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Faith

God, Democrats, and the Europeanization of America

Sep. 7, 2012 1:38pm

Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College, executive director of The Center for Vision & Values, and author of the book, […]

Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College, executive director of The Center for Vision & Values, and author of the book, “The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor.” His other books include "The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism" and "Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century."

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visandvals@gcc.edu

Author's Website

The battle at the Democratic convention to exclude God from the party’s platform is no minor moment. Do not underestimate what transpired there.

And while it speaks to so many things, at many levels, it reminds me of the recent battle within the European Union to exclude God from the EU constitution. That comparison is no mere academic one. It speaks volumes about the ongoing direction of the Democratic Party, and this nation.

About 10 years ago, the EU was in an intense debate over whether to mention God in its new constitution. The God opponents were the predictable Western European progressives: leftist Eurocrats in Brussels, Labor Party atheists in Britain, German socialists, Scandinavian secularists, and, naturally, the French leadership. The God supporters included new EU member states that survived godless communism—with Poland in the forefront—and the continent’s preeminent religious figure: Pope John Paul II.

The pope, suffering from advanced Parkinson’s, took up the fight with vigor. In the summer of 2003, he devoted a series of Sunday Angelus addresses to this political issue that transcended politics. He made arguments akin to those made by the American Founding Fathers: It is crucial for citizens living under a constitution to understand the ultimate source from which their rights derive. Their rights come not from government but from God. What government gives, government can take away. What God gives, government cannot take away.

The pope was countered by the likes of French president Jacques Chirac, who sniffed: “France is a lay state, and as such she does not have a habit of calling for insertions of a religious nature into constitutional texts.” The “lay character” of France’s government and public institutions, according to Chirac, simply did “not allow” for a reference to God in a constitution.

Chirac displayed precisely the misunderstanding of church and state that secular liberals in the United States have heartily embraced.

In the end, the EU compromised on a bland statement grudgingly conceding the continent’s “cultural, religious, and humanist inheritance.” It was a nod to God that George Weigel, in his superb “The Cube and the Cathedral,” described as “so bland as to be meaningless.”

But, in an important way, it was actually not meaningless. Hilaire Belloc once said that “the (Christian) faith is Europe and Europe is the faith.” Well, it isn’t anymore. Perhaps, then, it was perfectly fitting that the Europeans excluded God from their platform.

That brings me back across the Atlantic, to Charlotte. That the Democrats, in 2012, would find themselves in a similar battle is no surprise.

I’ll never forget the night Barack Obama won the 2008 election, when I turned on CNN and glimpsed an unknown Republican congressman from Wisconsin named Paul Ryan. When asked about Obama’s victory, Ryan said he was most concerned about “the Europeanization of America.”

“That’s it!” I said to myself. “That’s exactly it. Who is this guy? He nailed it.”

A further “Europeanization” of America is the best description of what has transpired under the Obama administration, especially its first two years under a fully supportive Democratic Congress. In 2009-10, we witnessed incredibly wasteful Keynesian-style prime-the-pump “stimulus,” partial nationalizations, “Obama-care,” explosive public-sector growth and unionization, demonization of the banking and investment and oil industries, stagnant unemployment, class-warfare rhetoric unlike anything I’ve ever heard in this country, and debt-to-GDP ratios approaching Greece standards. We’ve experienced a record-long non-recovering recovery reminiscent not of the American experience but of Western Europe.

As someone who researches communism, I’m often asked if the Obama administration is pursuing socialistic or even communist policies. No, no, I’ve always said. If you want the closest model to what Obama is doing, look at the Attlee government in Britain after WWII or Western Europe today generally.

I recently did an interview with the BBC in Ireland. The host asked: “What’s wrong with you Americans? You call Obama a ‘socialist’ as if socialism is bad. Here in Europe, we think he’s doing exactly the right thing.” Likewise, a friend of mine recently returned from Spain. She was shocked by the overwhelming support for Barack Obama’s policies. It’s really no shock at all—not in Spain.

Here in America, the staunchest liberal-Democrat areas, such as California, Massachusetts, and New England, all have European-level birthrates, divorce rates, abortion rates, and even church attendance. New England, in many ways, is a microcosm of Western Europe.

By the time of the 2012 Democratic convention, party delegates had already (following Barack Obama’s lead) embraced everything from unlimited taxpayer-funding of abortion to gay marriage. How does one get to these positions? Answer: by removing God. Fittingly, then, the delegates merely need to take the next evolutionary step: exclude God. It was very … European.

The soul of the Democratic Party continues to change dramatically.

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Comments (15)

Denise Matthews
Posted on September 26, 2012 at 11:06am
@THEFEDERALIST Well said. We must also get away from Europe’s multicultural style of life; we fought a revolution to get away from tyranny and we seem to be going back for some reason. God will heal us if we repent of our errors and look to Him to provide our freedoms and needs.

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igorofburma
Posted on September 10, 2012 at 2:07am
I haven’t seen any Gods about but have seen alot of good men/women with a fine human spirit!….It resides within and is whatever you may want to call it and may well be what Christ was implying when he said the kingdom of God (?) lies within. We should cut out the crap about some glorious creator and realize that there is ‘no’ such glorious, judgemental, and oh so loving deity calling the shots– only decent, intelligent, hopefully rational, people. If there was ever a cruel hoax perpetrated on mankind it is Christianity and its book of fairytales and Islam with its archaic, insane, teachings….both bad news for all that suck it in and believe in their false and ludicrous promises. The threat from religious fanaticism, of any kind, is without doubt, the worst thing mankind has to deal with. The outright immoral filth spread by Chrisitanity, Roman Catholicism particularly, and Islam is enough to gag a maggot.

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American_Woman
Posted on September 10, 2012 at 1:21am
This is why every time I talk to someone new, I ask them if they know why our founding fathers wrote in our Declaration of Independence that we get our rights from our “CREATOR”. They ALWAYS say no, to which I answer, because they knew that if they said we get our rights from “man” or “government”, that eventually, men/government would take our rights away. We MUST keep GOD in our American life to maintain our FREEDOM! I personally don’t care if someone believes in God or not, but please be tolerant enough to let our rights come from a higher authority than man.

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igorofburma
Posted on September 9, 2012 at 10:14pm
This all harkens back to what Kruschev told Nixon in ’59…..we don’t need to defeat you militarily, we’ll bring you down from the inside. Nothing could be more spot on! And, we’re reaping it in spades (no pun intended!) The Communists knew, way back, exactly how they would deal with us and there is living proof in our government now to prove it! The increasingly dumbed down electorate hasn’t a clue because they haven’t been ‘educated’ and won’t be to this day! We have teachers in place indoctrinating our youth and continuing to do so later at the college level…..American hatred 101.

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oldduffer
Posted on September 9, 2012 at 9:01pm
Watch the flag and God being brought forth from now on with the Democrat party. It’s really going to be sick.
The dummies that worship his and her highness will buy into it just like Global Warming and Al–Soros.

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senior74
Posted on September 9, 2012 at 8:55pm
I believe Obama is pushing the UN Agenda 21 & if he gets another 4 years, we will be part of a communist one world gov. Check out “democrats against agenda 21″, they don’t like it either but no one talks about this on the news or politicians, I found it on the web.

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igorofburma
Posted on September 9, 2012 at 12:20pm
The founding fathers were certainly men of their time but with their mantra being freedom, I must admit I’m surprised that they were not secular men. Secularism epitomizes religious freedom because it is freedom ‘of’ as well as freedom ‘from’ ! The bloodletting caused by these ‘God’ oriented religions is really to vast to bother enumerating. I see this morning that the Dems rep Ellison is accusing the Conservatives of being bigoted for opposing Sharia Law in our courts! The media, of course, is ignoring this but, it sure should give the Republicans and particularly women a great opportunity to go on the offensive. There is no law more bigoted than Sharia and its rejection should unite women and right thinking people worldwide.

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mdalton_5117
Posted on September 9, 2012 at 1:56am
Is anyone surprised that the party that welcomes abortion, gays and the Muslim Brotherhood removed God and Jerusalem from their platform? It would be a surprise if they didn’t.

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TEXASGRANNY73
Posted on September 8, 2012 at 3:55pm
@Archon Went back to Blaze stories and see where Obama says You will love me even more if the rich pay even more. Notice he did not say you will love yourself or you will love those who are rich and fork over their dough or you will breathe easier. He said YOU WILL LOVE ME EVEN MORE which proves my point.Yep. cannot wait to love me some Obama. Maybe I am wrong about the anti Christ but he truly is a king of deceit and arrogance. The opposite of truth and humility.

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californiapatriotmom
Posted on September 8, 2012 at 1:57pm
ARCHON – Do us all a favor and leave. Go to the socialist/communist, God-less countries that you think are so superior to ours, and leave America to the rest of us.

TERESAJ – Spot on.

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TheFederalist
Posted on September 8, 2012 at 9:21am
To win back our country… we must first, turn back to God. Embrace and worship God.
Then abolish the Dept. of Education. Get government completely out of the classroom. And get rid of the teachers unions. We cannot graduate another generation of ignorant students.
From there we can start abolishing all unconstitutional federal government agencies. Take back power that the federal government assumes and return power back to the states.

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The Third Archon
Posted on September 7, 2012 at 7:51pm
Wave your flag a little harder you jingoist–you ever think of anything beyond the arbitrary faith you were born into and the arbitrary lines on a map you were born between? Here’s a novel idea–THINK FOR YOURSELF. But you’d rather swallow the flag-colored pill and thousands of years old (and thousands of times rewritten for political convenience) unjustified metaphysical nonsense.

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- TeresaJ
  Posted on September 8, 2012 at 1:41am
  Archon, I do think beyond myself. But I am RED-Blooded American.
  
  You say you grew up in a real Christian household (as opposed to a false, abusive one), but you trade in your upbringing for the anger you spew out on these forums. Every time I see you post, I only see a hurting kid.
  
  But you dare to spit on the lives of men who died so you can fling your anger under the umbrella of free speech. Easy enough for you. But here is a reality check. Men scheming to seize power NEVER cease. It is as old as the book of “unjustified metaphysical nonsense” you so detest. With the Europeans gathered into a collective union, should powers shift, they will have a massive monopoly on the rest of the world, from military to food supplies. Don’t ever think for a second that a group of godless people would unwaveringly respect your rights.
  
  If you honestly think that Christianity has been oppressing America for the past 200 years, when it has been practiced in some shape or form by 80-90% of the country in all but the most recent of years, then you need to think again. For 200 years, we have maintained a country of previously unparalleled freedom. We were never in danger of dictator or take over. Until the last four years. With a president elected by a generation of Americans who have no understanding of the gift they were given by being born into THIS country. I honestly do not care what the rest of the world thinks of us as long as my country and my people are safe and free.
  
  Report this comment
- Bohump
  Posted on September 8, 2012 at 8:36am
  Son; If YOU,Don’t want to Live in this Country, ..Then Get the Hell out, .. Who’s Holding You ? .. We can take up enought money to help You along , .. as long as you don’t come back
  
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- TEXASGRANNY73
  Posted on September 8, 2012 at 3:25pm
  Drivel. You just admitted “thousands of years this unjustified nonsense”. Wow, survived thousands of years and rewritten thousands of times? And still survives ignorant jealous power hungry cynical nincompoops who have never bothered themselves to read history or even contemplate inside those arbitrary lines that man is free in his individual thinking only. Non individual thinkers who follow man’s rules have been shown thousands of years to lose. The individual thinker has a possible life span of between 80-100 years within those thousands of years.. For thousands of years mothers have nursed their babies with milk when they are born. You want to change that and give them booze? All who favor say aye. Aye. All those who do not say aye. Aye. 2/3 of the ayes have it and I win. I being the individual , of course. And that’s what happened at the Democratic convention ladies and gentlemen. Just drink and feed your babies booze but I, the individual choose to feed mine milk or living water so to speak. You, the archer would probably have loved Ramses Hitler and now Obama. All hail the king,silly, that is what our founders escaped from.
  
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