation than our founders did.
Our founders were not materialists, like those who touched off the French Revolution. That was the principal difference between the two revolutions – that and the fact that one ended in unspeakable horror and atrocities, while the other inspired hope for liberty around the globe.
We still have that hope in America today.
But it's not "the economy, stupid" argument that will fulfill that hope. The materialistic worldview of the Left needs to be answered with the God-centered worldview of our founders, not with another materialistic view. Quite literally, if we don't have God on our side, the battle is pointless – we've already lost.
I know this is not what many people want to hear.
Some people really think that we can just talk about free enterprise and limited government and lower taxes and win.
You might win an election.
You might win a battle.
But you will not win the war for America's soul – and that's the real conflict being waged today in the press, in Hollywood, in the schools, in the universities, even, believe it or not, in America's churches.
So, don't fall for the temptation to rally around economic issues. Rally instead around the vision that touched off the greatest freedom experiment in world history – the vision of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Rally instead around the idea that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. Rally instead around the idea that we don't have, nor do we want, any earthly king reigning over us.
That vision proved effective. That vision proved to be inspired. That vision, along with a lot of prayer and providence, can help us take America back.
Â