Election 2024: Whose Values Will Reign Supreme?
CBS News anchor Elaine Quijano recently interviewed James Carville (born 1944), the “Ragin’ Cajun” political consultant, media celebrity and Democrat strategist who managed Bill Clinton’s presidential run in 1992. Carville claims:
“Our primary identity should always be that we’re humans and Americans. I love Cinco de Mayo and all the cultural things different people have, but I believe in pluralism and that we’re all part of this.
I hate it when we start trying to exclude people; most people feel that way. People have an identity, and I don’t have an issue with that, but when you talk about your identity first and country second, people who don’t share your identity will not be persuaded.
I’m an American, and I want us to have a country where everybody respects other people and gets along. I can’t do anything about my identity any more than anybody else. Still, we should talk to people in a clear language that they understand and appeal to something better than just one’s identity.
Carville’s argument against identity politics would seem more earnest if he had been as forceful in the 2020 presidential election cycle, as leftists and Black Lives Matter anarchists burned and looted the nation’s cities.
After all, it’s Democratic leaders who sanction biological boys competing against girls at state track and field championships, canonize homosexual and gender dysphoria and foment race division.
However, Carville’s acclaimed political antenna is picking up distress signals from the American public four months before the Nov. 5 election, resulting from a failed Biden presidency:
— Biden’s catastrophic retreat from Afghanistan and abandonment of $7 billion in military equipment.
— Biden’s sell-off of half of U.S. oil reserves (set aside for emergencies) to offset rising fuel prices.
— Biden’s $230 million aid pier for Gaza is set to be permanently dismantled.
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— Biden’s border crisis, complicity, disarray, ballooning deficits and debt, rampant inflation and woke administration, exemplified by male staffers sashaying around in pantyhose and high heels.
There’s a headwind blowing Democrats in the face in November. The message? Political radicalization from the likes of Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi; cultural Marxism and similar beliefs, opinions and viewpoints have been taken too far and lost the American people.
For example, in reality, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is just another form of racial discrimination in the name of diversity being administered by woke government bureaucrats who have been granted $250 million for underrepresented minorities: Black people, Latinos, American Indians, Pacific Islanders and LGBTQ.
Normal voters, on the other hand—those who put in 50-hour workweeks, raise families, coach Little League and teach Sunday school—increasingly recognize that the term “diversity” is a mere subterfuge for racial discrimination. To let radically secularized government bureaucrats pick the winners and losers of $250 million is a shameless abomination. After all, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination against race in employment.
Last week, former Speaker Newt Gingrich summed up modern America’s predicament in a post on X:
This brings us to the 2024 platform of the Republican National Committee and the challenge facing evangelical and pro-life Catholic Christians. From 1984 until now, in every presidential cycle, pro-life organizations have proposed suggestions and additions to the platform. Once in a while, they produce a win in a Republican primary. Still, their activity focuses on fundraising, donor development and maintenance, action plans, Capitol Hill visits, the annual GALA and summer vacations.
President Trump’s appointment of three conservative pro-life justices during his tenure blew the pro-life organization’s 40-year model to smithereens. On May 10, 2022—one month before SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs vs. Jackson case—I wrote to the 70,000 American Renewal Project pastors:
Evangelicals ought to think through what’s coming soon to their surroundings and prospects. Specifically, with the U.S. Supreme Court looking as if it may overturn Roe vs. Wade in the Dobbs vs. Jackson case, tremendous pressure will now be applied to state legislators and courts. The battle over snuffing out the lives of children in utero will move from the Judiciary to the Legislative Branch of government, hence to a place where success or failure is determined by grassroots, precinct-level organizing.
Christians will have to take their Civics game to a new level. Somebody’s values are going to reign supreme in the public square. If Evangelical and Pro-life Catholic Christians stay home from the voting booth – in a presidential year, no less than half of all Christians unfortunately refrain from being registered and voting – then those ‘who speak perverse things, who leave the paths of uprightness’ … will elect their candidates, create and pass legislation, bringing about anarchy as its ‘natural consequence and fitting punishment’ to a spiritually apathetic nation.
Since Dobbs vs. Jackson, four states have passed a constitutional amendment explicitly declaring that their constitution does not secure or protect the right to abortion or allow the use of public funds for abortion. The progressive Guttmacher Institute (a leading research and policy organization committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights) notes:
— Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have laws that protect the right to abortion.
— Three states have protections for the right to abortion in their state constitutions.
— Four states and the District of Columbia have codified the right to abortion throughout pregnancy without state interference.
— Twelve states explicitly permit abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant person.
— Eleven states and the District of Columbia have protections for abortion providers, and in some cases, individuals who support patients, from the reach of out-of-state abortion restrictions and bans.
Pro-life state-based and national organizations would do wise to adapt to the new world, and the cottage industry they’ve created must give way to progress. Otherwise, they will float off into the sunset. As John Adams, America’s second president, used to say: “Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
Modern American Christendom has provided very little strategic thought and action to confront the false gods of secularism dominating the culture and indoctrination of our youth. As such, Christians will have to substantially increase their civic government commitment and involvement if they wish freedom and liberty to be passed on to their children and grandchildren.
Still and all, Gideons and Rahabs are now stepping into the public square.
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David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.
