If I believe, as I do, that the chief threat to American security is our own government’s wastrel ways, its out-of-control spending, in distinction from Islamic fundamentalism, then why wouldn’t I just full-tilt endorse Ron Paul? I am unwilling to do that, despite appreciating many of the things he says, and liking many of the stands he takes. I hope the eventual Republican nominee brings the Paul contingent back into the fold by promising to make Ron Paul the Secretary of the Treasury. That’s the right kind of scary, but there are other kinds of scary too.
In this space I have said kind/critical things about both Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, depending on the issue. A commenter has asked why — why, when you compare the relative importance of the economic melt-down we are creating for ourselves (which Paul sees) with something like the outrageous threat to bomb Iran, which Santorum delivered the other day, would you not support Paul? Well, contrasting them on those two points, I do support Paul. Stop spending money like you were a drunken orangutan, and don’t bomb sovereign nations unless Congress has declared war.
My issue has to do with the distinction between what is a threat to our security and what I regard as the ground of that threat. If catastrophe comes to us, I am strongly inclined to believe that it will be an economic catastrophe. America is much more likely to be a suicide than a murder victim. If this happens, it will God’s just and righteous judgment upon us. If it happens, we deserved to have it happen. That’s how judgments work. And while the catastrophe has not yet happened, the reasons for it have.
I would regard the ground of that catastrophe to be our sexual rebellion against God’s created order. That sexual rebellion includes the abortion carnage, the full-court sodomite press for gay marriage, women in pulpits and in the cockpits of fighter planes, the porn epidemic, the divorce rates, and so on. If it is right for us to question Newt Gingrich’s reliability based on his inability to keep his marriage vows, and it is, by the same token, it should be right for us to question America’s reliability based on our rampant sexual confusions. We break promises, we sleep around, and we dismember the inconvenient by-products of our pursuit of sexual pleasure. The penumbrae of the Constitution are conveniently arranged by us to shelter our dirty deeds. At the same time, we have arranged no shelter of any kind for the young Americans who may be constitutionally sacrificed on the altars of our orgasms. This is, I believe, the heart of our disease, the heart of our sickness — egalitarianism, hedonism, perversion, and every other form of pomosexuality.
So I think Ron Paul understands how we are going to catch it. I don’t think he understands why.
While I appreciate Ron Paul’s pro-life stand (I really do), there is still a significant problem for him when it comes to our nation’s sexual confusion about the creation order. In Liberty Defined, Ron Paul has said there should be “no limits” to the “voluntary definition” of marriage. He has said that he is supportive of all voluntary associations, and people can call it whatever they want. This is beyond naive — an orgy is a voluntary association, and sinners want to call it any number of things other than what God calls it — an occasion for some brimstone.
Because marriage involves property, and heirs, and dependent children, the civil magistrate will necessarily be involved. For example, Solomon adjudicated the custody fight between the two harlots over the baby. Marriage in a republic like ours cannot be reduced to something as easy as a boy and girl in second grade deciding to “like” each other. Whatever the definition of marriage will be, because of the ownership/custody issues that are the necessary ramifications of sex, the civil order will have to add its amen (or not) to that definition of marriage. And if the state is proposing to add its amen to any voluntary definition of marriage, no limits whatever, then I have to confess that I have never heard anything scarier (or dumber) in my life.
If Paul’s view of this were established, then bid farewell to the republic. I will go down to see her, like the fellow did in St. James Infirmary, “so cold, so sweet, so sweet, so fair.”