"DRAWING A LINE IN THE SAND" Part Three
A continuing essay series examining the conflation of politics and religion.
Graphic art credit: Jeff Gates, www.chamomileteaparty.com, is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Heritage Foundation’s president Kevin D. Roberts is an admiring fan of Viktor Orban the president of Hungary and an close ally of Russia’s president Putin. As reported by The Guardian this past Sunday, the Heritage Foundation is tonight concluding a two day event wherein,
Allies of Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán will hold a closed-door meeting with Republicans in Washington to push for an end to US military support for Ukraine, the Guardian has learned.
Members of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and staff from the Hungarian embassy in Washington will on Monday begin a two-day event hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank.1
"Republicans to meet allies of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán on ending Ukraine aid”
With this third part of my essay I intend to focus on two aspects of the commentary and these are what it is “that conservatives need to conserve” and Heritage Foundation’s president Kevin D. Roberts target audience in crafting this duplicitous piece of writing.
Who is his target audience with his commentary? We catch a glimpse of them in the opening segment that will lead to the second key takeaway in the following excerpt,
Better still, American parents—like all of us at The Heritage Foundation—are tired of playing defense. Like the 56 men who had the spine to sign the Declaration of Independence, they’ve decided to go on offense. I’m here to tell you that at every step of the way, in every fight, in every battle, with every hateful journalist, every attack on the American people—every single one—Heritage and I will stand firm.
As we fight to preserve the American order against this global empire, it’s important to remember what it is that conservatives need to conserve.2
The “American parents” are who Roberts is intent on persuading over into his cause, and as can be seen in the above excerpt’s closing line he is working his way towards inculcating in this group that which is “important to remember what it is that conservatives need to conserve.” This will all be in service of leading to his final rallying point of the third and final key takeaway;
Elites today fear American independence, freedom, and heritage. They don’t want our children to inherit liberty and truth, because then they can’t be ruled.3
As mentioned early on in this essay I have no intention of engaging with the whole of Roberts’ “disingenuous exercise in inflammatory-sophism,” for to do so would be akin to playing along with him and entertaining his premises as if they actually have any validity, and because I “know what time it is” I refuse to waste either my or your time with a granular critic of his many weak and intentionally vague points of support that he supplies for his readers by which he attempts to sway their thinking over to his cause. No, I am now intent on aiming my arrow at the heart of his indoctrination reinforcement operation.
Between the second key takeaway which established that Jerusalem was where “From the Jewish people, the West inherited our greatest gift, the one on which all others rest: the knowledge of our good and loving God” and the third key takeaway Roberts leads his readers through a mishmash of a so-called mini-history lesson; it is within this lesson that he then begins to redirect his readers’ focus on his true mission of creating in his followers an unthinking submission to that which he has declared for them is necessary to understand as being the “fight to preserve the American order against this global empire” as being contingent upon his assertion, as a fact, as to that “it’s important to remember what it is that conservatives need to conserve.”
As noted in part two Roberts prestages his readers focus on the second key takeaway, and by extension the third key takeaway as well, with the following statement,
America did not invent the idea of “ordered liberty.” We inherited it from the West’s four great cities of freedom that came before us: Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and London.4
The concept of “ordered liberty” is central to much of Roberts indoctrination efforts; in part two I suggested that the idea of ordered liberty should be best understood as meaning “prioritized-freedoms.”
This then leads me here in this part of my essay to remark upon Roberts idealized source of authority for prioritizing individual citizens’ freedoms as can be derived from his lesson.
Roberts in his mini-history lesson first discusses Jerusalem for its importance of introducing a monotheistically derived moral order after which he then discusses Athens for its contribution of Democracy into the world and then he briefly discusses the Roman Empire at which point he breaks from his discussion of the Roman Empire to digress into an overt exaltation of Christianity, as seen in the following excerpt,
Christianity, thank God, transcends politics. On the other hand, we have it on very good authority [The Bible] that Christians are “salt of the earth.” Their devotion always changes cultures—converts them, you might say. Christian devotion makes societies more just, more compassionate, and more charitable and dutiful. Yet for all these virtues’ collective value, the revolutionary truth at the heart of the Gospel is the innate, infinite value of each soul.[The ultimate anti-abortion rationale]
Thanks to a particular Roman crucifixion in first-century Jerusalem, human beings today are not only made in the image and likeness of God, but can be redeemed by Him. As C.S. Lewis said, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”
The revelations of the New Testament empowered mankind to pursue the “good, the beautiful, and the true” as never before. And the lives of the apostles, saints, and martyrs give us a road map toward them. But as we all know, the virtuous road is still the one less traveled. Human nature does not change. And men, especially powerful men, tend to pursue their own self-interest first and foremost.5
In the statement wherein Roberts introduces his readers to the concept of “ordered liberty” he also makes clear for his readers that his idea of ordered liberty is an inherited one coming as he says from “the West’s four great cities of freedom that came before us: Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and London.” It is here we can again see Roberts’ disingenuous persuasions at work, for even though he places the city of Jerusalem first in the ordering it is not until he reaches his discussion of Rome that he then dives right back into Jerusalem again, only this time he has evolved for his readers the presence of the city’s part in his mini-history lesson from that of the source of “All the moral principles on which America was founded—and on which our society has flourished—date back to the Old Covenant, the Old Testament, and the ancient Kingdom of Israel” into the birthplace of Christianity by way of “a particular Roman crucifixion in first-century Jerusalem.”
It is this point in particular that Roberts is determined to establish in his readers minds what exactly it is “that conservatives need to conserve” namely and without stating in any precise terms he is intent on leading his readers to accept that what they as conservatives need to conserve is a Christian morality, most notably a biblical Christian morality.
After his readers have finished reading his exaltation of Christianity’s place in history, albeit from his own self-serving perspective, he then spares a sparse 300 more words to bring up the Magna Carta and the city of London and the parts they play in his own mini-history, which if I am to correctly understand how he has constructed his sophistry is by and largely dependent upon his fellow conservative traveler Russel Kirk’s book “The Roots of American Order.”
It is during his meandering and wandering explication of Kirk’s theory of “American order” that Roberts transitions, without any notice to his readers, into another self-serving distorted rendering, of the coming about of the Declaration of Independence and makes a most audacious attempt to elevate his own sophistic argument by stating “That’s how Philadelphia became the fifth city, growing taller and stronger from the roots of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and London.”6 So in other words the city of Philadelphia, in his mind, has become one of the stepping stones by which biblical Christian morality assumes a mantle of national authority. Roberts continues on and says,
It is the legacy of these five cities that American conservatives today must now fight to conserve. Not simply because they represent our inheritance and the principles that make America exceptional. But because they are the true targets the woke Left is attacking today.7
Note, that while he says that the legacy is of the five cities, a discerning analysis of his argument can only lead ultimately to his overarching emphasis on “All the moral principles on which America was founded—and on which our society has flourished—date back to the Old Covenant, the Old Testament, and the ancient Kingdom of Israel” as they are later refined and defined within Christianity by way of “a particular Roman crucifixion in first-century Jerusalem.”8 He continues with his argument turned into lamentation with a short appeal to a unique aphorism known as “the democracy of the dead” explaining for his readers that it is nothing more than “—the bonds of faith, freedom, and fellowship we share with those who came before us.” This idea of a “democracy of the dead” is really nothing more than an appeal to tradition and is frequently found in use as an accompanying justification to the many Catholic justifications for holding fast to ideas and ways of life that continue to remain moored in the distant past forever unable to advance forward into the future with humanity’s continually unabated progress into new, different, and in many cases more advanced social structures that are responsive to humanity’s continuing societal-evolution.
As he nears the the third and final key takeaway Roberts pours out upon his readers a laundry list of complaints and grievances of which many are sure to in some way or another stir up anger and resentment in his readers, thus feeding into their sense of being oppressed, which is exactly what his goal has been all along, as can be seen in some selected quotes, stripped of their lead-ins designed to create false associations with the four cities, from this short section leading to the third and final key takeaway,
Just look around.
A majority of Americans today seldom or never attend religious services. Prayer and the Bible are banned in schools, but pornography is permitted. Churches are threatened with bankruptcy if they don’t endorse same-sex marriage. Antisemitic and anti-Christian crime is on the rise. Corporations that mock Christianity, like the Los Angeles Dodgers, are held up as heroic, while children are suspended from public schools for T-shirts that say, “There are only two genders.”
Today, the Left is at war with the truth: about unborn babies, about the differences between boys and girls, about climate change, about masks and school closures, and about the origins of COVID-19.
Today, all our powerful institutions have joined together in one uni-party cabal. The media, the academy, big tech, big business, and big government surveil us, censor us, manipulate us, prosecute us, doxx us, and cancel us. Meanwhile, individual freedom is being subsumed into the creepy zoology of woke identity groups.
Look at the border, where fentanyl and criminals pour into our country. Look at our crime-ridden city streets as district attorneys refuse to put criminals behind bars. You may have heard: IRS agents showed up unannounced at the home of a journalist the day he testified before Congress on the weaponization of the government. The White House ordered the FBI to investigate moms and dads protesting corrupt school boards as “domestic terrorists.”
Like they have for 236 years, elites today fear American independence, freedom, and heritage.9
It is here that the third and final takeaway is found in its context,
Elites today fear American independence, freedom, and heritage. They don’t want our children to inherit liberty and truth, because then they can’t be ruled. They can’t be bullied. They can’t be intimidated or gaslighted or oppressed.10
Which when placed together in its full context reads as follows:
They don’t want our children to inherit liberty and truth, because then they can’t be ruled. They can’t be bullied. They can’t be intimidated or gaslighted or oppressed. This is why so much of their assault is aimed at our education system. The Marxists’ “long march through the institutions” in America has been working.11
It is here that Roberts preludes for his audience the role that they can play in his grand call to “drawing a line in the sand” as can be seen in the line immediately following the third key takeaway that is focused on the idea that an “assault is aimed at our education system.” This is almost humerous in the light of the myriads of conservative, and Republican attacks on our education sytems in their many forms that have already been taking place all across America for the past several years, if it was not for the fact that our liberal democracy is currently under attack from within by not only organizations like the Heritage Foundation and its many partners and political supporters and users, but also by homegrown groups that buy into the messages and ideas promulagated by the movement-conservative messaging apparatus that is created, operated, and sustained by non-profit organizations such as Heritage Foundation et al., and of homegrown groups wherein which many can be found listed at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate groups listings; for as can be seen in the following excerpt,
Just a few short years ago, starting in Northern Virginia, a few brave moms and dads stood up and said no to woke school boards, no to woke principals, and no to woke lawmakers. They are the heroes, and their work is spreading throughout the country in nearly every school board meeting in America.12
Roberts, with his cherry-picked example of a single civil lawsuit case in Northern Virginia, (a civil lawsuit that was brought to court by a legal group—Pacific Legal Foundation—that is directly affiliated with—Pacific Research Institute—a Project 2025 advisory board member) is clearly and obviously seeking to instigate a spirited rebellion against liberal policies by appealing to parents to follow in the footsteps of “Moms for Liberty” whether by way of school board takeovers or filing civil lawsuits that assert objections to liberal policies.
The short remainder of the commentary will be discussed in part four of this essay along with precisely what it is that the left has attempted to destroy; and my own concluding thoughts about what can be learned from this commentary.
[Edit-to-add this note, July 2, 2024 I will conclude the fourth part sometime during this month, other things demanded greater attention after this third part had been completed.]
Robert J. Rei, December 12, 2023
"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self." -Aldous Huxley
"Republicans to meet allies of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán on ending Ukraine aid” Flora Garamvolgyi and David Smith, December 10, 2023, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/10/hungary-viktor-orban-republicans-ukraine-aid
"America Must Reclaim What the Left Has Attempted to Destroy” (COMMENTARY American History) Kevin D. Roberts, Ph.D. (President, Heritage Trustee since 2023), July 25, 2023, The Heritage Foundation, https://www.heritage.org/american-founders/commentary/america-must-reclaim-what-the-left-has-attempted-destroy
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Great fictions and most origin stories are based on the listener’s or reader’s intentional or unintentional willful suspension of disbelief.
The last 50 years of Conservative and all of the Christian orthodoxies require the suspension of disbelief as their most fundamental tenet.
I’m beginning to think that 50 years of apathy in actual pro-democratic action coupled with the blind beliefs that “checks and balances” and “people recognizing that TFG and the MAGA followers are unacceptable leaders” are similar suspensions of disbelief.
Where are the revitalized and easily repeated democratic “origin stories and histories” to counteract and defeat the Conservative and Christo-Fascist movements? Excellent well-researched point/counterpoint articles may not be sufficient.
Quoting Roberts in almost complete disbelief of his sanitized history of the world - “Their devotion always changes cultures—converts them, you might say. Christian devotion makes societies more just, more compassionate, and more charitable and dutiful.”
I’m sure that’s the same perspective the indigenous peoples of the Americas got from the end of a Spanish conquistador’s sword and a Spanish missionary’s “conversion” into slavery at a California mission, and I’m sure the so-called “witches” and “heretics” felt that warm and fuzzy vibe when being burned at the stake. Compassion toward the peoples of Europe was definitely on the mind of the Catholic Church when they turned a blind eye to the Nazis and Mussolini’s fascism. Many a sermon in this country’s evangelical Protestant churches could pass for a political rally speech, but is protected (not to mention tax exempt) when spewed in a temple of hate. I call BS on the hypocrisy of any organized religion that must depend on a vengeful god to control and mind wash the indoctrinated masses.
For anything other than historical or architectural significance, I won’t even step foot into a christian church; no exceptions made for invited weddings or announced funerals.
Roberts continues with “And men, especially powerful men, tend to pursue their own self-interest first and foremost.” as an example of a less virtuous road of temptation that plagues human nature. Let’s list a couple of valid examples: self-righteous greedy 1-800 televangelists, Republican members of Congress that now follow the calls of Christian Nationalism when seeking donor money and reelection, and the best example of all of purity - the evangelical backed, three timed married, vengeance seeking, pathological lying Orange Anti-Christ.
Again, I call BS on the whole hypocritical lot.