Values Voters and Ron Paul

Jack Kerwick, PH.D.
The New American
October 12th, 2011

*EDITORS NOTE*

I have uncharacteristically included the last portion of the article.  It best drives at the ambivalence of social conservatives to libertarianism.  If these conservatives emancipate themselves from a pointless culture war and the destructive war on terror a real restoration of our republic may be close at hand.


On the News: Ron Paul wins Values Voters Straw Poll, Leaves Cain in the Dust

"...Finally, that Paul appealed to the majority of “values voters” participating in their “summit’s” straw poll just might be due to the growing recognition that his ideas are not only constitutional, but they are as well Christian. The importance of this insight can’t be overstated. 

The Santorums and Bennetts of our generation have long promoted the idea that the federal government must be enlisted in the service of “Judeo-Christian” morality. They may very well believe this. However, in appealing to “values voters” — the vast majority of whom are Christians — Paul invites his supporters to revisit a feature of their tradition, an idea rooted in the teaching of Christ to which the rise of the dominance of our federal government and the utopian politics with which this has been coupled have all but blinded them.        

This is the idea that the realms of politics and religion — “Caesar” and God, or as Augustine put it, “the City of Man” and “the City of God” — though they may and often do overlap, are nevertheless mutually distinct. Those who would conflate the two aren’t just fools; they are blasphemers. With those few simple words — “Give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” — Jesus opened an unbridgeable chasm between Christianity, on the one hand, and utopian politics on the other. Indeed, from the apostle Paul to Augustine and throughout even the medieval period, for the duration of their pre-modern history, Christians knew this well. However, the emergence of centralized governments and the unprecedented power over which they acquired a monopoly forced this old Christian concept to the periphery. 

Perhaps Paul’s victory at the Values Voters Summit signals its resurrection."


Read this article in its entirety at TheNewAmerican.com.