Democratic Socialism — The Spirit of Antichrist
8 Nov 2008
On Election Night, I felt like the little girl staring at the television in the movie Poltergeist. Little Carol Anne announces the arrival of scary specters boding pending disaster by uttering the movie’s most memorable line: “They’re he-eere!” Of course, the pending disaster I saw while staring at the television on Election Night had nothing to do with scary specters, but everything to do with scary socialists.
I’ve been convinced personally for a long time that the biblically predicted one world system of the end time would ultimately prove to be democratic socialism. Yet, I’ve often wondered when and how America would end up adopting European style democracy. Well, I’m not wondering anymore.
With Barack Obama’s election to the White House, Democrats firmly in control of both houses of Congress, Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House of Representatives, Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader, our nation’s courts packed with despotic judges, and the nationalizing of our economy already begun by the lame duck Bush Administration, I can safely say with little Carol Anne of Poltergeist fame, “They’re he-eere!”
SOCIALISM VS COMMUNISM
Socialism may be defined as the deifying of the state. The state becomes all and all. Everyone does all that they do to prop up and preserve the state.
Communists have been called socialists in a hurry. Instead of incrementally capturing the educational system until a whole generation of young socialists has been produced, and instead of establishing socialism in the land by swapping the populace benefits from the public treasury in exchange for their rights and freedoms, communists attempt to swiftly create the socialist’s utopia by using military force. In place of slowly brainwashing the masses into believing that the state is above all, atheistic communists simply outlaw belief in God and declare that the state is all that there is.
Socialism is different from communism. Whereas communism is the involuntary subjection of the masses by a totalitarian state, socialism is the masses’ voluntary coronation of a benevolent state. Having been incrementally brainwashed into believing that Big Brother can take better care of them than they can take of themselves, the adoring subjects of the socialist government gladly hand over to the state the reigns of power. Granted, what is initially perceived to be “a dream come true” inevitably turns out to be a nightmare; still, the socialist’s promise of national utopia always proves too strong a temptation for men to resist.
UTOPIANISM
Most agree that socialism has its roots in utopianism. Utopians are those who believe in mankind’s ability to create an ideal civilization; in other words, utopians believe in mankind’s ability to create a utopia or heaven on earth. This idea is strewn throughout literature, with the ancient Greek philosopher Plato being accredited with the oldest serious examples.
In his Critias and Timaeus, Plato wrote of the mythical Lost City of Atlantis, a highly intelligent utopian civilization that sank into the sea “in a single day and night of misfortune.” While some insist that the Lost City of Atlantis actually existed, most concede that it was fabricated by Plato for the purpose of adding credence to his Republic, a work within which Plato proposes the possibility of an ideal civilization ruled by a Philosopher class, protected by a Warrior class, and served by a Producer class.
Although the idea is generally believed to date back to Plato, the term “utopia” appears to have been coined by the English statesman and humanist Thomas More, who wrote an essay by that title in 1516. More’s essay tells a fanciful tale of a fictitious explorer’s discovery of a rationally organized society. In a strange twist of irony, More’s essay is attributed with the birth of modern utopianism; despite the fact that it appears to have been More’s intention to repudiate rather than substantiate utopian thinking.
More constructed the term “utopia” from Greek words meaning “no place.” His insinuation is unmistakable; there is no place in this fallen world where utopia or heaven on earth will ever be found. While many, such as Francis Bacon, the author of New Atlantis, disagreed with More and continued to maintain the possibility of a manmade utopia, others, such as Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, and George Orwell, the author of 1984, became dystopians, writing of the hell on earth that would be created by utopians’ pursuit of heaven on earth. Though the world today would do well to heed the warnings of Huxley and Orwell, the Bible foretells our unfortunate and ultimate failure to do so.
The true roots of socialism have a much older and far more ominous source than utopianism’s initial musings in the mind of Plato. As any serious student of Scripture can tell you, fallen humanity’s first attempt at manmade utopia was the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9). The Tower of Babel represents fallen man’s initial attempt at glorifying himself by building his own heaven on earth. That this was the clear intention of Babel’s ill-fated tower builders is made abundantly clear by their audaciously articulated ambitions: “Go to, let us build us a city and tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
According to Genesis 11:2, Babel was located on “a plain in the land of Shinar.” This region, later known as Babylonia or Mesopotamia, has been called the “Cradle of Civilization.” It was here that the Garden of Eden was found and that human civilization originated, a fact attested to by all reputable archeologists and historians. As the site of man’s original sin and expulsion from Eden, as well as the incubator of fallen man’s aspirations toward manmade utopia, this strategic spot carries great symbolic significance in Scripture.
With the lone exception of Jerusalem, Babylon is the most talked about city in the Bible. It serves throughout Scripture as the antitype of Jerusalem. For instance, Jerusalem, which is called “the bride, the Lamb’s wife” (Revelation 19:9-10), depicts the capital of the Kingdom of God, whereas Babylon, which is called “the great whore” (Revelation 17:1-5; 19:2), depicts the capital or center of operation for the kingdom of this world.
The Bible describes Babylon in a number of ways. It refers to it as “great” or the “great city” (Daniel 4:30; Revelation 14:8; 16:19;17:18; 18:2, 10, 16, 18, 19, 20). It calls it “the jewel” and “queen of kingdoms” (Isaiah 13:9; 47:5). It identifies it as “the glory of the Babylonians’ pride” and as “the praise of the whole earth” (Isaiah 47:5; Jeremiah 51:41). Obviously, such glowing descriptions are from the world’s perspective and not heaven’s, which sees Babylon as evocative of fallen man’s attempts at forging his own way to heaven (false religions) and creating his own heaven on earth (one world government).
Babylon’s symbolic significance may be further uncovered by taking up one of Scripture’s most intriguing word studies. The original name, “Babel,” means “confusion” or “babbling.” It comes from God’s intervention at the Tower of Babel to halt the tower’s construction by confusing the languages of the builders, rendering ongoing communication and collaboration on the project impossible. However, the latter name, “Babylon,” means the “gate of god.” This name comes from the Babylonian Creation Epic, which alleges that the earthly entrance to the “celestial city” of Marduk (the Babylonians’ chief deity) was found at Babel. Here, a veiled, but vital truth of Scripture is uncovered for the spiritually astute by a divinely inspired wordplay. This truth—anyone suggesting the possibility of man making his own way to heaven or creating his own heaven on earth should be immediately dismissed as nothing more than a confused babbler—should be taken to heart by us all.
“THE REVOLUTION WAS”
Our new president-elect is both a utopian and a socialist. Although he and his political party will howl and wail at the top of their lungs against being labeled socialists, the evidence is irrefutable. When Barack Obama slipped and divulged his desire to “spread the wealth” to Joe the Plumber, he exposed the Marxism that forms the core of his and his party’s political philosophy. Long before today’s Democrats adopted this mantra Karl Marx artfully articulated it in his famous axiom, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Obama’s idea of spreading the wealth is the very soul of Marxism.
While many Americans perceive their new president as a modern-day Robin Hood, promising to use the tax power of the state to rob the rich to give to the poor, he is actually a Marxist who is painstakingly following the playbook of Karl Marx. In his 1948 “Communist Manifesto,” Marx taught that the implementation of socialism necessitates “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax.” According to Obama, raising taxes to 40 percent on the 5 percent who already carry 60 percent of the U.S. tax burden in order to give hundreds of millions of dollars to people who pay no taxes at all is a mere matter of “fairness.” In reality, however, it’s classic Marxism.
Not only is it undeniable that Barack Obama, along with his political party, which is now in firm control of our federal government, is socialist, but it should also be evident to any open-minded student of history that socialism has been incrementally advancing in these United States since the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was F.D.R., who during a time of national crisis, namely, the Great Depression, proposed to the country that the federal government become the caretaker of the citizenry. A decimated and impoverished populace gratefully acquiesced, granting to their beloved president an unprecedented four terms in office.
With such loyal and unwavering support, Roosevelt, the country’s perceived savior, attempted a brazen coup de tat. He attempted to pack the Supreme Court and take over the judicial branch of government. If he had succeeded, he would have been able to redo the Constitution and set up a rubber stamp judiciary for all of his socialist programs. Gratefully, Roosevelt failed in his attempt to take over the judiciary; and Congress, having witnessed the danger posed by a four term president, past a law limiting all future presidents to two terms in office.
As you are undoubtedly aware, our country is currently facing another financial crisis, one that has resurrected memories of the 1929 stock market crash. In response, our current president, George W. Bush, appears to be impersonating F.D.R. Bush has led the federal government to seize the nation’s largest S&L (Washington Mutual), the nation’s largest insurance company (AIG), and to nationalize the country’s two chief mortgage companies (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). In addition, Bush has presided over an unprecedented government intervention in private financial markets, pumping hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into a government bailout of Wall Street banks and brokerages.
Unbelievably, and much to the consternation of many, it is a Republican president, not a Democratic one, who has actually started the ball rolling again toward the nationalizing of our economy. With this socialist snowball picking up steam, speed and size, there will be no stopping it once Barack Obama occupies the Oval Office, Nancy Pelosi resumes the Speaker’s Chair in the House of Representatives, and Harry Reid once again assumes his position as Majority Leader in the United States Senate.
With the nationalizing of our economy already begun by the Bush Administration, with the mandate handed to Barack Obama by the American electorate, with the Democrats now firmly in control of the federal government, and with our nation caught in the vice grip of a credit crunch, America is finally facing the perfect socialist storm. As candidate Obama often opined on the campaign trail and boldly declared in his victory speech on Election Night, “This is our time!” Indeed it is; it is the time that socialists have dreamed of for decades—the time for the socialist takeover of America.
As one of the most ardent opponents of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, Garet Garrett wrote some ominous words in his 1938 essay “The Revolution Was.” He predicted a day in America when people would be looking “up the road” for a coming socialist revolution that was actually “behind them.” According to Garrett, “It went by in the night of the Depression, singing songs to freedom.” I’m afraid that the day Garrett predicted is today. Truly, what F.D.R. set in motion Barack Obama appears poised to make happen.
“THE LONG MARCH THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS”
Do you remember the cry of the sixties radical Allen Ginsberg, “We’ll get you through your children”? Like communists, the sixties radicals attempted to swiftly force socialism on America in a single decade. Unlike communists, once force failed, they switched to their backup plan. After the fading of the flower-children’s fantasies of political revolution, they changed their strategy to take overAmerica to what they called “the long march through the institutions.” Defined by Herbert Marcuse as “working against the established institutions while working in them,” this new strategy called for the flower-children’s infiltration of America’s institutions—government institutions, institutions of higher learning, etc.—for the purpose of destroying them from within in order to raise up socialist institutions in their place.
Tragically, and unbeknownst to most Americans today, the long march of the sixties radicals is almost over. To a large extent, it is yesterday’s flower-children that are in charge of today’s American institutions. Consequently, our institutions have been slowly but surely socialized, our future generation brainwashed and converted to socialism, our courts hijacked by socialists to enforce upon our nation their socialist agenda, and our citizenry led to believe that Big Brother is the cure-all for all that ails us. From Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” to Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” to the “nanny-state” ideology of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, to George W. Bush’s taxpayer bailout of Wall Street, to Barack Obama’s “spread the wealth,” our country has been incrementally conquered by socialism.
Many of today’s Americans are afraid that militant Islam may someday take over our nation and destroy it. Islam, though a dangerous threat to Western civilization, is not the real danger to our nation’s future. The real danger is within—democratic socialism. Furthermore, its take over and destruction of our country is almost complete.
My wife asked me recently why so many people in our country today count on the government for everything. Whether we’re talking about food, shelter, healthcare, employment, education, or a bailout from some financial or natural disaster, most Americans seem to think that the government owes it to them. This kind of thinking has been years in the making. It is part of the “long march through [our] institutions” and the socialists’ indoctrination of America. By creating a populace dependent upon government, socialists can create a socialist state, one in which the state reigns supreme as caretaker of its citizenry.
Unlike communism, which is swiftly implemented by force, socialism is slowly implemented by indoctrination. Do you remember Hitler’s youth? If so, take a good look at the current crop of college students on American campuses. Now, I don’t mean to suggest that today’s college kids are Nazis, but merely that they have been brainwashed into believing that Big Brother is the answer to all of our questions. This explains why they protest against the government over the world’s unsolved problems—poverty, AIDS, global warming, etc.—but still look to the government as the solution to them all.
THE NEW GOLDEN RULE
You’ve probably heard the glib retake on Christ’s golden rule: “He who has the gold makes the rules.” Although a far cry from our Lord’s, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” this glib revision of our Savior’s teaching does address an unfortunate reality in this sin-cursed, fallen world.
Our wily politicians are not ignorant of the fact that whoever holds the purse strings controls the people. The more dependent people become upon their government, the more control the government can exercise over the people. Once the people are totally dependent upon their government, the government will have achieved absolute control over the people.
Washington understands that it has to buy us before it can own us. This explains an $11 trillion national debt and the never-ending, out-of-control spending of our federal government. It also explains the preposterous promises of present-day politicians and whyWashington is awash in pork barrel spending projects, which are the sacred fetishes of today’s Congress. Our government representatives understand that they must bring home the bacon to their local districts if they hope to be reelected to an office of ever-increasing power over the American electorate.
All of this reminds me of a quote attributed to Alexander Fraser Tyler: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse [generous gifts] from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, [which is] always followed by a dictatorship.”
Who can argue that our democracy is not now imperiled by loose fiscal policy? We are told that our national debt has now risen to more than $11 trillion. If you counted a dollar per second 24 hours a day, it would take you 32 years to count a trillion dollars; 352 years to count $11 trillion.
With a trillion dollars you could: (1) Buy a $100,000 house for every family in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Iowa (2) Put a $10,000 car in each garage (3) Build $10 million libraries and $10 million hospitals for 250 cities in these states (4) Build $10 million schools for 500 communities in these states, and (5) earn enough from the interest alone on the money left in the bank to pay 10,000 nurses and teachers to man these hospitals and schools, as well as give a $5,000 bonus to every family in these states.
As frightening as it is to face up to the escalating figure of our national debt, it is even more terrifying when we tally up and total the additional moneys owed by our government in other obligations, such as the money owed to entitlements like Social Security and Medicaid. Once unfunded entitlements are added to our national debt the real amount owed by the United States Government balloons to more than $60 trillion.
If every household in America agreed to pay an equal share of our government’s debt, then each household would need to come up with more than half a million dollars. Obviously, our escalating debt has already reached unpayable proportions.
If Alexander Fraser Tyler was right, then America’s collapsing financial house of cards is now ripe for a dictatorship. Though many Americans will balk at such a notion, serious students of American history understand that such a thing almost happened once before. As we’ve already discussed, a despairing populace decimated by the Great Depression unhesitatingly handed over to a past president unprecedented powers. As the nation’s perceived savior, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt attempted to use those powers to transform America into a socialist state. What is to prevent another American president from doing the same during a time of economic disaster, especially a president who has promised to be the caretaker of the citizenry and is already perceived by the masses to be the savior of the nation?
“THE ONE”
At a campaign rally in Orlando, one woman told a local television station that seeing Barack Obama in person had been "the most touching moment of [her] life.” When asked why, she answered, “I never thought this day would ever happen. I won't have to work to put gas in my car! I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage! You know, if I help him, he's going to help us."
It sounds to me like this lady is confusing Obama with the Messiah and the government with God. One can’t help but wonder how many other Americans share her misguided faith? After all, president-elect Obama has promised to provide healthcare for all of the sick, jobs for all of the jobless, mortgage relief for homeowners and a college education for all of our children. In addition, he has even vowed to slow the rise of the oceans, lower the earth’s temperature and heal our planet. And I thought that Jesus alone could command “the wind and the sea” (Mark 4:41).
The rise of Barack Obama reminds us of another socialist star’s meteoric rise on the world’s horizon years ago. From obscurity he arose with no notable accomplishments to his credit, apart from a corporalship in the German Army. Yet, this unknown and unveted ascending star mesmerized the masses with his rhetorical skills. Throngs came to be infused with hope by his spellbinding speeches and flamboyant verbiage. Afterward, they left persuaded that he possessed god-like powers that enabled him to solve the country’s every problem and to meet the citizenry’s every need.
In the end, however, the faith of the populace proved misplaced, for Adolf Hitler failed to transform the Fatherland into the promised utopia of National Socialism. Instead, Hitler plunged the world into World War II, perpetrated the Jewish Holocaust, and penned what is arguably the darkest chapter in all of human history.
Now, I’m not suggesting that Obama is another Hitler, but merely pointing out the eerie similarities of these two socialist stars’ meteoric rise on the world’s stage. Barack Obama is an enigma. He is without doubt the least known and least veted politician to ever be elected to the Oval Office. In fact, one could argue that the media—whose job it is to vet presidential candidates for the sake of an informed electorate—deliberately kept the American people in the dark during this presidential election by purposely suppressing pertinent information about Barack Obama, refusing to strenuously question him, and blocking any serious investigations of him.
What was it that the Obama-friendly, mainstream media was afraid of discovering about him or averse to divulging to us? What secrets were kept under wraps or left undiscovered in the life of this man who is soon to wield all of the powers of the most powerful office on earth? Am I the only one who is ill at ease about handing over such power to someone about whom we know so little?
It’s not just all of the unanswered questions about Barack Obama that make me apprehensive, but many of the answered ones and so many unasked ones. No one seems to know who Barack Obama is, much less what he’ll do or how he’ll govern in the most powerful office in the world. Still, in spite of this fact, he received more votes from the American people than any other president in American history. To me, this is an extraordinary and inexplicable thing.
Only time will tell what an Obama Presidency will prove to mean to this country. It may prove to be one of the final pieces to the prophetic puzzle; a piece that helps set the stage for the scripturally predicted end time scenario. Whereas Franklin Delano Roosevelt failed to replace our capitalist system with a socialist one, Barack Obama may very well accomplish in one term what F.D.R. couldn’t accomplish in four. One thing for sure, as Obama himself has avowed, “Change has come!”
There is no doubt in my mind that America will never be the same again. I’m just afraid that the change that has come is not what Obama promised or the American people voted for, but what the Bible predicts. If so, may God help us!
Don Walton
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