Politics and the double-minded man

"A double minded man is unstable in all his ways." James 1:8 (KJV).

In this scripture, James is warning Christians not to be wobbly in their faith, because those weak of faith are driven to and fro by the winds.

By definition, double mindedness is the mental state of believing or attempting to believe two opposing thoughts at the same time. This simple and brief teaching of James 1:8 on the double minded man is one of the most profound in scripture.

The scriptural charge of being unstable is of serious importance. The American Heritage Dictionary defines unstable as fickle and lacking control of one's emotions, characterized by unpredictable behavior.

We believe that double mindedness is a recognizable psychological phenomenon and that it is used to neutralize human thought and action. It is very subtle because it almost defies description. Herein lies its power to deceive and control human emotions.

There is both collective and individual double mindedness. Most all politicians are aware of this phenomenon and use it to deceive the electorate.

Last week in my column, Are Republican politicians on our side?, I pointed out that the conventional wisdom that Republican politicians in the District of Corruption are conservatives who look out for the interests of conservatives is nonsense. That column prompted emails and letters from readers asking if I was advocating voting for Democrats instead.

The U.S. political system is a farce and fraud. Until the American people wake up to the fact that the right/left, Republican/Democrat paradigm is a false one, the farce will continue and our liberties will continue to be eroded.

Politics in America is not a party system. It is instead a repetitive and insulting process of pacifying the national will with the illusion of freedom and political choices.

As I noted before, in a federal government dominated by a Republican majority, the federal leviathan still grows in power. Despite having a Republican majority in both houses of Congress and a Republican president, we still have abortion, Obamacare, sodomite "marriage" and perpetual war… and there is barely any lip service paid to ending any of it. And despite having a Republican majority House and split Senate (which gave Republicans the majority based on the vote of the vice president) under George Bush the lesser, we still had legalized baby murder and "compassionate conservativism" that grew government welfare/social programs (along with increased corporate welfare and bank bailouts), including increasingly socialized medicine.

Last week, while you were distracted over 36-year-old allegations of sexual impropriety by a Supreme Court nominee (who is touted as a conservative and constitutional originalist but who, while working for Bush Jr. adjudicated in favor of expanded government surveillance powers), "small government Republicans" passed a monstrous spending bill. The bill includes $178 billion for the Departments of Health and Human Services and Education — $10.7 billion more than President Donald Trump requested — $286 billion in funding for abortion, and $100 million to continue an Obama-era "teen pregnancy prevention program." They also removed a provision from the House version allowing adoption agencies the discretion not to place children in homes without a father and mother.

The bill expanded social welfare programs to such a degree that all but five Democrats voted for it. So much for fiscal responsibility, small government and individual liberty.

The elites in the District of Criminals and the money power behind them are so far removed from the people over whom they lord and/or whom they employ, that they may as well be on a distant planet in another solar system. All the thoughts they think and all the things they do are designed to draw more power and more wealth into their control.

Every two years, whether it's in the off-year congressional election that we're approaching or the quadrennial presidential "election," the false paradigm is reinforced. The opposing candidates square off, promising change of this or that nature, and the people, hearing catch phrases and buzzwords that tickle their ears, fall in line and cast their votes. But regardless of whether this Republicrat or that Democan gets elected, nothing of consequence ever changes. Government grows and liberty is whittled away.

This is a classic example of collective double mindedness. Every American who votes will tell you, if asked, that he/she believes in life, liberty and property. Yet he/she votes for a political cabal that is progressively undermining basic liberty and transferring property to the state without payment. The only reason that people can be seduced into destroying their own liberty is because over time, they have unknowingly adopted the morality of the state. Their double-mindedness has numbed their senses so that they do not know that political oratory is an appeal for sanction of their own plunder. The electorate never understand the issues because none are ever truthfully stated.

The individual or group is double minded when clinging to a philosophy that denies and is contradictory to reality, regardless of its name or label. Political parties were never intended to be different in substance, only in name and oratory. Before we third- and fourth-party devotees agree with smugness, the same applies to all political parties. A rose under any name is a rose.

No, there is no difference. Our hope is based on illusion and illusion on double-mindedness. The great deception goes on.

The double minded man forever seeks liberty under party labels. There are two illusions here. The first is that political parties appear different simply because they have different names. The second great illusion is that political parties lead to political freedom. The opposite is true. Collective plunder does not lead to human liberty, but to human conformity. When Americans had freedom, there were no political parties.