The Real Battle Facing America

Tucker Carlson ventured in upon the COVID-19 situation in his opening monologue for Fox News last week: “So the question is, what exactly is this about? It’s not about science. If masks and lockdowns prevented spikes in coronavirus infections, we wouldn’t be seeing spikes in coronavirus infections after nine months. But we are seeing them, so clearly, the geniuses got it wrong once again. This time, they’re not even bothering to point to legitimate scientific studies to support continuing their policies because there aren’t any studies that support that.”

Who could have concocted in March of this year a scheme that thugs and hoodlums would be burning down cities and looting businesses across America—and that with impunity, scot-free? Or that a Texas mother would be fined, arrested and put in jail for keeping her hairdresser business open to feed her children? Or that pastors across the nation in blue states would be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars each and threatened with criminal indictment for holding worship services? Or that the constitutional rights of American citizens would be violated in the name of an alleged “health emergency” that has a 99% survival rate?

Anyone who thinks the Nov. 3 election had anything to do with Democrats versus Republicans has been disconnected from reality. What’s happening in America eerily resembles George Orwell’s dystopian account of a future repressive totalitarian state in his book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, often published as 1984, prophetically written as early as 1947-1948.

Let there be no doubt that long-term freedom for our children and grandchildren is on the bubble, as totalitarian government bureaucrats and blue state governors and mayors: No. 1 ruin the economy, No. 2 close schools and No. 3 divide Americans in categories of “essential” and “nonessential.” And all this being cloaked and concealed with serpentine skill.

The grand deception of COVID-19 is beginning to appear like the ruse put on ancient Israel by the Gibeonites in Joshua 9, whose stale bread and worn-out shoes were but a subterfuge and smokescreen to give the subtle serpent the upper hand.

Where were the spiritual men and women around the president on March 16, 2020, as he pronounced the necessity of “15 Days to Slow the Spread?” The mere fortnight has now turned into eight long months!

Dr. Knut Wittkowski warned in March to get the old and frail people out of the way, get the kids in school, run your businesses and carry on with life as usual, and in four to six weeks the virus would have run its course due to the only thing that halts any virus: herd immunity. Quarantines and “flattening the curve” do not prevent, just delay and prolong.

Which brings us again to Dr. Fauci, a government bureaucrat and “administrator,” not a clinician. An armchair physician coming down from his ivory tower, Fauci continues, untroubled by shame or blame, to peddle his baseless opinions and idle inconsistencies on quarantines and face masks. If he were to advise getting on boxcars with destination “COVID Protection Camps to Flatten the Curve,” hordes would rush to the nearest departure station.

Let anyone who doubts this consult senator and medical doctor Rand Paul: “Lockdowns don’t work. And, in fact, all of the evidence on mandatory masks show that they don’t work either.”

With that said, we thank God for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves in a country marching blindly toward absolute control and tyrannical sway.

Gov. Reeves declared, “We are not going to participate in nationwide lockdowns … We believe that while they may make recommendations, that in this country under the Stafford Act when you have emergencies … Those emergencies have to be state-managed, locally executed and federally supported. I don’t believe that there’s any constitutional or statutory authority for any president to shut down Mississippi’s economy. We will certainly fight that if it becomes necessary.” Hear! Hear!

It is not that complicated. If restaurants scare you—stay home. If airline travel scares you—stay home. If bars scare you—don’t go there. If working in an office scares you—quit and work from home. If you want to wear a mask—by all means wear one—you’re free to do so as of this writing. For the rest of us, please leave us be.

In the 2020th Year of Our Lord, it is becoming more and more clear that one doesn’t have to fly an airplane into a building to destroy a nation.

Unless we change our superstitiously irrational approach, says Dr. Knut Wittkowski, “We’re heading for a disaster, and mankind will be substantially decimated in five to 10 years. COVID-19 has evolved as a direct result of lockdowns.”

With that as background, we come to the real battle facing America.

In his outstanding book The Second World Wars, Victor Davis Hanson writes: “Throughout history, conflict [has] always broken out between enemies when the appearance of deterrence—the material and spiritual likelihood of using greater military power successfully against an aggressive enemy—vanished.”

The forfeiting of the biblically based culture laid down by the American founders that was squandered over the last 100 years—and has now vanished—has empowered God’s secular adversaries.

As Hanson continues: “A stronger appearance of power, and of the willingness to employ it, might have stopped more conflicts before they began.” Hanson refers here to Winston Churchill’s correct assessment from WWII that up until 1934, Hitler could have been stopped without the loss of a single life. It was not time that was lacking.

“Put another way,” writes Hanson, “deterrence in the famous formulation of the 17th-century British statesman George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax, meant that ‘men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen.’

“But once thieves were not hanged and more horses were indeed stolen, who is strong and who is weak became confusing, and the proper recalibration that pruned rhetoric and posturing from knowledge of real strength returned only at the tremendous cost of a world war.”

The fight for freedom and liberty will never end; each next generation must take up the torch.

American Christendom over the last 100 years has been all but the salt and light of the culture. In fact it completely forsook Jesus’ kingdom assignment from Matthew to build His ekklesia. Instead, a Christian subculture was created, replete with Christian celebrities, huge budgets, big buildings and a nominal footprint in the culture.

Seventeenth-century English author and Anglican clergyman William Gurnall (1616-1679), seems to have indicated 20th and 21st-century America and its cultural collapse when he wrote:

“The shadow will not cool except in it. What good to have the shadow though of a mighty rock, when we sit in the open sun? To have almighty power engaged for us, and we to throw ourselves out of it, by bold sallies in the mouth of temptation! The saints’ falls have been when they have run out of their trench and stronghold; for, like the conies, they are a weak people in themselves, and their strength lies in the rock of God’s almightiness, which is their habitation.”

Notwithstanding that paganism has raised its flag over a vanquished foe—American Christendom—it will not last. For, in the words of Charles Spurgeon, “they have imagined a vain thing,” as Gideons and Rahabs begin to stand in the public square. {eoa}

David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.