Monday night at the Anne Arundel County Council meeting in the state of Maryland was a truly revealing experience. The issue of racism was the big agenda item of the evening. The purveyors of “tolerance” were in full force demanding an end to racism, insisting that the county council must end hate. End hate? Wow, that seems like a pretty tall order. How would the seven councilman on the platform go about changing the hearts of all 600,000 souls in this county? Perhaps, I thought, these citizens are calling for a spiritual revival, beginning with repentance for a multitude of sins. After all a true revival would actually change people’s hearts, turn them from hating others to loving their neighbor as themselves just as Jesus Christ commanded. Is that what they were asking for?
The other clear message of the “tolerance” crowd was that they demanded the first amendment rights be respected in the proceedings of the Council meeting. Now all of this was before Joe got up to speak. When he did, he correctly pointed out that the young man murdered had graduated from a Christian High School and that the murderer graduated from a public high school in the same county. He also stated that the Ten Commandments were never allowed to be seen in the murderer’s public High School, let alone to be taught. And he added that if we wanted to really deal with the problem we would return to teaching the Bible in the public schools. Now during Joe’s entire two minutes, venomous statements were hurled at him by the very same people who were calling for the end of hatred. It was from that same crowd that someone yelled for Joe to shut up. What about the supposed love for the First Amendment they were calling for moments earlier? Not on display if your statements don’t line up with the leftist God hating agenda. Instead you will be shouted down by loud mouth bigots who demonstrate they lack any civility or self-government let alone love for their neighbors.
Then I began to share the quotes from Charles Darwin I shared with you last week, that clearly display the direct connection between Darwinian Evolution and racism. The very same people who said they wanted to end racism did not want to hear those words. I was repeatedly interrupted by angry shouting and hateful invective by those who just minutes before demanded an end to hatred and a preservation of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. They had no regard for my two minutes of free speech. This matches a pattern we’ve seen repeatedly demonstrated around the country.
In the past several years we have seen the publication of “The Silencing: How the Left Is Killing Free Speech” by Kirsten Powers and “End of Discussion: How the Left’s Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun)” by Mary Katharine Ham and Guy Benson. And now Kimberley Strassel has written a book called “The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech.”
Understandably all this is rather puzzling, they say they want free speech, but oppose it whenever they don’t like it. But perhaps last month Congresswoman Val Demings, Democrat from Florida cleared it all up for us.
In a Facebook interchange with Stephen Mercer, The Daily Wire reported that when Stephen Mercer ”asked Demings if they ever found her stolen handgun and suggested that she be more responsible with her own firearms before talking about gun control for others, Demings offered a peculiar reply: Teach me how to be PERFECT Stephen because obviously YOU are. My First Amendment Right is DIFFERENT from yours. You are wasting your time.”
The Daily Wire reached out to Demings via Twitter, Facebook, and her Washington D.C. office. While we were never able to speak with Demings herself, we did speak with her communications director, Caroline Rowland.
When asked if Demings could speak about the remarks she made on Facebook, Rowland simply stated: “No, she will have no comment on that. Thank you,” before quickly hanging up the phone.”
One commentator looking back at the UC Berkeley riots said, “The incredible thing is we are witnessing the reality of the left in action. Beyond the rhetoric and the sloganeering, the radical left is really about fascism, censorship and the end of free speech. They will not tolerate other points of view, and they will do whatever it takes to ensure that all recalcitrants such as Milo will not be given a hearing…The secular leftists are so proud of calling themselves “progressives” but the ugly truth is this: there is nothing progressive about this mob – and a mob is what they are. They are regressive: they want to take us back to the censorship, conformity, and uniformity of past fascist tyrannies.
They have no regard for all that they constantly shout about: tolerance, diversity, acceptance, love and freedom. They are every bit the fascists that they claim to reject and despise…I am reminded of a quip Bill Buckley made many decades ago about the left: “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” Or as Mark Steyn put it more recently: “The Left does not want to win the debate, it wants to shut down the debate.”[1]
That sounds exactly like what we experienced on Monday night. But where does that lead a society when these totalitarian forces are allowed unchecked power? Well, the French Revolution comes to mind as well as the Russian Revolution, as well as Hitler’s rise to power. In other words the exact opposite of what is proclaimed is what will be achieved. That appears to me that this is the current trajectory of our country unless there is a dramatic shift in direction. Unless there is repentance and revival.
There is a path open to true liberty under law, the type of freedom our country was founded upon. It is a liberty that as our Founders clearly stated can only be achieved by a populous that is composed of true disciples of Jesus Christ, whose own self-government demonstrates that they can be trusted not to abuse their fellow citizens but rather will stand for and defend the God given rights of their neighbors because they obey the command of our Lord Jesus, “Love your neighbor’s as yourself.”
As we saw last, the true disciple is not proud, he does not forget what he was before he came to faith in Christ. Titus 3:3 “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.”
In that verse we saw the downward spiral – fools in their thinking, adopting an unbiblical world view leads directly to acting in disobedience to God’s Law Word. This in turn results in opening their minds to all sorts of deceptions which the enemy of their souls is all too ready to supply. In that deceived state they then become subjects of slavery to sin. As they grow deeper into that lifestyle, or we should say death style of sin, they live lives filled with malice, envy and hatred.
Now if the majority of a country are characterized by this description of a downward moral spiral there is little hope for liberty to ever be achieved. However there is a caveat, it is the very first word of Titus 3 verse 4 – ‘But.’ All of the above is true, it is without question the reality which we face in this fallen world. But that is not the end of the story. Genesis 3, even as it records the fall of mankind into sin, also declares the ‘But’ that is the promise of the redemption which God will Himself accomplish.
4But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,
5Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us. This is what our land needs, a true repentance leading to revival that turns hearts from hatred to loving one’s neighbor as one’s self.
*** David Whitney *** is a Life and Liberty News contributor, Pastor and radio personality. He has appeared in the Washington Time, on Voice of America, Fox, ABC, NBC, CSPAN and BBC. He is a Senior Instructor with Institute on the Constitution, and serves as Pastor of Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church of Pasadena, Maryland.
Learn more about your Constitution with Pastor David Whitney and the “Institute on the Constitution” and receive your free gift.
[1] https://billmuehlenberg.com/2017/02/03/free-speech-fascism-left/
