“True liberalism holds much more in common with modern conservatism than either does with 21st century progressivism.”

Read it here.

PEOPLE MAKE CULTURES, but cultures make people. In The Character of Nations, Angelo Codevilla shows that over time, the distinctives of a political regime create a particular kind of individual unique to that political arrangement. He offered as contrasting examples the pre-1980’s United States and the Sovet Union of the same period. The character of Americans was in general different from the character of Soviet citizens, and that difference was due largely to the differences between the American constitutional republic and the Soviet communist dictatorship. The politics isn’t just different; the people are. And the politics is the engine driving personal transformation.

THE UNITED STATES AND LIBERTY

THAT THOUGHT WAS IN MY MIND as I observed the citizens of Vancouver, Canada on a recent visit to my son Richard’s ordination to the diaconate there. Though the effects of the Covid virus had grown negligible, 60% of people walking outside were masked, and vaccine passports were required for entrance in most business establishments. Though my visit postdated the “Freedom Convoy” of trucks protesting the mandates, I detected no evidence of protest or even resistance during my visit. Canadians had simply adjusted themselves to political edicts, and there seemed to be no dispute about them, only willing compliance.

This passivity is in stark contrast to the American spirit, which pushed back almost everywhere against the politicized Covid mandates. Obviously there were a multitude of exceptions, particularly in dense urban areas and in deep blue states, since they both reflect a majority of Leftists. Still, the pushback was significant, and recalcitrant, liberty-loving citizens posed a great frustration for Leftist politicians: “Why can’t these deplorables just do as they’re told?”

A hallmark of the United States from its Founding has been liberty — religious, political and economic. This liberty was enshrined in our Founding documents like the Bill of Rights. This was liberty Americans have traditionally insisted on, seen as their national birthright, to be defended to the death (and on occasion has been). The Declaration of Independence reversed the rationale for nations by insisting that governments are instituted to protect individual liberty:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men… (emphasis supplied)

For almost all previous governments in history, man was to find his purpose in the state; man exists for political purposes. This is collectivism, and it was true for ancient tribalism, notorious in Plato’s idealized society, the linchpin of the world empires, and obvious even in much of medieval Europe, despite its unmistakable Christian conviction. The United States’ grand experiment in liberty turned this traditional order on its head. The Founders, rooted in Protestant social theory, knew that individual liberty was so precious that the only rationale for political governments was to defend that liberty. If government doesn’t defend individual liberty, there’s no reason for its existence. The state exists for people; people don’t exist for the state.

Europe preserved the old collectivist ideal, and when the modern empires fell, the new secular non-imperial society simply replaced one collectivism for another. No one would suggest that the French and Russian Revolutions were less collectivist than the regimes they replaced. All to the contrary.

The unofficial European motto has been: “We’re all in this together, and the state makes sure we stay together.” The U. S. has countered with: “Give me liberty or give me death, and if the state doesn’t protect that liberty, it should meet death.”

THE UNITED STATES AND EUROPEAN COLLECTIVISM

BUT FROM THE 30’S ONWARD, and especially since the 60’s, elite Leftists in America have wanted to recreate the U. S. in the collectivist European image. They were devoted to fashioning the New Utopian Society of radical egalitarianism — not only economic but also religious and sexual equality. They were influenced by Cultural Marxism, first developed in Germany, Italy, and Hungary and imported into the U. S. during the mid-30’s by thinkers like John Dewey (see Ralph de Toledano’s Cry Havoc!). This Cultural Marxism wanted to accomplish by peaceful cultural subversion (“the long march through the institutions”) what Lenin in Russia (and later Mao in China) accomplished by military conquest: politically enforced equality.

The problem with the Founding American tenet of individual liberty is that it impedes the elite vision of society creating a new humanity that would willingly share all material resources, affirm all sexual lifestyles, and recognize the commonality of all religions — or, preferably, no religion at all (except their own secular religion, of course).

Liberty is dangerous because people don’t know what’s best for them (a great theme of that early modern collectivist Jean Jacques Rousseau). “We elites know what’s best for citizens, so we must strip them of their liberty to give them what they need.”

LIBERTY MAN TODAY

LIBERTY MAN, THE MAN OF THE U. S .FOUNDING, still survives, but he’s under blinding assault by Leftists wielding the most potent cultural weapons: Hollywood, mainstream media, the public schools and universities and law schools. This assault is hard to resist over decades. In this way, Liberty Man is being gradually supplanted by Collectivist Man. Rugged individualism is demeaned as “toxic masculinity” and blamed for a myriad of cultural evils. Men are feminized and women are masculinized. Hard work and thrift and providence are degraded while leisure and laziness and reliance on state largesse are deemed noble. Christianity is judged a “judgmental” relic of the past hindering The Good Life, defined as maximum individual autonomy free from all constraints — except the state itself.

Collectivist Man is content to be an informal ward of the state, as long as it guarantees him unfettered sex, a monthly stipend, and a risk- and carefree life.

CONCLUSION

THIS EMERGENCE OF COLLECTIVIST MAN is one dire consequence of the loss of Christian culture, which is necessitates liberty culture. Christian culture stresses God’s sovereign government in the earth. Just below it is man’s self-government under God’s sovereignty. There are God-established institutional governments like the family, the church, schools, and businesses. One government is civil government (politics), perhaps the least important of all. Apart from God’s kingdom government, there is no more important earthly government than the self-government of the virtuous man. Because men have abandoned self-government, they’ve invited intrusive imposed governments, particularly the only government with a monopoly on violence, civil government.

To try to recover the society produced by the U. S. Founding, therefore, is not to grasp at provincial nationalism (“my country right or wrong”), but rather a restoration of the biblical Protestantism that has a God-honoring liberty at its heart. God has blessed America because it was founded on basic biblical truth. The fruits of that Founding have survived the widescale European collectivization project of the Left. But those fruits will eventually be depleted, and if we don’t recover, the U. S. will go the way of the collectivist European societies: politically dictatorial, economically deprived, and religiously desiccated.

“Christians welded to a total biblical world-and-life view must resist and oppose at all costs both cosmic insurrection and cosmic withdrawal.”

Read the post here.

Jeffery J. Ventrella, J.D., Ph.D. is Senior Counsel and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs & Training for the Alliance Defending Freedom and CCL’s Distinguished Fellow of Law and Culture.

Since the philosophical complexion of the Court has changed since the confirmation of the three Trump appointees, is the Court likely to take up cases it otherwise wouldn’t? How will this changed philosophical complexion alter the direction of the Court?

The Court accepts only a fraction of the cases for which review is sought. Many factors contribute to the Court’s decision to review a matter, aside from the Court’s philosophical make up: what’s the Court’s current work load, does the matter provide a suitable “vehicle” for addressing an issue, are the lower courts split as to the particular issue, is the issue of significant national and constitutional interest, et al. How particular justices interpret the Constitution or an implicated statute, that is, their judicial philosophy, says nothing regarding these factors.

Moreover, it takes four votes to grant review, yet often for prudential reasons, justices interested in granting review will not vote to do so unless they believe they would garner a fifth vote on the matter — in other words, if the appeal would only reinforce what the four think is “bad law,” then granting review is counterproductive. That said, the individual justices’ philosophical make-up can “nudge” the Court to examine fresh areas like religious liberty and life and these areas or interest are often signaled in the certain justices’ dissenting or concurring opinions. One example of this is in the COVID-19 church shutdown cases. The Supreme Court had repeatedly denied review in cases until new justices were confirmed to the Court.

The Dobbs case (Mississippi) has the potential to overturn Roe v Wade. What are the chances of that happening?

While there are no crystal balls for predicting what will happen and overruling a prior decision is a high bar given the power of precedent, in this case, the acknowledged lack of any constitutional justification from both Left and Right legal scholars should boost the chances of overrulingRoe, and the oral argument contained several encouraging interactions with the justices that align with overruling Roe. Here, the Court should prefer “right” to “decided.”

From a conservative Christian standpoint, what is the state of mainstream legal training in the U. S.?

Legal education today is a trade school imparting some basic analytic and practical skills, but it is also often an indoctrination device that precludes serious thought and discussion about the bigger “why” questions concerning law’s nature, the constitution’s underlying worldview, text, structure, and history, and its object, the human person and his flourishing.  Until we get “human” right, we will never get “human rights” right.

The jurisprudence or theory of law underpinning legal education is latent, but powerful and flows not from a fidelity to the democratically enacted text of statutes or our Constitution nor an objective moral tradition like natural law or related concepts, but from legal positivism, legal realism, critical legal studies, and critical race theory.  Rarely, are these driving forces acknowledged, let alone examined, and instead, they are merely assumed.

In fact, non-Christian scholar, Roger Cramton, decades ago called legal education in America a “religion,” this “religion” has only gotten more radical and bold since Cramton penned this article in 1978.

What are some of the cases ADF is arguing and what are some of your recent victories?

303 Creative – The Supreme Court recently granted review in 303 Creative, an important case that will determine whether a state under the guise of nondiscrimination laws can force creative professionals to speak contrary to their sincerely held religious convictions. The free speech rights of all people who wish to run their businesses in line with their faith are implicated.

Bethel Ministries v. Salmon: On December 10, the district court granted summary judgment in Bethel’s favor, ruling that Maryland violated the school’s free speech rights when it revoked the school’s eligibility to participate in a voucher program based on its religious beliefs.

Albemarle County

Seattle Union Gospel Mission

Meriwether

I asked David to prognosticate the likely effects of the Russia-Ukraine war, and particularly the Western sanctions, on Russia, Ukraine, and the United States. His response is below. David is CCL’s Senior Fellow of Economics and Finance; Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of The Bahnsen Group, a wealth management firm based in Newport Beach, California; and has been named as one of Forbes Top 250 Advisors, Financial Times’ Top 300 Advisors in America, and Barron’s America’s Top 1200 Advisors.

For Russia, the economic consequences will be devastating. No amount of exports to China or imports from China will make up for their lost output of goods, and China cannot sell them anywhere near what they have been cut off from buying from the rest of the world. It is highly unlikely China will remain interested in getting paid in collapsed rubles for what Russia does buy from them, either. The trade consequences to Russia (in her role as a buyer and seller) are devastating. But most importantly, Russia’s access to her foreign reserves through the cutoff of central bank transactions puts Russia on a life line before she, well, goes broke. $640 billion of excess reserves essentially became $190 billion of excess reserves the second the central bank was cut off. This is a severe but not immediately fatal act that will play out in the weeks and months to come.

For Ukraine the consequences are obvious – significant uncertainty, reliance on foreign aid, erosion of imports and tourism, and massive wealth destruction out of the violence and destruction of war.

And for the United States, the only substantive implication in the short term is the exacerbation of supply/demand imbalance in global oil leading to higher commodity price inflation (the same can be said of several agricultural imports like wheat). This is not a reference to a new event but rather an acceleration of an already-in-motion event. It may very well turn into the catalyst that reforms beltway thinking about American oil and gas. Longer term, it is fair to wonder if some foreign countries may worry about the U.S. doing to their foreign reserves what we have done to China, and other countries becoming afraid of leaving foreign exchange reserves in dollars. But that is a ways off, and a likely needed trade-off to our geopolitical strategy, here.

One of the most pernicious myths of the church is that children must grow up before they can be zealots for Jesus Christ. The most productive Christians in history were following the Lord before they can remember.

Listen here.

“No sacrifice is too great for the Kingdom to invade lives, families, and churches, as well as business, education, politics, science, entertainment, music, and economics.”

Read the rest here.

Dear friends and supporters,

I hope that you enjoyed your most rewarding Christmas in your life.

You likely know that many Christian ministries and other charities derive a bulk of their annual income in December due to the year-end cut-off for tax-deductible donations. CCL is no exception. 

Many of you have already sent a sizable donation this year’s end, and I’m deeply thankful; but if you haven’t, would you prayerfully consider a gift of any size? Any amount helps.

You can donate via PayPalor Venmo by 11:59 tonight.

Or just mail a check to CCL, Box 100, Coulterville, CA 95311 postmarked no later than today.

While much of the world is bemoaning 2021, for CCL, God is bringing the year to a triumphant conclusion — and he’s used you to do that.

May God rain down his blessings on you and your family in 2022.

Yours for the reigning King,

Founder & President, Center for Cultural Leadership

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