Libertarianism Cannot be Christian

Libertarianism cannot be Christian, updated October 31st, 2015

Before I begin, I want to define Libertarianism. So for that I will simply employ the default definition which appears on the Google search page for the term:

Libertarianism (Latin: liber, "free") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as its principal objective. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and freedom of choice, emphasizing political freedom, voluntary association, and the primacy of individual judgment.

I was inspired to make this presentation tonight in part because here in the United States the long and arduous political season is upon us once again, in part we are constantly confronted with so-called Christian Libertarians in social media, and in part because a few weeks ago I saw a three-part series of articles on the internet from a website which calls itself The Libertarian Republic, which are titled Why Christians Make Great Libertarians. The articles were quite repulsive, as they reflect an absolute lack of true Christian understanding. So we are going to proceed by presenting part of the first in that series of articles, small portions of the others, and offering some criticism. The first article opens by saying that:

In 1932, the Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton expressed concern that many people were according the government with a trust and reverence that ought to be reserved only for God. Chesterton’s admonition was not only prophetic, but rooted in the deepest mainspring of Christianity’s past; he was echoing words spoken by the prophet Samuel nearly three thousand years ago.

1 Samuel 8 tells how the Israelites, having grown weary of deferring to their local judges, decided to centralize power and crown a king. The great judge Samuel, upset by the nation’s desire for an earthly ruler, prayed to God for guidance. God replied by telling Samuel that, by demanding a human king, the Israelites “have rejected me from being king over them.”

This equation of statism with idolatry is alive and well in modern Christendom. In particular, Christians in the United States have – since before Bush left office – been moving away from federal advocacy and towards political decentralization. Whenever someone suggests that Christians cannot be a viable force for liberty, I know that person has been long out of touch with America’s Christian culture. The believers I speak [sic of] increasingly feel put upon by the earthly state and simply wish to be allowed to live as they see fit in their own communities.

Now, while we would assert that America's Christian culture is no longer Christian, there are some very good points which are made here. At Christogenea there are several articles which also explain that in recent history, people have substituted the god of government in place of the God of Heaven. We developed our understanding and our reasoning separately from G.K. Chesterson, however, and otherwise we would certainly have given him credit. While we have not read any of Chesterson's writing, from further citations provided in this series of articles it is clear that he may not have been the sort of Christian of which Identity Christians would readily approve.

In a 2009 article entitled Who is your god? We wrote:

Over the past one hundred or so years, at the same time that the State has slowly become the god of the people, the State has also slowly torn down the moral barriers of the old God – the God of the Bible – and has replaced the morality of Christianity with a new morality: that of Diversity, Inclusion, and Multiculturalism.

Now, there is more to that first Libertarian Republic article than what we have presented, but these paragraphs set the tone for this article and also for two related follow-up articles which The Libertarian Republic offers, which are titled Rejecting Earthly Authority and Christians forbidden to correct sinners by force.

Now these articles also have some good points, as for instance they use the parable of the trees of the forest found in Judges chapter 9 to show that corrupt men naturally incline towards positions of power. But they make some points which Christians should not accept, as for instance where they state that “Chesterton, perhaps hyperbolically, called original sin the 'the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.' It is also the part of Christian theology which most squarely defeats political authoritarianism.”

We cannot agree with Chesterson that original sin is “the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.” In fact, an understanding of Christian Identity and Covenant Theology allows one to assert that every part of Christian theology can certainly be proved.

But we understand that many Christians may agree that political authoritarianism is evil, and how it would be appealing to Christians if they could stand on Scripture to face down such authoritarianism. However the question we must put forth is whether that is truly a Christian attitude, and if it is not, we must ask why it is not. We shall also strive to answer those questions this evening.

For now we shall state that authoritarian government was also ordained by God, for instance in Daniel chapters 2 and 7, but it was ordained on account of the sins of man. That concept is completely missing from The Libertarian Republic, and that is the major shortcoming of Libertarianism.

Commenting on the Book of Acts and countenancing another incorrect view of Acts chapter 4, which is advanced by Marxists, the second article in the series states in part:

... that the whole of Acts 4 is directly libertarian. The chapter begins with Peter and John being arrested by the government. The pair is ordered “not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus,” but instead defies the authorities to their faces, saying “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him?”

but they do not properly advance that which is “right in God's eyes” as the solution to our current political dilemmas. Then the third article in the series states the following:

Libertarian Christianity did not end in Acts. For millennia, leading Christians have been vociferous critics of the state. The third century church father John Chrysostom fervently denounced the authorities of his day – and had no desire to take their place.

“Christians above all men are forbidden to correct the stumblings of sinners by force,” he said. “It is necessary to make a man better not by force but by persuasion.”

While we are familiar with some of his writings, we have not read all of John Chrysostom, so we cannot comment on these statements in their original context. But we shall answer all of the questions raised here by commenting on the views of the Libertarians which have been posited in the paragraphs which we have just presented.

Our first issue with the Libertarians is this: that they do not adequately explain why the ancient children of Israel rejected Yahweh their God as king, in favor for an earthly government. Secondly, the only alternative they offer to authoritarian government is a personal freedom dictated by individual conscience. While the founders of the American Republic believed that man should be permitted to worship God as the individual conscience dictated, they also expected that men would worship God. Thirdly, while for various reasons both religious and historical, Christians were forbidden to correct sinners by force, the Christian Gospel instructs Christians in how to treat sinners, and those instructions are completely ignored by the Libertarians. We will confront each of these errors of the Libertarians, but first we will present the article we wrote in 2012 entitled Libertarianism cannot be Christian:

I saw my beloved brother and sister-in-law for the first time in seventeen years this past July (2012), and I received a reminder of where I had come from. Quite a vivid reminder it was because in spite of the passing of so many years, sadly they are still there. It is not that I do not love them, for I certainly do. However once one grows in the enhanced understanding of life and world circumstances and develops the weltanschauung which many Christian Nationalists have, or should have, a journey into the past is often a trip down a memory lane that is lined with haunted houses. [In other words, all Identity Christians have done things in the past which they would know better than to do now.]

One easily discussed example of our current differences may be drawn from popular music. “But you used to listen to that”, my brother said in protest when I pointed out that a certain musician was a promiscuous and deviant miscreant. Well, the ever-present strains from that FM radio of my childhood were flooded with it, so everyone used to listen to it. “You even bought one of his records!” Of course I had, but I was all of thirteen years at the time. And I can still hear and appreciate the beautiful melodies of Tiny Dancer or Your Song pierce the stale air of the distant past. But eventually I discovered the demons which lurked behind the poetical lyrics and bucolic album covers, and I hated them.

I made a pointed remark concerning the evils of certain deviant sexual practices. “But it doesn't matter what someone does in their own house, as long as they don't do it in front of me”, was the off-the-shelf reply which my brother's wife had to offer. That is one of the standard responses given by many people today in reply to such criticisms of modern depravity. It displays the libertarian attitude reflected even by people who imagine themselves to be rather conservative, and often even somewhat religious. And they blame their acceptance of such vice upon the fashion of the modern world.

But is depravity really modern? In his Germania, the first-century AD Roman chronicler Tacitus, remarking on the Germans but ostensibly testifying to conditions in Rome, said “No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted.” Tacitus marveled at German chastity, and at the harsh and swift punishment for things such as adultery, which he said was “very rare for so numerous a population” (Germania, 19). Tacitus also explained that in Germany traitors, cowards, and men who committed sexually deviant acts – such as that which many today call homosexuality – were thrown into the mud and suffocated as a punishment. (Germania, 12).

“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”- Leviticus 20:13

The struggle between good and evil has been with man throughout history. Good triumphed when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed in the flames, when ancient Babylon fell, and when a morally decadent Rome was lost to the Goths. The deviant practices considered modern or fashionable today had corrupted all of those ancient societies. Yet in the most decadent societies there were men who could distinguish between good and evil. Although Abraham was alone before the gates of Sodom (Genesis chapter 18) Tacitus was not alone in Rome, as we can tell from Paul's epistle, written not long before Tacitus' Germania was written.

Paul of Tarsus described the moral corruption of ancient Rome in the opening chapter of his epistle to the Roman Christians, and after having illustrated the rampant sexual deviancy and other sins which were common there at the time he concluded “that they practicing such things are worthy of death, not only they who cause them, but also they approving of those committing them.” The Germanic people, as part of their inherent nature, regularly dealt these same judgments to such sinners, as we see from Tacitus' description of them. When a society ceases to judge decadence, corruption flourishes and history teaches us that such a society never endures for very long. Why should we believe that things should be any different today?

“How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked?”- Psalm 82:2

“It is not good to accept the person of the wicked, to overthrow the righteous in judgment.” - Proverbs 18:5

When Christians fail to judge the wicked, they themselves shall be overthrown as the natural result of the wicked being permitted to flourish. We see one example of this process today when children are being taught all sorts of deviancy in schools against the wishes of their parents. Other examples abound, where we are subjected to witnessing all sorts of immorality on a daily basis. Living in Sodom, the just Lot tormented his own righteous soul (2 Peter 2:7-8).

With the Christian ethics that were evidently quite natural to the European peoples, out of the ashes that were Greece and Rome there rose a society greater than all which went before it. And while other and darker forces often caused its component principalities to compete viciously with one another, even to frequently war within itself, in both the arts and the sciences and in its dominance over the beasts of the wider world Christian Europe far surpassed all of the cultures which preceded it. This was achieved in spite of the corruption of the church by the bankers, and the subsequent wars against Christian society waged by the Catholic tyrants. However with the Reformation thence followed the disease now known as Liberalism, which emancipated the Jew – who is forever the enemy of Christian society - and it would eventually allow for the complete corruption of Christian society, causing it to follow in the way of all the great civilizations which went before it.

The ideals of Liberalism, liberty, equality, and fraternity, the false gods of humanism, are trumpeted to this day, resulting in the continual destruction of Christian society and the White race which built it. And not only are all hominids - never mind men - now considered to be of equal value in society, but so have all creeds, all superstitions, all ideas, all beliefs, and all moral values - or immoral values - now somehow become equal, at the expense of the very builders of civilization, and at the despair of whatever righteous and true men remain. The promises of Liberalism are only promises for the Jew, and for whomever the Jew affords them, that he may take full advantage of Christians. On the other hand, Christians should only have expected liberty and fraternity in Christ (Galatians 5:1, 13), and Christians should not expect equality at all, except in esteem among the members of the body of Christ (Luke 12:48, 1 Corinthians 12:4-27).

It is not a mistake, that the last false prophet of the old kingdom of Judah was named Pashur (Jeremiah chapter 20). He is mentioned frequently in Jeremiah, and was adversarial to the prophet of God. The name Pashur means liberty in Hebrew, and in that there is an important message. As the apostle Peter would say of those who promote personal liberty outside of Christ, “while they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption” (2 Peter 2:19).

Escaping the relative chaos which the advent of Liberalism created in Europe, many of the refugees of what was once Christendom managed to form a handful of decidedly Christian states in America. However a Constitution which was meant to be a compact among Christian states did not escape the influences of Liberalism, and the infection spread, exacerbated by those who sought the concentration of power and from thence transformed the newly formed Federal government from one which regulated a union between sovereign States into one that held sovereignty over those States.

The U.S. Constitution did not legislate religion or morality because it was left to each of the sovereign states to legislate religion and morality for themselves. Soon that concept was corrupted, and now we are both irreligious and immoral.

Once it was injected into the minds of the American people, apart from the will of the founders and the people themselves, that the Federal government of the United States held Sovereignty rather than the people in their respective States, the Constitution became a vehicle for Liberals with which they could destroy its Christian signatories. Even the word posterity, defining the limits of the Union to the descendants of the signers and the European people whom they represented, became forgotten in the minds of the American public, replaced with the Liberal cries of liberty, equality and fraternity, and the false gods of humanism.

Jeffersonian Liberalism held the ideal that a God-fearing Christian nation could govern itself, and should therefore be free of the tyranny of either church or monarch. Jewish liberalism has taken God out of the nation, and imposed a tyranny that either church or monarch could only envy.

The Constitution of the United States was never supposed to be the “law of the land”. It is only an agreement binding the various Sovereign States which were party to it in a contract of cooperation in the areas of defense and trade. Therefore the Constitution did not codify morals, or many other things, because the various Sovereign States already had, and the power to do so was to remain with those States. And those States did indeed codify morality, as communities of decent Christian men should be expected to do. The various States forbid homosexuality, calling it by its more fitting name, sodomy. Most all of the States also forbid fornication, race mixing, and many other vices.

Yet ever since the large influx of Jews into America have they constantly attacked and have now successfully eradicated the Christian fabric of American society. In the name of equality, using the nation's own court systems and Constitution as weapons against the nation itself, they have corrupted the nation. Jews brought the first court cases which attempted to strip the Christian foundations from American society as early as 1899 in Virginia (See The International Jew, How the Jews Use Power) and have done so relentlessly ever since. Jews have at the same time been at the vanguard of attacks against the proscription of immoral acts which were at one time legislated in each and every State, until this very day where morality has now been almost completely deregulated. The parallel attacks on both Christianity and legislated morality are not a coincidence.

If man believes that his rights are endowed by the Creator, as the founders of this nation recognized, then man understands that those rights are inalienable. If man believes that his morals are passed down from God, as the founders of this nation also recognized, then man understands that those morals are immutable. Yet man has allowed the Jew to litigate God out of modern society, and therefore now we have no rights, and no morals.

Yet contrary to what the Jewish media now has most Americans believing, Liberalism is not the law of the land. The Constitution did not enforce morality only because that was a power expressly left to the individual States. Furthermore, the freedoms spoken of by the founders of the American nation were economic, spiritual and social freedoms that were expected to be expressed within the boundaries of Christian moral standards, and not in spite of them. However the Jewish idea of freedom includes the freedom to be a pervert, the freedom to corrupt society into a state of decadence, which the founders never did envision, and which the laws of the several States had already proscribed. When the Republic was devised, it was not its purpose for the Federal Government to encroach upon the Sovereignty of the individual States and their natural right to legislate morality in order to protect their good citizens.

For over a hundred years, American Conservatism, almost entirely Christian in nature, attempted to stand against the encroachments of the Liberals, that section of the political spectrum which has always been heavily populated by Jews. However American Conservatism has today embraced Liberalism, and few are even aware of it, and now even Conservatism is heavily populated by Jews. Today's Conservatives are actually no different from Liberals, except perhaps for certain of their beliefs concerning economic matters. The vehicle through which this seems to have happened is Libertarianism, a sort of hybrid political philosophy which itself was contrived to a great extent by Jews (i.e. Murray Rothbard, Robert Levy and David Boaz). Libertarians are indeed fiscal conservatives, and rightly eschew involvement in foreign wars, about which George Washington so famously warned the nation upon leaving office.

However they are apathetic concerning race, an attitude which discards the clause in the Constitution concerning posterity. Libertarians must be apathetic concerning race, since those who developed the philosophy have no share in that posterity. Libertarians are also social Liberals, and therefore moral Liberals: accepting all sorts of immoral practices merely as alternative lifestyles, personal freedoms, and even defending the supposed right of individuals to engage in such practices, a right which does not exist and which was not recognized by the founders of the Republic – who were all representatives of States which explicitly prohibited immoral acts in their laws.

There is a Libertarian political party which itself has never gained any actual power. Ever since the 1980 election, when Libertarian U.S. presidential candidate John Anderson received media attention which far exceeded that which was merited by the final vote count, Libertarian ideas have seeped into American Conservatism. Like Ron Paul, who is embraced by Libertarians but operates within the Republican party, Anderson was also a failed Republican primary candidate. Now Jewish Libertarian ideas have totally saturated American Conservatism, and Ron Paul seems to be the standard bearer. Conservatives, seeking votes and therefore relenting to the big-tent philosophy, have compromised themselves and their ideals for the economic benefits of the individual which they believe would result from smaller government and lower taxes. With a great percentage of Liberals, Libertarians, Republicans and other Conservatives now agreeing on at least most moral issues, politics has been reduced to a fight over little but money.

Ignorant of the fact that the Federal Government, and the Constitution, were never intended to regulate those things which belonged to the Sovereign States alone, Conservatives are now persuaded that Libertarian ideals are those which belonged to the nation's founders, yet nothing could be further from the truth. The developers of Libertarianism as a political philosophy have made it quite clear that it is amoral, or morally Liberal. In regard to morality, and also in regard to other important issues such as race, Libertarianism has an openly accepting philosophy which allows for, and would even enforce, the coexistence of good and evil.

“Each who going forth and not abiding in the teaching of Christ has not God. He abiding in the teaching, he also has the Father and the Son. If one comes to you and does not bear this teaching, do not receive him into the house and do not speak to welcome him! For he speaking to welcome him takes a share in his evil works.” - 2 John 9-11

The word conservatism is from a Latin verb which means to retain, and its political aspiration should naturally be to seek to retain the Republic as it was first formed. That would include the rights of the various Sovereign States to uphold the moral values of their citizenry, seeking to protect the citizenry from corruption, as those States had fully asserted and had put into practice long before the Union was first formed. Libertarianism is actually anti-conservative, because it insists that States relinquish all such rights to regulate morality.

Libertarianism is the vehicle which has made Conservatives into Liberals, and now Conservatives are not only turning a blind eye to all sorts of deviancy, but also in essence they are defending the contrived rights of the deviants themselves to be deviant. Libertarianism is therefore a deceptive political philosophy which persuades otherwise good people into defending the right of Sodom and Gomorrah to exist, when Sodom and Gomorrah actually have no such right! Yet Christians are commanded to keep themselves from evil, not to sleep with it – politically or otherwise. Therefore Christianity cannot be reconciled with Libertarianism.

Back to my brother's house, the following evening I took my nephew to a meeting which I had in Jacksonville with a couple of dear Christian Identity brethren. We talked for hours about the Bible, our Christian Israelite heritage, our society, and of course its current state of apathy and immorality. One of the lessons I had hoped he would take away was that morality is absolute, and immorality must be rejected. Moral relativism is a Jewish concept, and now it is being taught to White children everywhere. It is also the philosophy which Libertarianism espouses. He paid close attention to the conversation, and [at the time] he agreed. While those who understand are few, the enemies of Christ have not yet won a decisive victory over good, and neither will they do so.

This concludes our September, 2012 article. Now we will address our three main contentions with the articles from The Libertarian Republic, parts of which we have already presented earlier.

While The Libertarian Republic explained that the children of Israel rejected Yahweh their God in exchange for an earthly king, as it is explained in 1 Samuel chapter 8, they did not give any historical context which explains why the Israelites were led to do so. To see that context, we must go back to the Book of Judges, which relates some of the history of the period leading up to Samuel.

First, we may read in Judges chapters 17 and 21 that “In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” So it was inevitable that the Israelites would eventually demand the appointment of an earthly king, because they had already rejected Yahweh their God as king. But there is another pattern which is manifest throughout the Book of Judges, which happened frequently during the 400 year period which the book covers, and we will offer Judges 13:1 as an example: “And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.”

The lesson in the Book of Judges is that when the children of Israel forsook the law of God, they were punished by falling subject to tyrannical government. This is what it means to have Yahweh God as King, and this is what it means to have Christ as King: to follow His commandments. The Libertarians would replace authoritarian government with personal freedom, but to do so is not Christian. Instead, the only Biblical alternative to authoritarian government is government by God and His law.

So Libertarian the idea of personal freedom dictated by individual conscience is not a Christian idea at all. Christ had said “if you love Me, keep My commandments”, and He was certainly referring to all of the Old Testament commandments governing the behavior and morals of men.

While we would admit, and can elucidate through Scripture, that Christians themselves are forbidden to correct sinners by force, the Christian Gospel instructs Christians in how to treat sinners, and those instructions are completely ignored by the Libertarians. The Christian Gospel also informs Christians that sinners would be punished by God, and that punishment comes in the form of authoritarian government!

So in essence, Libertarians are sinners in denial, just like the children of Israel were in the days of the Judges and Samuel. The children of Israel used the excuse that Samuel's sons were wicked judges, but they did not seek to replace them with good judges. Rather, they sought an earthly king because they thought an earthly king could defend them from becoming subject to tyrants every time that they sinned! That is the real lesson of Judges and Samuel: that men seeking to escape punishment for their sins would only be punished all the more.

Because the circumstances of 1 Samuel chapter 8, where the children of Israel rejected Yahweh their God as King, have not been reversed, the children of Israel remain in a period of punishment under earthly kings. This situation is not rectified until Christ, who shall indeed be King of Kings and Lord of Lords, as it says inn Revelation chapter 19, when all earthly governments are dissolved once and for all. For this reason the apostle Peter had told his Christian readers to “13 Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; 14 Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well.”

So we see in 1 Peter chapter 2 that tyrannical government is sanctioned by God for the punishment of evildoers. Likewise Paul states in Romans chapter 13: “1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. 2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: 4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. 5 Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.” Saying these things, Paul also recognizes that tyrranical governments are a punishment from God upon sinners.

Therefore tyrannical government is a punishment from God, and a sinful nation cannot remain sinful and expect freedom from tyranny. In the New Testament, sin is still defined by the law of God. Paul described what we would now call homosexuality and lesbianism in Romans chapter 1, and gave a list of other sins among which are fornication, covetousness and murder. Then he said that those who know the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. In other words, accepting the persons of sinners we become partners in their sin, and we too are worthy of the penalties for that sin. This is the primary reason why libertarianism cannot be Christian.

Christians may not have authority from God to execute such sinners themselves, but it is the function of tyrannical government to punish those who accept such sinners, and that is where we stand today. However Christians did have instructions as to how to treat such sinners, and today they fail to obey them, having been deceived by Libertarianism and Liberalism. Paul made an example of those instructions in 1 Corinthians chapter 5: “11 But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. 12 For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? 13 But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.” God judges them, and as both Peter and Paul tell us elsewhere, God uses tyrannical governments to judge not only the wicked, but also those who accept the wicked.

Christians themselves may indeed judge the wicked once their own obedience to God's law is fulfilled, as Paul explains in 2 Corinthians chapter 10. Therefore the warning of Christ not to judge sinners is a warning not to judge hypocritically. Christians certainly must break company with and ostracize sinners.

Christians have liberty only in Christ, and liberty in Christ means that Christians must keep His commandments, and reject all of those who do not keep them – as John had also warned. Christ Himself had said “If you love Me, keep My commandments”, and if we do not love Him, we do not have God. As Peter also said in that same place we just cited, in 1 Peter chapter 2, Christians are not to use that “liberty for a cloak of maliciousness”, which would be the violation of God's laws.

Christians can only have liberty in Christ, and Christians must also expect all of the members of their communities to abide in the commandments of Christ. When they do not abide in those commandments, they must be ostracized from the Christian community.

For all of these reasons and more, Libertarianism cannot be Christian.