Constitutional Scripturalism

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Ted Cruz setting himself on fire at the GOP convention is a good example of how things are not always what they seem. The Wuss Right cheered because they hoped it would hurt Trump. They never cared for Cruz, which is why they refused to back him until the last days of the primary. Even those who were willing to back Cruz early on were muted in their enthusiasm. Once there was nothing to lose and he was throwing one last rock at Trump, they could let loose with full-throated cheers for Lion Ted.

The Wuss Right’s reticence with regards to Cruz is not all wrong. Cruz is a weasel, who cannot be trusted. He proved that the other night. He is also revealed himself to be a fanatic, fully capable of stepping on a rake that he laid in front of his own path. Cruz seems to believe the things Glenn Beck says about him. He imagines himself as the throne half of the team, while Beck imagines himself representing the altar side of their thing. Their thing is a strange movement that blends evangelical Christianity, Mormonism and evangelical Constitutionalism.

Conservatives tend to define themselves as people who are faithful to the spirit of the law, as well as the letter. When it comes to the Constitution, the Right typically takes a narrow view. If it is not explicitly in the document, then it is assumed to not be in the document. This is in line with the traditional negative liberty that is the bedrock of the American system of governance. The state only has powers specifically granted to it. Put another way, the state must get permission from the citizens to act.

Listen to a Ted Cruz speech and he talks about the Constitution in the same way preachers talk about Scripture. You either read the document as the literal word of God or you are a sinner. An America that is not organized around the literal reading of the original document is failing in its duty to God. Similarly, liberty is a stand-in for salvation. One is either in a state of liberty or outside the light of the Founders. When a guy like Ted Cruz talks of religious liberty, it clearly means more than just being left to worship as you please. It is liberty as a religion.

The irony of this evangelical constitutionalism is that it was Evangelicals who ushered in the whole “living constitution” stuff. The Christian reformers of the 19th century badgered the courts to accept a more expansive role in law making. This always meant chipping away at property rights in order to eradicate immorality from national life. The Abolitionist Movement was, after all, an attack on property rights. Slaves were property and freeing slaves is, legally speaking, no different than “freeing” someone’s car or their cash.

Treating the founding documents as holy texts and the Founders as messengers of God seems like a natural evolution of Evangelical politics. In the 70’s and 80’s, Christian conservatives got involved in politics and ended up as a reliable Republican constituency. This traditional approach to politics got them nothing but disappointment as the liberals steamrolled conservatives in Washington on social issues. Strategy shifted to backing coreligionists, thinking that would result in more dependable politicians. Eight years of George Bush disabused most Christians of that belief.

Holding up a holy text as something more than words on a page is to be expected. Religions only work when the rules are set forth by an authority higher than man. Otherwise, it is just coercion. Deifying the Constitution, the way we see with guys like Cruz and Beck, inevitably deifies the men who wrote it. It also assumes a transcendence that the writers never imagined. The men who wrote the Constitution fully understood that it was a grab-bag of compromises that were necessary in order to organize thirteen nations into a single country.

Just as important, the men who founded the country relied upon the work of others to form their opinions and debate how to best organize the newly independent country. Jefferson, for example, borrowed heavily from The Declaration of Rights with which Parliament asserted its rights against the King in the Glorious Revolution. Imbuing the Constitution with sacred authority inevitably turns the writers into something they were not and strips them of their humanity. The Founders were just men, but they were still men.

That is what makes the Cruz speech and his refusal to back Trump interesting. The Wuss Right, filled with hatred for the rise of Trump and his nationalist backers, cheered Cruz as the heir to Reagan. The Cruz people, however, are not looking for Reagan. They tried that and got nowhere. They saw the Cruz speech and saw their savior, a man in the line of the Founders, sent by God to bring his people back into the light of the Constitution. It’s why his followers are sure God will punish America for rejecting their man.

Ted Cruz says he will run in 2020 no matter what happens in 2016. It remains to be seen whether this movement he is leading has legs. These things often fizzle out. With high profile people like Glenn Beck and Erick Erickson signing on and preaching from their Internet pulpits every day, it is probably going to be with us for a while. Ted Cruz is the leader of the political version of the Westboro Baptist Church now. The founding documents are holy scripture and the leaders are men of God, sent by God.

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Comments (Historical)

The comments below were originally posted to thezman.com.

36 Comments

James LePore #15365 July 27, 2016 8:30 am 11
When someone who you perceive as your enemy invites you into his home, you have two choices: decline, or go and be gracious while you’re there. Cruz went and pissed on the floor, which I believe turned off pretty much everyone who was watching and ended any chance of his ever becoming president.
Severian #15366 July 27, 2016 8:47 am 10
Honestly, I wish Cruz types actually would go ahead and deify Washington, Jefferson, et al. It’s the second-best alternative to the current mess, it worked for the Romans, after a fashion, and it’s certainly better than deifying an abstract concept — Rousseau defied the political process itself (the “General Will”), Hegel took it a step further and deified the State, and of course Marx built on all that and deified History. The body count rose exponentially each time. Second-best alternative: a Cult of Personality. Trump, I’m told, is busy building one. Good! That’s the only way to change course in a totalitarian system (cf. Khruschev’s “secret speech” on Stalin’s crimes). We’re well past the point of noodling over philosophy; the only goal now should be to keep the body count down.
teapartydoc #15367 July 27, 2016 9:06 am 1
Very nice posting. I like your succinct summary of the history of political philosophy married to its body count. History may yet decide that the burden of guilt for the premature deaths of many over course of modernity should be laid at the feet of men of letters rather than the men of action dealing with the consequences of those ideas.
Severian #15370 July 27, 2016 9:32 am 1
It’s fun (for certain horribly depressing values of “fun”) to play the old “travel in time, kill baby Hitler” game when you’re an adult and know some intellectual history. Killing Hitler wouldn’t have solved anything; something like that was inevitable given Marxism. But killing Marx wouldn’t do anything, given Hegel, and Hegel was inevitable given Rousseau…. one can only wish that the Inquisition had gotten whoever it was who first decided that we can force the Second Coming by killing off all the sinners. He’s got everyone else’s body count on his hands, too.
Uncola #15369 July 27, 2016 9:28 am 9
“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is also more nourishing.” –(H.L. Mencken)When considering the yin and yang of liberty once must balance Isaiah Berlin’s “I am slave to no man” with “I am my own master”. It is moral law, therefore, constituting the line in the sand separating free society from anarchy. Or, perhaps in the case of Hobbes, that which separates a benevolent monarchy from tyranny.John Locke claimed: “The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.”But then again, he also stated: “Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.”Locke also penned “The Reasonableness of Christianity” and believed denying God would ultimately lead to a breakdown in society towards chaos. This is why he embraced the biblical “Golden rule” when he wrote: “To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality.”Enter the Donald. From the very beginning of his campaign, he has clearly stated in the media what a lot of Americans have been thinking and feeling. He’s politically incorrect which many find very refreshing. And when the media pundits challenge him, he doesn’t back down. On the contrary, he doubles down. This makes Trump a hero of sorts to not only his supporters, but to an apparently growing constituency nationwide. People seem to be embracing Trump like they would a brave friend who stands up for them against, say, an unfair neighbor.I tend to believe the majority of Trump’s supporters believe him when he says: “Let’s Make America Great Again”. It’s Nationalism pure and simple. They love their country and believe Trump does too and this is why he is fearlessly running for president: To try to save America from those who are pillaging her. It’s hard not to support a dragon slayer. It’s the stuff from which legends are made.A few big problems though: The Deep State War Machine and the financial elite globalists. They want to tear down America so they can build their new world order and they won’t let a little piece of paper with “We the People” written on it, stop them. The Central Planners have wanted Hillary all along and will spare nothing in their arsenal to tear Trump down relentlessly, until Hillary takes the oath of office on January 20, 2017.The optimist in me hopes I am wrong. The cynic in me thinks we are too far down the rabbit hole. We’ll know soon.In the meantime, to the Conservative Puritans, it is Ted Cruz who represents constitutional integrity. I find this ironic because those currently heeding the clarion call of TrumPence seem to consider Cruz as just another Goldman Sachs slave shilling dehydrated rat anuses to the blind for wedding rings.
cali #15364 July 27, 2016 7:46 am 7
Great post!Cruz is a arrogant little man full of false pride that felt entitled to be president. It goes back to his father and their nutty church – the dominionist ideology. Cruz was told long ago by his father that ‘he is the anointed king’. They both are dreaming of turning the US into a theocracy as similar as Iran without the beheadings. In Cruz’ father church and their beliefs has convinced Cruz that he must cleanse the earth of all sinners, homosexuals etc to enable Jesus Christ’s return. That is what he believes based on the church of father and son.When he gave his conniving speech – jealousy of Trump and anger that it was not him in DT’s place was something he could not swallow. What makes persons like Cruz dangerous is that he carries his bible despite not believing or knowing what it says. He uses it to manipulate voters throughout his campaign.His schtick with the constitution is also interesting because he was born in Canada to a mother who gave up her American citizenship and adopted Canadian citizenship when Rafael Cruz was born. He sealed his files at the beginning of 2015 after questions arose in Texas by a group of voters who questioned why he did not have US citizenship. We actually dodged a bullet with the Bush family agents because Cruz’ wife Heidi was a CEO at Wall Street and wrote the policies of the North American Union. She also assisted the CFR among a host of other one-worlders. I do not think Cruz is done with being conniving!
Lulu #15374 July 27, 2016 10:36 am 5
Few of those who ended up (desperately?) going for “constitutionalist” Ted on the conservative forums started out rooting for him. Some were actually very strongly against him before they were for him. When attrition (wearing a Brioni suit and a Make America Great Again cap) stripped away their first, second, third, etc., etc., choices and Cruz appeared to be the only non-Trump standing (Kasich never counted), they built him up (sort of like the DNC does) with his “constitution as religion” and his faux “religiosity”. A nutcase “pastor” father in a bogus faux religion helped a lot. That was and remains their last bastion. A wife who had been gravely wounded by the bully Trump (never mind Cruz’s nastiness toward Melania Trump via his backdoor henchpersons) helped to justify their rather weak position.What will they do on Election Day? It’s anyone’s guess. Conservatives have been known to throw away their votes before. This would be a very dangerous year in which to do that.
eskyman #15398 July 28, 2016 1:39 am 3
Excellent post, with many excellent comments; I am most closely aligned with “cali” who has made many of the comments that I would have made.Once I was very pro-Ted Cruz, to the point of sending him money and posting a lot of remarks in comments on lots of blogs about how badly this country needed a Constitutional purist such as Ted. Then I started finding out about him. What I found was disconcerting. For a great deal of background information and discussion about Ted Cruz, please check out The Last Refuge, AKA The Conservative Treehouse; it is an up-front pro-Trump website, but there is a great deal of actual journalism done there.https://theconservativetreehouse.com/category/ted-cruz/The last straw for me with Ted Cruz was when I found that he is actually a natural-born Canadian citizen, but he claimed to have been unaware of that fact until recently, when he renounced his Canadian citizenship. I couldn’t reconcile the thought that this brilliant legal scholar, who had graduated cum laude from Harvard Law, who had successfully argued in the Supreme Court- this man is so careless and clueless that he didn’t know that his birth may disqualify him? The absolute last straw was when he sealed his birth records. That’s the act of a scoundrel, who is attempting to deceive; and it has worked with far too many, who are unaware of how successfully he lies. He is the stereotypical “sleazy lawyer” whose ethics are nonexistent.There is a great deal of doubt now about whether Cruz is any kind of US citizen; it would appear not. I personally wouldn’t ever vote for him for any office. I don’t trust him in the slightest, and feel resentful that he’s chosen to hide so much from voters. He has now proven to the world that he can’t be trusted, that he is not and never has been a team player, and he richly deserves the ignominity that will be his forevermore.
Al from da Nort #15388 July 27, 2016 3:08 pm 3
Z Man;So, are you saying that the only reason we Evangelicals supported Cruz is religious zealotry_? That, sir, is an insult_!Seriously, let me just say that presuming to know what Evangelicals think portrays a certain unfamiliarity with the demographic. I can confidently state that there is no such thing as THE Evangelical position on almost any question, even theological ones. We, sir, are a fractious lot.However, one thing I can say with considerable confidence is that almost all Evangelicals do NOT think the US Constitution a divinely inspired equivalent to Holy Scripture. I hope and imagine that this was hyperbole on your part.Regards evangelical relationships to progressivism, you may not be aware of the ‘Fundamentalist’ vs ‘Mainline’ Protestant split of about 100 years ago. Well into my adulthood ‘fundamentalist’ was a term of abuse in protestant polite circles. While by no means exclusively, the original fundamentalist protestants tended to be Southerners while the progressives, as you say, were a split-off of the mainliners who were (mostly but not exclusively) Northerners (Woodrow Wilson is a counter example). Then and now, a least common denominator definition of fundamentalism is that, however interpreted by humans, the Christian Bible is inspired by God’s Holy Spirit and it means what it says it means.Fascists of all stripes, as with the Marxists from whom they derived their inspiration, explicitly rejected Christianity in the 1920”s. The earlier Progressives at that time did not reject mainline protestantism and vice versa (e.g. FDR). But the fundamentalists did reject both mainline protestantism and progressivism at that time for largely theological reasons. Starting in the ’60’s came the mainline’s unilateral divorce where the Marxist hard progs explicitly rejected Christianity entirely and the soft progs within the mainline denominations played abused spouse, promising they’d change their social doctrines. Which required them to change their theological doctrines.The dynamic of progressive accommodation drove anyone with the least fundamental leaning, either theological or social, out of the mainline. So-called Evangelicalism today is largely the fusion of renegade mainline fundamentalist individuals with the original fundamentalist congregations: As with conservatism, one can say, ironically, that the largely southern position won out.The rise of the so-call evangelical right in the ’90’s represented a reversal of the original fundamentalists’ position of non-engagement in the political culture as a response to the prog social cultural onslaught begun in the Bush I years. But, as you say, thanks to the right elite, particularly under Bush II, etc., this shift to activism was of no avail against the uni-party. Being a constitutionalist fundamentalist lent Cruz credibility that he might actually provide some protection against the prog cultural onslaught.IOW, I think you have the causality reversed, sir.
james wilson #15389 July 27, 2016 4:04 pm 1
Ben Franklin, who if anything was a doubter, thought the deliberations were divinely inspired and gave a speech recorded by Madison to that effect, so it might be assumed that a number of the Founders believed likewise, none of whom were anti-Federalist of course. But the way was cleared for that shiny city on the hill. How interesting would life be had the anti-Federalist won.
thezman #15390 July 27, 2016 4:53 pm 1
If you believe the pollsters, Cruz did not do all that well with Evangelicals. I did not want to make the post too long so I stayed out of the weeds with regards to the divisions within the Evangelical world, but yeah, there’s much more diversity of opinion within than without.
RedFred #15384 July 27, 2016 12:49 pm 2
I don’t want to go over top, while suggesting you might be a bit over top accusing Cruz supporters of going over the top, even though it’s clear that Glenn and Ted are now definitely over the top.Especially Glenn.But I think there’s a few of us (ex?) Cruz voters who simply agree that the founders put together the best set of limits they could at the time, as you say. And we think that those limits on government should be strictly adhered to, for the good of the country and the protection of us all. And if you don’t like those limits, then round up enough honest agreement to AMEND the Constitution, or go home and suck an egg. Enough of subverting and ignoring and trampling our wisely conceived and written founding document.
Notsothoreau #15395 July 27, 2016 10:37 pm 2
The problem is that Conservatives try and pass as keepers of the flame. But they don’t act that way when they get in office. They vote for stupid trade deals and unwinnable wars. They don’t do a single thing to shrink government programs. They don’t seem to have an interest in protecting our culture. And they run and hide if you call them a racist. If your most recent victories were when Reagan was in office, your movement is dead.
Frank #15376 July 27, 2016 11:09 am 2
I am a fairly long time reader and I would first like to say how much I enjoy your blog. You are an outstanding writer and thinker and your writing actually relaxes me while informing, which I believe indicates that there is predominate truth in your writing (and thinking). Your historical perspective in everything is so critically important as the nature of man only changes over very long time scales, and society in general in shorter, but still fairly long time scales.With that said, I truly hoped that Cruz would win the nomination. He is the first person I believe to be a conservative who had a chance since Reagan was in office. I was non-political until I began working for the government (effectively) in the healthcare area. I am one of those people whose job it is to read and understand the entirety of things like the MACRA legislation and be able to implement those laws in software systems. That experience over the past 15 years has turned me into a hard fiscal conservative. When you truly understand the intent of this type of legislation you do not know if you should cry or throw up. One law at a time, the left, with their well meaning helpers are taking over every aspect of society and with the capture of healthcare, the leverage “they” have over society is almost insurmountable. While I fully agree that cost containment is absolutely necessary to allow America to survive, the intent of most of this “quality legislation” in the end is about power and control, and siphoning off as much money out of the healthcare system as possible to fund democrats societal control efforts.I see Ted Cruz as a disruptive force that could have stopped the government in its tracks for a little while and that is about as much as we can hope for. The fact that the rest of the senate “hates his guts” is a huge selling point for me. Only with disruptive forces inside the government can we hope to slow down the relentless path to slavery that the left is trying to accelerate. When do we become a slave? When they take 60% of everything I have? 80%? 90%? When they tell me where to live, where to work, what to drive, what to eat, what I can say, who I can associate with, what I can think? When you go down that list you can easily see that they are actively working to control and dictate every single one of those parts of life. So, at what point to I become a slave?Attacking Ted Cruz or his father’s faith is an easy target as we are so disdainful of Christianity, and I personally was disappointed in his judgement with that speech. I think he should have simply not spoken, but, he is a disrupt-or and I guess I have to take the good part of that with the bad. Hopefully he will have another bite at the apple, or perhaps we can find another Reagan somewhere who can balance their desire for reducing government with their own personal agendas. One way or another, only a disrupt-or is going to change the course.
notsothoreau #15377 July 27, 2016 11:57 am 10
Cruz is not capable of disrupting anything. How effective was his filibuster? Not very. He is incapable of working with other people. He’s interested in the Senate only as a means to run for president. The real disruptive force is the person that can get past the main stream media to make their voice heard. Cruz will never be that guy. Trump is.Cruz thinks things will be the same in 2020 but he is completely wrong. The country will have changed. If Hillary gets in, it will be almost unrecognizable and he won’t have a chance to win. If Trump wins, Cruz will not fit in with the new nationalistic mood. And, folks like me will never support Cruz. He’s done. And I don’t support him as a Supreme Court justice either.
Lulu #15381 July 27, 2016 12:24 pm 4
Agree, though God knows he tries to disrupt. “If Hillary gets in”…..thanks for that nightmare! 😉
thezman #15378 July 27, 2016 11:57 am 13
Thanks.I wanted to like Cruz, but there was always something lurking in the shadows that turned me off. I could never quite put my finger on it. Some people just rub you the wrong way. That said, I’d happily vote for him over Clinton, even though I thought his speech at the RNC was childish and unmanly. Imagine if he had said, “Everyone knows I have my issues with Donald Trump. Everyone knows we are not friends. Doing the right thing by your country often means doing it with people you don’t get along with or even like. The country must come first so I ask everyone who supported me to support Trump this November.”He would have walked away a rock star. Instead, most people think he is a weasel and maybe a kook.Ultimately, that’s probably what bugs me about him. He’s smart, but he does some amazingly dumb things.As far as the evangelical constitutionalism, I think at worst it is harmless.
Lulu #15379 July 27, 2016 12:16 pm 6
Unctuous. Grasping. Naked ambition. And a barely disguised mean streak.
Drake #15392 July 27, 2016 7:24 pm 1
I liked Rand, then settled for Cruz – which of course meant he was doomed.
Meema #15362 July 27, 2016 7:33 am 2
I thought this was interesting:http://www.eutimes.net/2016/07/ted-cruz-met-with-obama-prior-to-rnc-endorses-hillary-rick-perry-set-to-destroy-cruz/ If you read the comments you find a lot of Ted Excusers. But the question is still begged – why was he on Air Force One and what did they talk about? Grand kids? No, wait, Ted isn’t old enough to have grands yet.
Christopher in MA #15361 July 27, 2016 7:30 am 2
“The founding documents are holy scripture and the leaders are men of God, sent by God.” Which I find amusing, in that Pauline Maier, an MIT history professor (FWIW), wrote a book concerning the drafting and editing of the Declaration called “American Scripture” in 1998. BTW, have been reading your blog for a few months now, and enjoy it. It’s a daily stop for me now.
thezman #15363 July 27, 2016 7:33 am 0
Thanks and yes, I had Maier’s book in mind.
LetsPlay #15397 July 28, 2016 1:04 am 1
Sure and your great professor of history at corrupt institutions of higher learning, along with her husband at Havvaaad, probably filled a lot of heads with socialist mush. To wit:In an interview with CommonWealth magazine in 1998, Professor Maier told of sharing a cab in Washington, as people often do. Her companion told her that she was from Africa, and Professor Maier replied that Africa must be beautiful.The woman said that the United States was better, and Professor Maier casually asked why she thought so, expecting the woman to extol perhaps the country’s wealth or job opportunities. The woman replied that she admired the country’s Constitution, its government of laws and its principles of equal rights.Her comment, Professor Maier said, “absolutely overwhelmed me.”(fromhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/us/pauline-maier-historian-who-described-jefferson-as-overrated-dies-at-75.html?_r=0)And with that bit of evidence slapping her in the face, she would still write a book declaring the founding documents “dead” and Jefferson, well, not so important after all.She must have been brilliant.
Clayton Bigsby #15421 July 28, 2016 1:43 pm 1
Phew….lotta good stuff in this thread…my $.02 is that Glenn Beck (aka douche bag beck) is quite possibly insane…..and should be blabbering from a cardboard box on a subway grate …. not worthy of being the subject of discussion on this blog…..The fact that Ted Cruz is his Annointed One, should be of no surprise and makes perfect sense….
LetsPlay #15394 July 27, 2016 10:17 pm 0
ZMan. I don’t know where to start. I know you are being provocative so here is my response point by point.1. You are a smart guy. Why do you seem to focus so much on Beck? Sure he has his followers but he is not the danger that Hillary or the Dems/Liberals are. I don’t want to be an apologist for Beck but I take him as a Paul, the Apostle, formerly the persecutor of Christians and Tax collector Saul, who is simply crying out in the wilderness trying to get America to turn from it’s hedonistic and materialistic ways. How much anyone wants to listen to him is another matter.Some people, preachers for example, see themselves as having a calling and dedicate themselves to that mission. I can have at least a modicum of respect for such efforts especially when the proof is all around us that we “are” on the wrong track.2. You attack the Founders as mere men who “appropriated” ideas that had already been developed. Well, yes and no. Maybe ideas had been ban teed about, but no one until this time (1776), this circumstance and this group of people put it all together in what many still say is “the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Many believe that America’s founding was providential in this regard and led to it’s amazing success. When people say “We have lost our way,” I think they refer to both the idea of America and the spiritual foundation that made this country great to begin with.3. You treat the Founding Documents as mere pieces of paper, kind of like the liberals do. I place a lot of fault with the legal profession with the tonnage of paper in laws that dominate our landscape and take away our freedoms. Our Founding Documents were simple and direct. It is only conniving, deviousness that has weasel worded around those simple ideas to protect interests that are mostly criminal and not in the best interests of the country.4. Christians started the “living constitution” stuff? Really? Are you a Christian? Do you think it is proper for one man to “own” another? Do you think it is right for one man to be the property of another? Are you saying it was wrong to free the slaves, either here in the US, or in Britain as Wilberforce fought for? Do you believe that the Founders left a way to amend the Constitution not because it was a “living” document but because they might not be able to envision things which might be need changing? This is a much better alternative to simply “throwing it all away” for the sake of totalitarian convenience and doing away with our liberties one at a time, slowly but surely, as has been the case over the past decades. I would support any effort to change a law, or create a law to support or strengthen freedom of American citizens.5. You mock Ted Cruz. I am not so quick to do so as I have read material both pro and con regarding this man. I still don’t know the truth. Sometimes, I think that like Trump he is playing a very different game and because of his Christian and Patriotic fervor, he is attacked for it and discounted. That seems to be de rigueur these days.I did not trust Trump and I liked what I heard from Cruz. But Cruz lost out. In the meantime, I have come to like what I am hearing and seeing of Trump. He seems to be a quick study on the issues both national and foreign, and I like his tough stance and decisiveness. The risk implicit in anything this these days is the potential for being misled by the media, old or new. Seems to have reached new levels of sophistication even since Barry won the DNC nomination in 2008.Only self destruction the likes we are seeing today with the DNC and the Clintons, and the contributions by fearless authors, editors, and investigators can keep the truth front and center, especially at the right times. But it also seems to have needed a spark from a man like Trump to call a spade a spade and name Hillary a criminal for the house of cards to start falling apart.So, in summary, Moses brought down the Ten Commandments from the Mountain Top but that did not make him a deity. He as but a messenger. You may or may not believe God uses people as His instruments for His purposes but I do. And, as for God punishing America for not choosing Cruz, well, if you like what you’ve been seeing lately, well, we ain’t seen nothing yet!
Pat Baker #15396 July 28, 2016 12:37 am 2
The miracle of America was not the instrument employed (the Constitution, mediating between the rival folkway groups), but, rather, the Judeo-Christian belief that rival folkway groups could peacefully co-exist if their first loyalty was to the same God – an ecclesial nationalism: one nation under God, composed of many nations/tribes/folkways; the twelve tribes of Israel as the inherited and applied model, already in practice by every denomination in the colonies. The old world thought and proclaimed that this could never work, having witnessed the failure of the empire of the universal (Catholic) Church and it’s dissolution into warring, ethnic self-worshipping nations.I believe this ecclesial model affords us the availability of alternate counter folkways to replace the prevailing failing folkway (border-folk and southern folkways ascendent as neo-puritan and Quaker folkways diminish). In this way America has, and will, continue to refresh itself, be ‘re-born’ anew, until the weaknesses of the new way begin to flag.It will take time and events to bring all four folkways together as happened in the nineteen forties, and when we do,it will seem as thou Providence had a hand.
RedFred #15385 July 27, 2016 12:56 pm 0
Damned auto-correct! Over THE top, over THE top!
David in Cal #15368 July 27, 2016 9:08 am 0
Cruz is very eager to see our government follow the Constitution, and this is BAD??
thezman #15371 July 27, 2016 9:49 am 7
Guy A: I want you to live a moral life because it will bring you happiness. Guy B: I want you to live a moral life because it makes it easier for him to rob you. Both men want the same thing for different reasons and those reasons are what is important.
LetsPlay #15380 July 27, 2016 12:22 pm 0
Sounds very lawyerly when the real issue is how to you define “moral life?” Guy A living a moral life is not necessarily an idiot.
Adama #15375 July 27, 2016 10:52 am 1
Constitutional obedience is something, I’m sure, most regulars here approve of. But, to Z’s point, obedience by way of zealotry is too high a price to pay. Tolerating undesirable means for the sake of achieving a desirable can seriously backfire, as those means can also be used to achieve other undesirable ends. The Constitution does just find standing on its intellectual merits alone, it doesn’t require consecration.
LetsPlay #15382 July 27, 2016 12:27 pm 4
And just who is doing the wrecking of America? Talk about zealotry. I would rather agree with Bary Goldwater circa 1964: Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue.Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.Moderation in the protection of liberty is no virtue; extremism in the defense of freedom is no vice.
Adama #15387 July 27, 2016 1:55 pm 1
I have no problem with extremism in certain forms; extremes are relative positions anyway. And if a rational analysis takes you to the extreme end of a particular issue’s belief spectrum, then fine. But there is a difference between being, let’s say, a principled extremist and a zealot. Zealots have a habit of turning things into articles of faith. Articles of faith aren’t reasoned into or in any way questioned.They’re just accepted as an act of religious devotion. The Constitution is a pretty damn solid effort, affirming it doesn’t need to be a sacrament. That’s all I’m saying.
LetsPlay #15393 July 27, 2016 9:52 pm 1
And all I am saying is it is not Christians or strict Constitutionalists who are taking away freedoms or transforming America. It is the other guys, liberals aided and abetted by corrupt politicians and uber greedy capitalists.
Pat Baker #15386 July 27, 2016 1:44 pm 2
The Constitution was crafted as a peace treaty between American Puritans and Cavaliers, not holy writ.Zman is correct.
Drake #15391 July 27, 2016 7:23 pm 2
But… If the Ninth and Tenth Amendments weren’t thrown in the trash a century ago by the Progressives, we wouldn’t need a zealot to get the federal government back into the constitutional box. Nobody else, other than the Pauls, seems to remember those Amendments are still part of the Constitution.


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