The libertarian magazine, Reason ventured into the intersection of Christianity and politics, and came out sounding a lot like David French. Utilizing a famous line and the horn effect of the notorious HBO show Game of Thrones Stephanie Slade argues that Christians should refuse to see politics as a winner takes all zero sum game. In an article titled, “Against Game of Thrones Christianity,” she manages to get both religion and politics wrong, ultimately arguing if it’s us or them, we should unilaterally disarm and accept our fate in the gulags, in order to preserve our witness. The article begins with a correct understanding of the opposing view.
For many members of the so-called New Right, one thing is clear: Classical liberal principles are not getting the job done.
The left, after all, has no compunction about using the state to go after conservatives. As far as those illiberal progressives are concerned, Catholic hospitals should be forced by law to perform abortions, and social media companies should be threatened with regulatory action if they don’t agree to scrub their platforms of ideas and information unfavorable to the Democratic Party.
So instead of a principled commitment to limited government and individual liberty, the argument goes, conservatives who “know what time it is” should be willing to use public power to attack their foes. Anything less amounts to unilateral disarmament or even suicide.
Already we see that Stephanie Slade does not understand the role of government from a biblical perspective. In Romans 13 we clearly learn that the government’s role is to punish evil and reward good. They have a sword in which to execute this tasks. Therefore, the government has a sword. The question is who has the sword and how are they going to use it. The Democrats have made clear that they intend to use the sword of government to reward evil and punish good. They are evil after all. So therefore, why would it not be biblical to use the sword of government to punish liberals?
The stakes, in this telling, are existential. It’s not uncommon to hear that a future of Soviet-style persecution awaits those who refuse to embrace a sufficiently “muscular” response. A New Right influencer once told me that the liberalism of the American founding, by making conservatives squeamish about fighting fire with fire, was apt to land her in a gulag. Like the famous maxim from Game of Thrones, it’s a vision of politics as a literal war in which you win or you die.
But how like Westeros is the United States? Are American leftists really plotting to round up religious traditionalists and Republican voters? If they were, would they stand a chance of getting away with it under the American system as it exists?
Slade uses the Game of Thrones quote casually, yet it’s incorporated in the headline for clicks. But she fails to understand the context of the quote and more importantly how the context wrecks her argument. In the book and show, Cersei Lannister says to Ned Stark, “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.”
Ned Stark famously dies in A Game of Thrones. And the reason why Ned Stark dies is because he’s the David French of Game of Thrones. Ned Stark refused to use the sword of government despite being second only to the king, with power that included the title “Protector of the Realm” which entitled him to raise armies. Once Ned Stark found out the most open secret about his political enemies, he refuses to understand “what time it is” and gets swallowed up by the lady who said “you win or you die.” Now David French might see that as dying the hero, but Stark’s leadership ultimately led to his family’s ruin.
The irony is that the approach to politics outlined by these new, militant conservatives is flatly at odds with authentic Christian virtue. The New Right implies that religious traditionalists have a choice: They can either be the ones inside the gulag, or they can make sure their enemies are. Jesus never would have accepted that bargain.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,'” he says in the Gospel of Matthew. “But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father.” These are probably the most radical words in the Bible and almost certainly the hardest to live by. Yet the very heart of Christian teaching (if not necessarily the heart of Christian practice) has always been self-sacrifice, self-emptying, “taking up your cross,” and “laying down your life for your friends.”
Stephanie Slade, David Frenchism as a whole, confuse categories. If you read the Old Testament, specifically Exodus and Leviticus, Jesus is not truly being radical. The Old Testament law places a duty of care on people in which an enemy is not an exemption. Jesus speaks of private grudges and feuds, not of governance. Thus, this is a major category error in which the category of private vengeance is conflated with public governance. This conflation misapplies the words of Christ who by the way is the one who keeps us out of the gulag known as hell. Slade concludes:
To truly care about virtue is to recognize that it matters how you win: Ends don’t justify means. If conservatives ever did have to choose which side of the barbed wire to be on—as the gulag inmate accepting persecution or the victor carrying it out—there would be only one right answer from a Christian perspective. It isn’t the New Right’s.
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40 Responses
She fails to understand that the dilemmas she describes are being imposed by the government, big industry, billionaires and mega donors, big institutions, and other powers that be. Therefore that is the reality we face. That is who has rejected classical liberal ideas, and unreasonably constrained the options. Our philosophy and beliefs haven’t changed in over two millennia.
She presents a vague and undefined “New Right” straw man in the very first sentence of an article in Reason magazine. Go figure.
Most everybody already understands that many of the dilemmas are false dilemmas, illogical, and irrational. But we also understand the powers that be have thrown logic out the window. They’re not warring by the rules of logic. She might as well forget that.
Libertarians are satanic.
So-called “classical liberalism” is not Biblical, and not a single Founding Father had beliefs we’d call “liberal” or “libertarian.”
Liberalism of any stripe is a false god. Some conservatives are finally waking up and it’s driving the satanists to concern-troll.
Friend, if you have something to accuse me of, with that “concern troll” comment, considering I’m the only other poster here thus far, then you should confront me directly, as Jesus said that you should do in Luke 17. Let’s hear it. You can rebuke me all you want. I’m not above it. Just use scripture when you do.
By God’s moral law, the penalty for satanism is death.
And the penalty for false accusation is the same penalty intended for the falsely accused, which is to be carried out without pity.
If you were referring to me, then you need to repent.
Are you suggesting we execute liberals? A little extreme but if you say so…
Exactly how an irrational progressive would typically twist words and react. “Waaah, he said we should be executed!!!” You trolls are too easy.
You said liberals should be executed. I say if so, classical liberals should be included because all liberals are satanic.
I said that he should repent, and I say the same to you (assuming you’re not the same individual), because many of your false accusations on this page are also serious enough to be worthy of death. If you don’t repent, then God will carry out that death sentence on the day of judgment. Not me.
I’m not sure how a Christian could possibly not understand the meaning of my post.
God did give us liberty. We are created with free will, and we are made free through Jesus Christ. Peter addresses it in 2 Peter, and other scriptures address it also. The free will that God gave Adam and Eve wasn’t the problem. The problem was what they did with that free will.
The existence of liberty does not mean that we are obligated to accept or respect everything someone may do with that liberty. It does not mean we are to respect sin. It does not mean that God gave people the right to sin, much less to impose that sin upon others.
It does not mean that we are to advocate for moral anarchy. It means that Jesus Christ is our one and only Lord and Master. It means that God, and God alone, sets the limits.
We should not confuse the existence of liberty with the abuse of liberty. To do so would amount to trying to twist the scripture. You conglomerate classical liberalism, and libertarianism, and allude to what is now considered liberal, which as I understand is just about the opposite of classical liberalism. So I don’t even know what you’re talking about. If you can’t correct me with scripture, then you’re also welcome to correct my understanding of what is meant by classical liberalism. I can be wrong. I can be corrected. And Lord knows the definitions of such terms just about change on a daily basis these days. Correct me all you want, but don’t falsely accuse me.
Typical shitlib evangelical from Weimerica in the current year. Our Lord came to free us FROM sin. You see this as freedumbs to perpetuate your satanic system of license TO sin, e.g. “muh rights to expose children to sick degenerates” and “muh free market to usury.”
Apparently you haven’t read a single thing I’ve posted. I’ve probably stated that freedom is not a license to sin at least half a dozen times, and even quoted 1 Peter 2:16 to make that point clear.
Yes, as I understand it, the Bible does say that excessive usury is a sin, and that any usury could be wrong when loaning to a brother or sister in Christ who is poor. Therefore if one commits the sin of charging excessive usury, they are abusing their liberty. Given that our economy is inflationary, it is not an easy problem to work out, because money is constantly losing value (buying power) as time passes. If real inflation is at 5%, for example, and your loan interest is 5%, then your real interest rate is effectively 0%. What the bank is receiving back from you has pretty much the exact same buying power as what it loaned you. Several good apologetics ministries such as GotQuestions and CARM, discuss what the Bible says about such issues, and those guys understand and can explain it better than I ever could.
I recently borrowed money myself from a fellow believer and family member. We settled on 5% as a fair amount given inflation and the expected time period of repayment. Any lower than that, and the lender is effectively losing money due to inflation. Any higher and the lender is making too much money off a poor guy. Some banks are in a position to offer lower rates, but individuals are not.
But here again, you attribute the sin of usury to the existence of liberty.
If loans were not freely allowed, then God wouldn’t need to condemn usury, He would just condemn loans altogether. Right? Well, He doesn’t condemn loans. The liberty to loan and be loaned to is perfectly fine. The abuse of that liberty, by charging too much interest, is the problem. As is the abuse of liberty by not repaying a loan as one can. The Bible speaks on loan repayment also, if I’m not mistaken – but of course it should go without saying that refusing to repay a loan without justification when you can repay would be the sin of theft.
In a free market, which encourages competition, banks must compete for loans, which would encourage them to keep interest rates as low as they can.
But in the United States we do not have purely free markets. We have a lot of government meddling, unnecessary regulation, a lot of money printing. The federal reserve is constantly messing with it, changing rates, and so on. We have fiat money. We have monopolies. We have imbalanced trade with countries using slave labor. We have a lot of things here that do not qualify as free and fair market.
The main reason interest rates are high right now is because the federal reserve has raised rates in order to discourage economic activity, to try to artificially decrease demand, in an attempt to produce a reduction of prices. But they play with fire in doing so, for many reasons.
This is why you see a lot of libertarians and many conservatives calling to end the Federal Reserve. It is not a free market institution. It’s not driven by pure supply and demand, competition, and other free market principles. It meddles and manipulates.
Libertarians are for the opposite of what you seem to believe they’re for. I’m not one, as I tend to want to conserve and keep God’s Word, but the systems we have in place now are definitely not those which libertarians envision. Not even close.
Nowhere, at no time, have I said that anyone is free to sin. I have specifically stated the opposite many times. The Bible says we are free. But we are not free to sin. There are limits, set by God, which do not change.
Of course, in trying to lower prices, much of that has to do with ensuring poor can afford to buy food, can afford gas, that businesses can stay afloat so we don’t have millions of people losing their jobs, followed by total economic collapse.
I don’t like the federal reserve. I believe it should be abolished. Much of the mess we’re in has been caused by their meddling, as well as the government’s meddling. But closing its doors is not an immediate solution. It would have to be phased out, or effects would be catastrophic. We’re stuck with it, and have to deal with reality as it currently is. So what the fed is doing right now, along with the banks under it, by raising rates, is an attempt to bring down high inflation. And high inflation harms the poor the most. Would you rather be able to feed you children, or get a low interest loan for a new car? Which is more important?
But as I said, they are playing with fire. By artificially slowing the economy, the could slow it too much, businesses would start going under due to lack of business, chain reactions of all sorts of catastrophic things could happen, to include possible depression and possibly even economic collapse.
There’s a lot more to it than just screaming “profit bad!” “interest bad!” A lot more. Excessive profit can be a sin, as can excessive usury. But there is a lot more to it than often meets the eye. And the systems we have now, we are stuck with.
We’re not going to have a perfect government and perfect economic system until Jesus reigns for 1000 years. Until then, we’re stuck with the best imperfect human beings can muster.
And profit is a good example also. Much like liberty. Profit is not wrong in and of itself, but the means of gaining it can be. If it is gained through sinful means, it’s bad. That is why Jesus said it is difficult for a rich man to get into Heaven – like trying to fit a camel through a small door made for people. Not impossible, but difficult. Because it is very difficult to become rich without sinning in order to gain that wealth.
But pure free markets (which we don’t have), with true competition and so on, actually should work, at least in theory, to reduce excessive profit, excessive usury, and so on. The guy who’s charging too much won’t get the business. People will buy from the guy who’s charging less. Same with banks. The bank charging the least interest for loans will get the business.
I need to clarify that statement. Should’ve said it is difficult to obtain and keep wealth without continuing in sin. We all sin from time to time. But one who is born of God will not continue in sin (scripture from 1 John quoted here elsewhere – you’ll have to read the posts to find it) (and there are many other scriptures that say the same). A born again Christian cannot continue in sin, because the Holy Spirit will bring strong conviction. A born again Christian will repent of sin, turn from sin, and make right the wrongs committed, which in the case of obtaining ill-gotten gains is very hard to do, because full repentance might require giving up those ill-gotten gains.
For even further clarification, it also should be noted that the worst of sins are most often, if not always, a culmination of repeated continuance in sin. Somebody who commits cold blooded murder, for example, didn’t just make a single mess up. No, they repeatedly continued in sin for a good amount of time until it reached that level of severity. A born again Christian will be strongly convicted of sin, and repent of it, long before things ever get that bad.
So all the way back to what I originally said here, which the Bible tells you from the first verse to the last.
Yes banking is a mess. Governments are a mess. This world is a mess. Everything is messed up. It’s all a total flipping mess. It’s been a mess since Adam sinned, and it’s getting worse by the day.
The one and only reason it’s all a mess is SIN.
And wickedness is not exclusive to any ethnicity.
But we endure because God is patiently waiting for the lost to repent …
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9.
These concepts are extremely important, because to deny the existence of free will is to undermine the entire Gospel.
And that is a point that must be made, no matter how many posts it takes. It cannot go unaddressed.
God did give free will. He did give liberty. He did give freedom through Jesus Christ, our one and only intercessor, our one and only Savior, Lord, and Master. And we do not have the authority to encroach on God’s domain by trying to deny liberty itself. But we do have the authority, and the scriptural obligation, to push back against those who encroach upon that liberty which God has given us, and to call out any and all sinful abuse of that liberty. There’s a big difference between liberty itself and the wickedness that people do with that liberty. The Bible calls it sin.
This is not an either-or, false dilemma choice between apostates like French, and the so-called “Hyper Calvinists” who essentially undermine the entire Gospel. Both are extremely wrong. Both are extremely departed from scripture.
This is how I see it. And, again, you are welcome to correct me all you want. Just don’t falsely accuse. Don’t undermine the Gospel. Be careful that you are not a “concern troll” yourself.
Cry more, satanist.
Yet another sinful false accusation carrying a death penalty offense.
“Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.” – 1 John 3:8-9
Who’s of the devil?
Who’s of the devil? Answer: liberals, including Jew banker stooges aka “classical” liberals
If you aren’t trolling, then you are not paying attention. As previously stated, classical liberalism is just about the opposite of what is now called liberal. Progressive, big-government, authoritarian democrats are the opposite of classical liberals, which is why libertarians don’t vote democrat. Born again Christians may not agree with libertarians on everything, particularly atheist libertarians of the Ayn Rand variety who reject the absolute truth of God’s Word, but there is agreement when it comes to the existence of liberty itself.
Now that the GOP has officially embraced and endorsed abominable sin, born again Christians cannot agree with the platform of either “side”, so talk of politics, at this time, shouldn’t be wrongly construed to advocate for either in whole, though there are still some good candidates who are Christians, fast becoming fewer and farther between..
The scripture tells you who is of the devil. Your personal opinion doesn’t count. Though you should consider the fact that your comments here attempt to imply that the two groups you mention are sinning. You imply that they are doing wrong, while at the same time you attempt to blame that wrongdoing on liberty itself, if not ethnicity or some other attribute that is not a factor according to scripture. If they were not doing wrong in your opinion, would you still be trying to blame them? Come judgment day, the “liberty made me do it” excuse won’t cut the mustard. Each is accountable and responsible for his own sin. Jesus said in Mark 7:21-22 that sin comes from wickedness in the heart of the individual. That is the source of it. So consider this yet again. The Bible tells you, liberty is not the problem, sin is the problem.
We have the Frenchian faction saying that Christians should support sin in order to support liberty. And we have another faction saying Christians should support neither sin nor liberty.
Both are wrong. Both have departed from scripture. The Bible says to support liberty, but not sin.
Lmao Jew banker tricks aka classical liberalism, defended as “the Gospel.” Wow. Didn’t know the Gospel was invented by Austrian Jews in the 1890s.
Ah, so it would seem you are either national socialists, or trolling as such. In either case, it’s no wonder you have a problem with the concept of liberty.
One day you will pay dearly for spreading your wickedness in the name of Jesus. You’ll answer to Him.
I’m not a satanic liberal. One day you will pay dearly for spreading your wickedness in the name of Jesus. You’ll answer to Him.
Seems obvious, at this point, that you’re trolling here in order to try to paint conservatives and born again Christians as haters of liberty.
Sorry bud, but conservatives have nothing in common with national socialists. Your efforts are in vain. You war against God’s Word. You are guaranteed to lose.
“Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.” – 1 Peter 2:16
That is exactly what I have described in my comments here. Freedom is good. But it is not an excuse to sin. Sin is the abuse of freedom that God has given. Just like Adam and Eve, who were given liberty, with one simple rule. The problem wasn’t liberty. The problem was their disobedience.
We are slaves to Jesus Christ, and only to Jesus Christ. We ultimately answer only to Him. Therefore, among men we are free.
You go to a Bible website and search on the words “liberty” “freedom” “free” and similar. You’ll learn something.
Your error is the false assumption that freedom and order are at odds, because you lean on your own understanding, rather than God’s Word. The two are not at odds. Liberty was a part of God’s created order, as the Genesis account tells you.
The irony is that you are exercising liberty by even posting here, exercising your freedom to speak. By your own standards, that would make you a satanist. Are you?
Freedom is not the problem. Sin is the problem.
Jews are not the problem. Sin is the problem.
Whatever else you wrongly think is the problem is not the problem. Sin is the problem.
The problem is sin.
God’s Word tells you this from the first page to the last. And that fact does indeed underlie the entire Gospel. Sin is what separates us from God, and that is why we need a Savior. If you don’t understand this, then you’ve never heard the true Gospel.
Go post more walls of text filled with semantics and heresy. It won’t save the ideology of liberalism which was invented 200 years ago by satanists. You’re an idol worshipper, bud.
If you’d bother to actually read those walls of text, you’d know that I’m defending conservatives and born again Christians from trolls such as yourself who attempt to stake claim to both and then to wrongly paint both as being tyrannical monsters who are opposed to liberty.
Most often those who don’t understand, or refuse to acknowledge, the fact that “modern” liberalism is just about the opposite of classical liberalism, are leftists. Such observations often make it fairly easy to spot trolls.
Classical liberals (like the historic liberals of 200+ years ago) are for small and limited government, for free markets, against government meddling, against government intervention beyond what is absolutely necessary, for individual rights of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, property, those outlined in the Bill of Rights, and so on (not to include contrived so-called positive rights)
Progressive, big government, authoritarian leftists who call themselves liberals these days are nothing like classical liberals.They are pretty much the opposite – which everyone but them understands and acknowledges.
So-called “positive rights” are a wicked contrivance of progressives which attempt to justify infringement on the God-given natural rights of others.
An example would be a boy putting on a wig and then demanding that all 8 billion people on the planet start calling him a “she.” Or homosexuals demanding that a Christian bake them a cake to celebrate their abominable sin. About everything the alphabet mafia does would fit this category. And in that case, it is not just an infringement on the right of life and liberty now, but an infringement on the right of life and liberty eternal. There is no such thing as an obligation to tolerate, accept, or respect sin.
Classical liberalism was a meme cooked up by Jewish bankers in London. Of course evangelicals NPCs buy it, hook, line and sinker.
I’m a Christian anarcho-capitalist and certainly am a libertarian.
Your comments are astonishingly buffoonish. I’ve never seen such comments on the internet about libertarians and classical liberals being satanic. You show no willingness to learn from people with this perspective. You simply violently and arrogantly spout your utter nonsense.
All, do not waste your time with this person.
>> As previously stated, classical liberalism is just about the opposite of what is now called liberal.
This is a total lie. It’s not historical. It’s the sign of a boomer NPC running programming from programmed NPCs like Glenn Beck.
Yet because I’m not a liberal, I get called a “nazi” by this satanist, even though my politics are straight out of the Bible and The Federalist, in that order.
All they have is witchcraft, “as previously stated a liberal is not a liberal because anyone who says 2+2=4 is a nazi troll.”
I specifically stated very early on that anyone was welcome to correct me if my understanding of classical liberalism was incorrect. You did not do that. Instead you falsely accused me of being a liberal, falsely accused me of being a satanist, falsely accused me of supporting abominable sin, falsely accused me of witchcraft, and so on.
If your views are out of the Bible then why haven’t you posted any scripture to back up your claims? Where is the scripture?
The common definition of classical liberalism is as I described above – small and limited government, and so on. It is nowadays most aligned to libertarians, and those conservatives who conserve such ideas.
Why do you attack me with such vitriol just because I believe the most common definition of classical liberalism? Makes no sense.
I cannot read your mind. I cannot just magically know whatever it is you claim you know. If my understanding is incorrect, you should be able to correct me, as I welcomed anyone do, without resorting to nasty, wicked, sinful false accusations. You haven’t made a single post here without sinning in the process.
Further I don’t know who in the sam hill you think you can fool with your implication that only liberals are for liberty. The progressive marxists calling themselves liberals these days are about as anti-liberty as it can get. If you think marxism and liberty go hand in hand, you need to go live somewhere like north korea for a while. Good grief.
Finally, if you hate liberty, obviously have a problem with Jews, repeat some of the same things the nazis said about bankers and such, you shouldn’t be surprised if someone is led to believe you are a national socialist. If not that, then what? You’re certainly not a conservative.
I welcome correction, and even rebuke if necessary. I’m an imperfect human being just like everybody else. But you needn’t expect others to just blindly take your unsubstantiated comments as fact.
As it pertains to scripture, you need to quote scripture. As it pertains to definitions of something like “classical liberalism” you’re going to have to point people to resources that show the commonly accepted definition is wrong.
Getting worked up when people don’t just bow down and take unsubstantiated claims as fact is a great way to ensure you will be angry all day every day for the rest of your born days. You’ve got to back up your claims. Nobody’s obligated to believe it just because you say it.
Romans 13 is ultimately referring to Christ. He is the only true authority. However, it does admonish us to “go along to get along” because there are more important things, such as sharing the gospel and making disciples. Scripture does not condone the state in any way. The state is not an agent of God in any way. It is man ruling over man with violence and coercion. It does not punish good and reward evil. That’s laughable. By far, the largest and most pervasive perpetrator of evil is the state.
Simply put, the conventional interpretation of Romans 13 is wildly wrong.