Commentary: Conspiracy Theory (Part Fourteen)
#1258c
John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 21-Mar-15; 11 minutes
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transcript:
Members of the Republican Party like to consider themselves in our times as the party that represents those of the American citizenry who are of conservative belief and practices. Those who are actually elected and supposedly representing conservative-thinking people like to refer to themselves as "Reagan Republicans." Many of the very people they supposedly represent, though, refer to those people as RINOs based on their voting record. RINO stands for "Republicans in name only" because they very frequently vote on legislation either in the Senate or in the House of Representatives exactly the same way as their opponents, the Democrats. Doing so tends to pretty clearly reveal their hypocrisy because it tends to show that, regardless of party affiliation, they perceive the elements involved in governing this nation almost exactly as the Democrats.
The RINOs voting record removes the mask to reveal who they truly represent. But it also is an indication to me at how thoroughly effectively Satan's deceptive work has been. To me, he has almost meticulously convinced the political and educational leadership of this nation to deal in pragmatism rather than righteousness. Practicing pragmatism is easy compared to practicing righteousness.
Pragmatism is a concept that should be important to us to understand because we have been called upon by God to live by faith. Do not forget what Paul stated in II Corinthians 5:7, "We [meaning, Christians] walk by faith, not by sight."
Pragmatism arose in the philosophical world. It indicates that the meaning of the answer to an idea or proposition lies—listen to this—in its observable practical consequences. Pragmatism is defined as a practical, matter-of-fact, way of approaching and assessing situations and solving problems.
On the surface, pragmatism seems to be a reasonable means of solving governmental problems in which moral and ethical issues present firmly divided and emotionally held opinions, such as we are having in this nation on many fronts between liberals and conservatives. However, pragmatists do not deal with, nor even consider, absolutes in terms of what is righteous. They deal with what seems practical and convenient in any situation. Thus, pragmatists almost inevitably resort to what is commonly known politically as "kicking the can down the road." Pragmatism is clearly an outgrowth of humanism.
Here is an example from America's founding, when the Constitution containing this nation's laws was being formed. Heated arguments arose regarding slavery because to Southern states' leaders, slavery was vital to their economy. Northern participants did not want slavery to be legal. They knew very well that the slavery the Southern leaders desired was much more severe than what God permitted in His Word. So the Northern leaders came to a pragmatic solution by permitting slavery in the Southern states in order to get the Southern leadership's vote to approve the Constitution, and then they would solve the issue later. That pragmatic solution eventually led to the loss of more American lives in the Civil War than any other war in our history, and besides that, multiple billions of in economic loss from the war. They kicked the can down the road instead of acting righteously according to the Christian God's righteousness.
Some of the same types of moral and spiritual issues are involved in the longstanding illegal border-crashing and amnesty problem facing this nation and our fellow Israelites nations in Europe that are facing the same issue with a great influx of Arab peoples from the Middle East.
These problems were largely caused in the United States by American-born financial and business interests who figuratively twisted the government's arm to make this illegal invasion possible by simply not resisting it. Guess who put the pressure on the business leaders? Well, it was the New World Order crowd, the conspirators who did this, and that's how the invasion got started. The amnesty issue arose when somebody in the Democratic Party suggested that amnesty should be given to the border crashers because they would probably vote Democrat. The Constitution says nothing whatever about amnesty, even as, in the beginning, it said nothing about slavery. There are no laws on the books regarding amnesty.
What was Mr. Obama's pragmatic solution to that? He simply—like a dictator—created his own amnesty law and has openly challenged Congress, and especially the Republicans in Congress, to do anything about it.
In a nation claiming to be Christian and with a citizenry practicing some degree of its tenets, spiritual issues are always going to be involved in governmental procedures. They cannot be avoided. They must be confronted because some degree of the citizenry will demand it like the homosexuals are doing today. So, spirituality will thus absolutely be involved in the practical cultural and social realms because spiritual values impact on them. But to the pragmatic, righteousness is not the solution. To them, the solution lies in what is practical—especially at the moment—and observable.
Faith issues are not always observable, and thus, in a culture like ours, subverted by humanism, in which everyone does what is right in his own eyes, there is no guiding faith in God and His Word, and thus there are no absolutes for absolutely dependable guidance to truly moral, ethical, and righteous solutions. We're in a box. We are in a canyon we can't get out of. Therefore, the only resort as to what is practical at the moment. Those pragmatic solutions will be made by those who have the largest voting block.
Did you ever stop to think that even those with some morality tend to produce situation ethics? This is very common. "Situation ethics" is nothing more than pragmatism adopted and applied to moral and ethical problems confronting an individual rather than a large body of people, as in a governing body.
I said near the beginning of this commentary that pragmatism became popular as the means of governing solutions through the educational field of philosophy. According to Wikipedia, philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems such as those connected with reality (what is more real than God?), existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by it's critical, generally systematic approach, and its reliance on rational arguments. God is not rational to humanists, and they hold all the power in the United States of America. The definition of philosophy has nothing to say regarding faith.
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