Friends, wonderful news: Joe Biden, a.k.a. Saint Joe, plans not just to save America from Trump -- he's also ready and able to save your soul! Just ask Joe himself. If you listened to his acceptance speech recently, you'll recall that a "battle for America's soul" is underway, and the surest route to redemption runs straight through Wilmington, Delaware! No surprise there. And this nonsense, believe it or not, is the theme of my latest article. See what you make of it.
Biden the Blasphemer
President Trump delivered a lot of memorable lines in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. Among the best was his assertion that “Joe Biden is not a savior of America's soul.”
It was a reference to a key moment in Biden's own acceptance speech, in which the former Vice-President called on voters to “join a battle for the soul of this nation.” He declared, “This campaign isn’t just about winning votes. It’s about winning the heart, and yes, the soul of America.” Governors Kasich and Cuomo, among others, echoed this idea that America's “soul” is on the ballot.
In his speech, Biden framed his campaign as one of “hope and light and love.” Trump, by contrast, is “darkness” personified.
Biden particularly drew attention to President Trump's alleged observation in August 2017 that there were “very fine people” among the violent white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia — a smear that has been discredited and disproved on countless occasions. Trump was not referring to white supremacists, as he made clear at the time, and as he has been at pains to remind people since. This imaginary outrage in 2017 nonetheless marked the exact moment when, according to Biden, “I knew I'd have to run.” The “soul of America” demanded nothing less.
Trump is absolutely right to condemn Biden's sanctimonious and intentionally deceptive rhetoric. He is right, because of the emptiness of Biden's words. He is also correct, however, because Biden's arguments represent, at their core, a refutation of the Christian faith that Biden professes to hold. Biden is proposing himself as the savior of the nation, and of Americans' souls, when any true Christian knows that salvation comes only through Jesus Christ.
It is one thing to claim that one candidate serves, or would serve, the American people better than another. It is one thing to claim that the current leader has failed to perform, and another could do the job better. Such arguments are de rigueur in electoral politics.
Biden, however, goes far beyond this, asserting that his campaign stands for “hope and light and love,” while President Trump has brought a “season of darkness” upon the land. This is strikingly moralistic, even pious, rhetoric for a party that claims to embody rationality.
What's worse, Biden, despite his Catholic roots, doesn't suggest God as the force — the only force — that can restore America to spiritual health. He nominates himself as America's redeemer. He claims that he, Joe Biden, can “Give people light.” He, the career politician, can and will illuminate the path back to righteousness.
This rhetoric isn't merely grandiloquent. It is blasphemous. It belies Biden's entreaty to the Almighty at the end of his speech, “And may God bless you,” for it is not God from whom Biden anticipates blessings, but from himself.
Sadly, this moral-spiritual fog, in which it is so easy to confuse oneself for God, is a persistent feature of left-wing ideology. Leftists are humanists: they are believers in the excellence, even the perfectibility, of humankind. They believe that a utopia can and will be built on Earth, if only the ignorant will heed the calls of the enlightened.
And who are the enlightened? Why, they are, of course — they, the left-leaning, “progressive” vanguard of a new age. It is from their glorious minds that the shape and structure of the promised utopia will spring, even though the Bible and common sense teach us that human beings are imperfect in their knowledge, their judgment, and their character, by definition.
Does any of this mean that Donald Trump, rather than Joe Biden, is God's candidate in 2020? No.
What it does mean is that, for all his bloviating, Donald Trump acknowledges that he is beneath God, and so are the rest of us. “In America,” he declared in his acceptance speech, “we don't turn to government to restore our souls. We put our faith in Almighty God." As we should.
Joe Biden is also a man of faith. The difference is that, when it comes to saving souls and redeeming a nation of 330 million people, Biden thinks that he is the key. Not God.
Joe Biden and many Democrats are fond of quoting Scripture. Let them heed, therefore, Matthew 15:9, “In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”
Simply put, Joe Biden is not Jesus Christ, and the platform of the Democratic Party is not the Scriptures.
If the American people cannot tell the difference, then sadly our “season of darkness” is only beginning.
Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com. He appears weekly on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.
And here it is at Townhall:
https://townhall.com/columnists/nicholaswaddy/2020/08/31/biden-the-blasphemer-n2575332
Dr.Waddy from Jack: I think the left has long ago given up on " IF ONLY the ignorant (deplorables) will listen to the elect ". By the end of the 19th century they had settled on "they SHALL listen and comply". Lenin based his determination to take (ehh)"affirmative action",rather than wait for that which the sage, grave Marx had proven was inevitable, on this sociopathic promise.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: This is a very well constructed and reasoned essay; I hope it is published further and I'm going to contact the Olean Times Union to urge them to print it. They publish some of your posts. It's an outstanding exposition. Pore ol Joe has foot in mouth disease; his attempts at empathetic ingratiation with the monolithic ( as he sees it, the poor dear), "black community" are cringeworthy and right out of 1965 Kumbayaaville. Maybe he thinks he can get us all holding hands around the campfire! Pretentions to messiahhood are perhaps not a reach for an intellect as shallow as his and I am glad to see you, a tested professional scholar, bring him to intellectual task. If he can't stand the dialectical heat he should quit the kitchen or he should be shown the door in November.
ReplyDeleteJack, you're right that the Enlightened Ones don't expect cringing obedience from us dumbstruck deplorables. They know that coercion will be part of the equation, if utopia is ever to arise. Still, I think I'm right that they diagnose the world's ills as a symptom of stupidity and stubbornness. By the same token, they regard the wisdom and truthfulness of their own beliefs as blindingly obvious.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind words, Jack! I've already sent it to the Olean paper. I've little doubt they'll publish it. They seem fond of my ramblings.
You're right -- Biden does have a touch of the foot-in-mouth disease. What amazes me is that his appropriation of all this evangelical/millennial language hasn't raised any hackles on the Left at all. I suppose he kept it just secular enough to avoid their ire. And, insofar as he posits no meaningful distinction between God and Karl Marx, he may even have found a formula for "faith" that could appeal even to lifelong atheists!
They're a strange bunch, those lefties. They can make a very heterogeneous brew of ideas congeal, if only they're plastered together with a common hatred or two. Look at the strange bedfellows currently united in the crusade against Trump!
Dr.Waddy from Jack: The career of the author David Horowitz is a telling example of one who drank the leftist koolaid in the '60's buteventually renounced and denounced it when he understood their totalitarian intent. Is Biden fully cognizant of the vast cadre of now insanely vindictive radicals which would enter government,surely mostly without his knowledge or say so, should he win? If he is , then his nice guy image is a vicious front. His administration is guaranteed to impose an avalanche of Cuomoesque pronunciamentos designed to assure the inevitability of a far leftist dictatorship in America. If he doesn't know it or if he thinks he can mitigate it, he will be given to understand his folly, in very good time, by those for whom he is now such a pathetic shill.
ReplyDeleteJack, I doubt it has ever crossed Biden's mind to fear the long-term consequences of his own presidency. He seems like the sort of fellow to assume that only "truth and light and love" could possibly arise from his accession to power... Ignorance is bliss, right?
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