By James Wilson
Two things are important in a season punctuated with the explosive revelations of Dinesh D’Souza’s Hilary’s America. First, his allegations against Democrats are substantially correct and matters of public record these past two centuries. The other is many Democrats are people of genuine and passionate devotion to what they imagine the party of justice for all.
What is that record?
Andrew Jackson and his supporters founded the Democratic Party after losing a presidential election to John Quincy Adams in 1824. Billed the party of the people, Jackson’s policies were actually protective of wealthy men like himself. He owned scores of slaves, treated them brutally, and engineered exile of Native Americans along the infamous Trail of Tears after stealing their treaty guaranteed lands for white settlers. He also destroyed the Bank of the United States, established to finance settler land purchases with cheap money. His party has faithfuly followed the same road, seeming to give while yanking away.
Democrats Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun led the pre-war fight to preserve and expand slavery. When Republicans, led by Abraham Lincoln, freed the slaves it was the Democratic apparatus that fought to minimize their freedom. This included founding, staffing, and defending the Ku Klux Klan. Woodrow Wilson – famously progressive – screened and applauded the film, Birth of a Nation, in the White House. This film was propaganda for the Klan narrative that it was saving the nation from black liberation.
Hillary Clinton claims Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger as her role model for freeing women from the slavery of childbirth. In fact, Sanger’s creed was eugenics – elimination through abortion – of those she thought ethnically inferior. According to Alveda King, niece of Dr. King, most Planned Parenthood clinics are in minority neighborhoods; it is a statistical reality that black people – 12% of the American population – account for more than a third of abortions. Sanger disciples like Clinton are effective at selling death to a whole people.
Many acknowledge this history while contending it is only history. They believe their party battled Jim Crow; in fact, it defended the very Jim Crow system it invented and codified. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, and every major civil rights achievement under Democrat Lyndon Johnson, received more Republican than Democratic votes. Republican Richard Nixon – corruption notwithstanding – did more to advance civil rights for minorities than any president before him other than Lincoln.
Am I just penning an apology for Republicans and rah-rah for Donald Trump? Of course not.
There is plenty of unacknowledged racism across America and the Republicans are not as innocent as Dinesh D’Souza supposes. President Dwight Eisenhower did little to conceal his bias, even asking the Supreme Court not to force his hand with desegregation of public schools in 1954. Donald Trump has made statements – his description of the judge in the Trump University case is one – I can only describe as racist. The difference is Eisenhower is dead and no doubt receiving instruction from the Lord on the meaning of, “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek.” Trump has met the Lord on this planet and his repentance is visible for all to see if we will.
Republicans sin and are as much in the grip of fatcats who care for neither God nor men – remember King Herod – as Democrats. But the biggest difference is the Republican Party was founded to promote justice for all; leaders can and do stray but course corrections are possible. The party of Jackson, Calhoun, and Hillary Clinton, was founded to deny justice for any but the chosen; leaders can and do stray but their course corrections lead to hell.
Why would I publish a clearly partisan political piece speaking as a Christian? Because Christians are called to have our heads in heaven and our feet on this ground. Elections for us are not about party or ideology. They are opportunities to serve God in the world. That means committed Democrats should be demanding repentance from their leaders and a new season of living out their rhetoric. Committed Republicans are called to the same – and perhaps much more inasmuch as they began as a platform of liberty and justice for all. Personal repentance before God is the heart. Trump’s repentance can and should lead the way.
The ministry of John the Baptist is traditionally emphasized in the weeks preceding Christmas. His rhetoric was harsh because times were critical and there was no time for kid gloves. John called on people who thought themselves children of God to fess up their hypocrisy and begin to actually become such children. His message is especially relevant today.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, and Kingdom in Pursuit – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at praynorthstate@charter.net
