Chaos at the Capitol

A few bullet points in light of yesterday's events:

• As I have preached from the book of James more than once, man's anger can never accomplish God's righteousness. This is true no matter where that anger comes from along the political spectrum. Anger, and the violence that comes from it, are not conservative or productive forces; they are destructive.

  Violence is simply not a tool of social and cultural transformation; indeed, it makes that transformation harder to accomplish in the long run. Those on the political right arguably had the moral high ground after the leftwing riots over the summer. Much of that high ground was lost yesterday. It will be hard for Republicans to recover their reputation as the party of law and order and the rule of law after yesterday. That may be unfair, but it is a reality.

• We should notice the hypocrisy of the mainstream media and many Democrat politicians who defended and even glamorized the violence that rocked many American cities all summer long, but have now suddenly found a social conscience and think yesterday was "the worst day in American history." There are numerous problems here: While I appreciate Biden calling on Trump to tell the protestors to stand down yesterday, why didn't he tell BLM and Antifa to stand down this summer? Where was this pushback against protestors when DC was, literally, on fire back in May? Why is it acceptable for private businesses to be vandalized, looted and burned, but the nation's capitol is somehow "sacred"? If burning a Wendy's to the ground in Atlanta was an acceptable social statement, why isn't storming the capitol equally acceptable? If sieging federal buildings in Portland is an acceptable form of social protest, why should sieging federal buildings in DC be any different? If Steve Scaliese and Rand Paul suffering physical injury at the hands of leftwing protestors did not provoke outrage in the media, why should the scare given Congressmen yesterday matter, especially given no physical harm was done to any of them? If "rioting is the voice of the unheard," as we were told over the summer, why doesn't that apply equally to yesterday's protestors? If the riots over the summer were "mostly peaceful," that was even more true of yesterday's protest, which was mere child's play compared to what happened over the summer, in terms of damage done to property and persons. BLM and Atifa normalized political violence over the course of 2020; while it is disappointing, it is not shocking to see the other side try the same techniques in 2021. For the record, I am consistent in my own view: I believe the violence that we saw night after night over the summer was unacceptable, but I also think the violence on display yesterday was unacceptable. 

• That being said, the events of yesterday were perfectly understandable. You cannot disenfranchise people (as they think happened), lock them in their homes til their businesses tank, shut down their schools, and just expect them to sit by in a docile way and take it. What are people supposed to do when they see politicians destroying their country and their lives? While I abhor the violence, I can sympathize with those who gathered in DC to protest. I believe they did so in the spirit of the Boston Tea Party. I believe most did so with good intentions. I believe there will be further uprisings in America if people's livelihoods and rights continue to be assaulted. There are no easy answers as to what should be done by people who are suffering under the kind of terrible mismanagement we have seen in so many states across the country over the past 9 months, but something must be done differently. Again, given all that has happened, nothing about this uprising was surprising and it may very well only be the beginning unless something changes to allow people to live their lives freely. 

• But, again, that being said, resorting to violence yesterday, even minimally, was a mistake and a miscalculation. There certainly is a place for righteous violence, even as political theater (think of Jesus cleansing the temple with a whip). But resorting to violence, as we do in a just war, should be a decision we arrive at only after other options have been exhausted and we have counted the cost (Luke 14). The stakes are just too high to do otherwise. We are not pacifists and we do believe there are times to righteously disobey the powers that be, but it is not clear this is one of them. And anyone who resorts to violence needs to be ready to be on the receiving end of counter-violence. To this point, our rulers have largely allowed protestors over the last year to have their way. The optics of uniformed soldiers using deadly force on American citizens makes for really bad optics. But that could change. I do not think this is the time to break things in public or fight with police. Think about this way: If people storm the capitol, do those in the capitol have the right to defend themselves? Why wouldn't they -- just as you would defend your own house against an intruder? What yesterday's protestors were hoping to accomplish could have been done more effectively, and with less fallout and backlash, had they remained completely peaceful. (Some have suggested that the mob that infiltrated the capitol included some Antifa types who wanted to use violence to discredit the Trump supporters. But I have not seen any credible evidence of that yet, and Trump himself does not seem to think this was the case. The woman who was shot was a known Trump supporter.)

• While yesterday's events in the capitol were tragic, it was far from the most lawless or immoral thing to go on in that building, even in the last week. There were plenty of thugs and scoundrels in the capitol building before security was breached. Our leaders and our citizenry are both corrupt.

• While is there much I appreciate about what Donald Trump accomplished over the last four years, there is no question his character flaws eventually caught up with him. He is just as rude, crude, and immature today as he was when he ran for office. He was all too often unnecessarily alienating, over Twitter and in person. He never respected any authority but his own. While I applaud Trump for his pro-life stance and his patriotism, his inability to learn on the job and broaden his base were costly errors. My hope is that conservatives and the Republicans will learn some valuable lessons from Trump, both from his successes and his failures. On the one hand, Trump showed the value of actually fighting for something, which underscored the reality that most Republicans have been too cowardly to take a stand for a long time. Trump also showed the Republicans they have a new pathway to victory that includes appealing to the working class and racial minorities much more than in the recent past. On the other hand, Trump all too often made loyalty to himself, rather than to sound political principles, the litmus test. He could not keep his mouth (or keyboard) under control when he needed to do so. He became his own worst enemy. Yesterday was the fruition of Trump's self-exaltation, putting himself above the good of the party and the country. I fear the deep state swamp creatures are going to come back stronger than ever in response.

• By contrast, I continue to be impressed with Mike Pence. Contrary to Trump, I think Pence was right about what he had to do with the election results according to the Constitution. It is a shame the Tump/Pence administration will end with them apparently at odds. Wouldn't you love to have an off the record conversation with Pence over a beer about the last four years? 

• People in the media kept referring to yesterday's events as a devastating "attack on democracy." This is just media ignorance and hysteria. Actually yesterday was a perfect representation of democracy in action -- and also an illustration of why our country's founding fathers loathed democracy and did not want it. Democracy easily devolves into mob rule, which is why our Constitution set up a democratic republic instead of a democracy. Too bad so few in our media have any clue about American civics. But the media is wrong about something else as well: The greatest threat to the integrity of our government is not the protestors who stormed (almost all unarmed!!) into the capitol, sat in Congressional offices, and so forth, yesterday. The greatest threat to our republic is the administrative deep state, which fuels the "regulation without representation" we constantly face and which will almost certainly grow worse in the coming years. The administrative deep state -- the various agencies run by unelected and largely unaccountable and unfireable officials -- are the real practical threat to our freedoms. Of course, beyond the greatest threat to our nation at the moment is fragmentation, along both identitarian and ideological lines. Social media did not create these divisions but it has exacerbated them. The coming merger of Big Tech and Big Government after Biden's inauguration is sure to intensify the problem. The huge tech companies that control much of our public discourse are not constrained by the first amendment and can easily be used as pawns of the Democrats going forward. 

• While Trump will be blamed for a lot of yesterday's chaos, the infamous "Fourth Estate" of the media bears much, much greater blame. The mainstream media is utterly corrupt and dishonest; it has become nothing more than a propaganda arm of the Democrat party. Burying the corruptions of the Bidens (as it did the Obamas and Clintons before that) is just the most recent and egregious example. The media has been incredibly unfair to Trump and to his voters. I have no doubt that if we had an honest media that did its job with integrity, our nation would be a lot better off and the last election would have looked quite different. The loss of trust in the media is one major reason we face so much cultural upheaval. In so many instances, no one really who to believe or what actually happened. But it is often the case that the truth is almost exactly opposite of the mainstream media narrative.

• I feel the same frustration many do about the 2020 election: there were many suspicious things about Biden's victory. Unfortunately, we may never know the truth. I do believe the election should have been audited, as Cruz and others proposed. But whatever the case, legitimate or not, Biden will be President later this month. With the election of two far left Democrat Senators in Georgia, we are moving towards a one party state. Faithful Christians had best learn how to be the loyal opposition. We must learn how to be faithful dissidents. I would suggest reading Rod Dreher's book, Live Not By Lies, which argues we are headed for a kind of "soft totalitarianism" in which the progressive ruling class does not crack down on the opposition (that's us!) with Soviet-style gulags but a Chinese-style social credit system that bleeds us to death with a thousand paper cuts. Expect the left to use yesterday's events to take away more of our rights, to justify an expanded police and nanny state, and so on. 

• The American system of limited government can only work if the people practice self-government. What we are seeing is a break down in government largely due to a break down of virtue. The founders acknowledged this: they believed the Constitutional order was only fit for a religious (that is, Christian) people. America's greatest enemy is and always has been herself. While we have always had many enemies on the outside trying to take us down, our greatest threat is suicide due to enemies from within. A people who cannot govern themselves through self-discipline and personal/familial responsibility will become ungovernable -- or will have to be governed by a tyrannical government. That's where we are headed.

• Yesterday was a sad day for America because it is a sign of God's judgment on our nation. We are a divided people, rapidly becoming ungovernable. Yesterday we looked like a third world nation. There is no political solution to what ails us. Some have suggested secession, but who is going to walk away from all the benefits the US still has -- the global reserve currency, military bases all over the world, a stockpile of nuclear weapons, etc.? Not to mention the fact that every state requires federal funding for many of its most basic operations. Secession is impossible. Again, there is no political solution. There is only a Spiritual solution, and involves repentance, which means only a church that is faithful and successful in its mission will be able to preserve our republic and keep us from eventual disaster.

• Those who did not roundly condemn the violence last summer in places like Portland and Chicago have no business condemning what happened in DC yesterday. Arguably, had the riots been put down over the summer, yesterday's violence would have never happened. Interestingly, almost no one who engaged in violence over the summer was arrested or faced serious charges, despite billions of dollars in destruction and many lives lost. Will those who entered the capitol building yesterday get the same leniency? It's highly doubtful. Think back to the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings: a bunch of crazy people sieged government buildings, including the Supreme Court. Again, while yesterday's events were tragic, they are not as unprecedented as the media would have you believe. What was different about yesterday is that the violence came from those on the political right rather than the left. And that's why the media is up in arms over it. The media has a double standard.

• Yesterday's events have exposed the statism that has come to characterize the American left but also, to some degree, the American right. To compare yesterday's events to Pearl Harbor, to rage against the attack on "this temple to democracy," is to reveal that we have made an idol out of our own government. (Is the capitol building really a "temple"? Who or what are we worshipping?) As a people, we have put our trust in princes (and Presidents). But this is one false god that will fail us, and with disastrous results.

• I saw a meme the other day that asked, "What should you tell your friend who believes in conspiracy theories?" The answer given: "I'm sorry, you were right." Most conspiracy theories should be rejected, if for no other reason, because people are simply too sinful and incompetent to pull them off. Some conspiracies are also too far fetched and lacking in evidence, e.g., the Russia hoax and QAnon. At the same time, some conspiracy theories do seem more plausible after recent events and revelations. Here's my word of caution: Make sure your beliefs/convictions do not outrun the actual evidence you possess, even if it means you have to make judgments and evaluations that are more tentative in nature.

• Any time someone says that "this is the most divided our nation has ever been," I point out that we have been deeply divided before. Congressmen used to settle disputes by challenging one another to duels. And we did once fight a Civil War -- that was obviously a greater division than what we see today. Or was it? It's possible soldiers on the two sides of that conflict in the 1860s had more in common with each other than the political right and left have in common with each other in America today. Remember, Lincoln pointed out that one scandalous aspect of the Civil War is that people on both sides of the conflict prayed to the same God. They had deep political differences, but many social, cultural, and even theological commitments in common. That is no longer the case today. We do not have a shared faith in any sense whatsoever. We cannot even agree on basic biological realities like what a man is or what a woman is. How does a nation this divided culturally, socially, politically, and theologically stay at peace? I'm not convinced we can over the long haul.

• Sadly, the church in our day has been far more influenced by the world than the church has influenced the world. For all the emphasis on mission and cultural engagement over the last 25+ years, we have very little to show for it, as our culture continues its downward slide, often dragging the church with it. Vishal Mangalwadi has put it something like this: "The culture is the church's report card. America's moral decline is a sign that the church has believed more in saving souls than discipling nations." That is true: we have truncated the mission of the church, we have short-changed the Great Commission. We have not trained Christians how to think and act biblically in all of life, and we have not defended Christian convictions in the public square with wisdom or winsomeness. We have privatized the faith, and so it is not surprising some form of secularism has filled that void for many people.

• As a postmillennialist, I have always advocated thinking long term. The kingdom will triumph and the nations will be discipled in history. But we must be patient, willing to serve and suffer. Recent events have not altered our fundamental hope. The kingdom of Jesus remains unshaken. 

• Now is a great time for us to focus on rebuilding our politics at the local level. This should include a careful study of the doctrine of interposition (a lesser magistrate standing up to a higher magistrate) and how to use it. One of Trump's positive legacies is the recovery of state's rights. Perhaps we can build on that going forward.

• Congratulations to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on winning the presidency and vice-presidency. I will pray for you, just as I prayed for Trump and Pence. I will pray for a peaceful transfer of power in the coming weeks. Your names will be mentioned in our pastoral prayers at TPC regularly. We will pray that you rule in a way that serves the common good of this whole nation and that allows the people of God to lead quiet and peaceable lives (1 Timothy 2). Against all odds, we will pray you use your offices to promote justice and peace in our land. But here is my most important piece of advice to you as you enter office: Kiss the Son or be smashed with his rod of iron (Psalm 2).