Why the Pending Supreme Court is Valuable and Shouldn’t Be ‘Given Away for Nothing’

Daniel Greenfield is an Israeli-born Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an investigative journalist focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. His article in Frontpage Magazine titled, “Biden’s Black and Left Base Go To War Over Supreme Court Seat,” helps explain the behind-the-scenes manipulations and maneuverings by Representative Jim Clyburn and Senator Bernie Sanders around President Joe Biden’s upcoming U.S. Supreme Court selection.

This is compounded by Biden’s potential bid for reelection in 2024 and his history of compromise.

As background, Governor Rod Blagojevich [born 1956] was indicted by a federal grand jury in April 2009, mostly on charges related to attempts to sell the Senate seat vacated by then President-elect Barack Obama. Blagojevich reported to prison on March 15, 2012 at the Federal Correctional Institution in Englewood, Colorado. The former governor would have been eligible for early release in March 2024, based on good behavior; however, President Trump commuted his sentence and Blagojevich was released on February 18, 2020.

Greenfield writes, “As Governor Rod Blagojevich once said of Obama’s Senate seat, ‘It’s an ‘expletive’ valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing.

“A Supreme Court seat is even more valuable and with the Senate stalemated, the two big factions of the Democrat base are furiously fighting over who gets to ‘Blagojevich’ it.

“The superannuated struggle over the seat of Justice Stephen Breyer, who chose to retire at the age of 83, pits Rep. Jim Clyburn, 81, against Senator Bernie Sanders, 80. Both are demanding that Joe Biden, 79, let them ‘Blagojevich’ the valuable’ Supreme Court seat.”

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, the most senior member of the U.S. Supreme Court’s liberal wing, and his announcement to retire at the end of the current session brings to mind Sidney Powell [former President Trump’s attorney] and Lin Wood’s oafish prodding of Georgia evangelicals and Republicans in December 2020 not to vote in Georgia’s Senate Runoff on January 5, 2021. This qualifies undoubtedly as the most perfunctory, pitiful and pathetic political advice we have heard in our nearly 40-year career.

Their inane instruction to some degree caused both Georgia Senate seats to go to Democrats in January 2021.

In politics, it is all about the ability to play the long game. Elections have consequences and, in many cases, long-term consequences, like with the two Georgia Senate seats in 2021. Politics comes down to addition and multiplication, rather than to subtraction and division. Advising Republican and Christian conservatives to “stay home” in any election is political malfeasance. Aside from crazy talk, it is political suicide.

Politics, in and of itself, without the shadow of a doubt won’t change America’s culture. Spiritual men and women emerging from behind the four walls of the church building to enter the public square, on the other hand, will do just that since they act in full obedience to Jesus’ ekklesia kingdom assignment from Matthew 16:18.

A primary reason for American Christendom’s rueful exodus from the public square is aptly worded by Dr. Peter J. Leithart in his 1 & 2 Kings Commentary: “academic theologians have never been engaged in any political struggle more serious than annual departmental budget battles.”

A major disadvantage for American culture of this disengagement is that wise and accomplished spiritual leaders now tend to remain absent from the rough and tumble of the public square.

Jewish Hebrew scholar Michael V. Fox spells out that wisdom “delivers her message where the competition is fiercest, not competition from other orators but from the everyday distractions of business, politics, and disputes. Far from being esoteric or academic, Wisdom plunges into the midst of this hustle and bustle to reach people where they are. The same accessibility is claimed for God’s commandments in Deuteronomy 30:11-14.”

Sadly, to the detriment of American Christendom, church leaders and worshippers have been busy propagating a trifling subculture, sequestered from the world and producing a Lilliputian footprint in the culture with no detectable ability to address America’s dissolution and demise … let alone to provide correctives and improvements.

Dr. Bruce K. Waltke’s 2008 Christian Book of the Year titled, An Old Testament Theology, contends that if America is to survive, spiritual men and women will have to make themselves available for elected positions, as well as becoming active in the political-cultural world. Proverbs 22:29 (NKJV) says: “Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before unknown men.” Proverbs, according to Dr. Waltke, “presupposes activity in the political arena.”

With the so-called paradigm shift currently happening in America, pastors and spiritual leaders are beginning to take civic responsibility and over the next 30 years, a whole new level of engagement will occur as Christians move from meetinghouse to marketplace … as per the Lord’s ekklesia.

As an example of this, in mid-2019, Jerry Falwell, Jr., called with several people on the line, explaining that the managing director of Liberty Seminary was retiring after 30 years. Before he finished his thought, I said, “I know what you’re looking for.” Upon his prompting to explain my remark, I said, “You’re looking for someone who can equip seminary students with the Word, and one who has a thorough understanding in acquiring and disbursing political currency and capital in the public square.” This turned out to be exactly what Jerry Falwell, Jr., was looking for.

“Finding one with that combination of talent and knowledge,” I continued, “and yet saturated in the Word, will then be able to launch from Liberty Seminary fighter pilots into the culture to change the trajectory of America.”

American Christendom’s contemporary yardstick of measuring ecclesiastic success by the number of butts, and the size of buildings and budgets, has been tried and found wanting. It is going to be a long, hard battle awaiting us in turning the course of history. But it will turn, and not that far in the future.

John Bunyan’s [1628-1688] remarks from prison may point the way to the resurrection of American culture: “I never knew what it was for God to stand by me at all times and at every offer of Satan to afflict me, as I have found him since I came in hither; for lo, as fears have presented themselves, so have supports and encouragements; yea, when I have started, even as it were at nothing else but my shadow, yet God, as being very tender of me, hath not suffered me to be molested, but would with one scripture or another strengthen me against all; insomuch that I have often said, were it lawful I could pray for greater trouble for the greater comfort’s sake.”

Gideons and Rahabs are beginning to stand. {eoa}

David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.

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