Author, columnist, speaker
Socialism v. God, Science, and Prosperity
By Robert Knight
For thousands of years, people typically had short lifespans and were at the mercy of bad weather, crop failures, and tyrants.
By modern standards, life was “nasty, brutish and short,” as philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it in 1651.
Today, we can barely imagine life before electricity, indoor plumbing, air conditioning, jet travel, automobiles, smartphones, modern medicine and dentistry, and the internet.
All of these things came out of the free-market West, which for centuries after the Greco-Roman period was simply called Christendom. None of it came from socialism, which was birthed during the atheistic and murderous French Revolution in 1789.
Fifty-nine years later, socialism was given monstrous force by Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’ “The Communist Manifesto.”
A perversion of Western philosophy, socialism operates like cancer in otherwise healthy tissue.
Socialism was weaponized by Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Kim Il-Sung, Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, Daniel Ortega, and others who still use it to tyrannize their fellow countrymen and spread misery.
Socialists refuse to acknowledge their debt to Western civilization. Beijing now has electricity thanks to Michael Faraday, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse. Much of the world has air conditioning thanks to George Gorrie, Willis Carrier, and General Electric. Cars are affordable (at least, they were) thanks to Henry Ford. And so on, up to computers and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The free West’s inventions have benefited billions. Socialism does not create wealth or spawn original discoveries. It’s why the Soviet Union had to steal and adapt. It’s why the Chinese communists work so hard to hack Western technology.
At the heart of socialism, Nazism, and communism is hatred of God. The Bible sacralizes life and marriage, defends property ownership and truth, and puts government under the authority of heaven.
The Old Testament proclaims the sovereignty of God over man and the promise of a Messiah. The New Testament teaches that redemption flows from the wounded hands and side of Jesus Christ, not the grasping hand of government.
To this day, leftists portray Christianity as the enemy of science and equality. That view filters down to schoolchildren via Marxist-educated teachers. It’s one of the main reasons that so many young people have a benign view of socialism and a negative view of Christianity and capitalism.
What the students are not told is that Christianity, far from being a hindrance, has been the key to progress, as explained by the late Stanley L. Jaki in his 1988 book, “The Savior of Science.”
Jaki was a Catholic priest and physicist who earned his Ph.D. at Fordham under the tutelage of Nobel Laureate Victor Hess, who discovered cosmic rays.
The book explains that the biblical concept of a God-created, predictable order laid the groundwork for the scientific method.
Other societies, such as China, India, and Egypt, excelled in early discoveries such as algebra, architecture, paper, and fireworks, but they hit a theological wall at some point.
“They all were dominated by a pantheistic concept of the universe going through eternal cycles,” Jaki writes. In other words, why bother if it is just an endless cycle of rinse and repeat?
“The pattern is the stillbirth of science in each of them in spite of the availability of talents, social organizations, and long periods of peace,” Jaki writes.
Islam, he notes, preserved Greek math and science, including works by Euclid and Archimedes, and created elements of beauty.
But Muslims became content with a capricious reality conferred by Allah, whose creation, according to some Islamic scholars, cannot be predictable. As such, Muslim science began declining in the 11th century, never to recover.
By contrast, the biblical concept of an ordered, discoverable universe has propelled science, with Christians such as physicist Isaac Newton opening up new worlds.
Over the centuries, the West evolved, birthing the Industrial Revolution. In 1776, America’s founding was grounded in the understanding that people are created in the image of God and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.
Against this, what did socialism offer? Divisive envy harnessed to political power aimed at making government a virtual god.
This diabolical doctrine appeals to man’s vices, including sexual excess, while punishing virtues, such as forming God-centered families and self-governing communities. It hates independent thought and life.
Socialism is sold as fairness and compassion, but in practice it spreads misery while enriching a few at the top.
It operates like a man who watches another man build a house, then taxes him out of it, giving the home to people who hail the taxman as a hero.
It is also prone to violence. From the 2020 George Floyd riots to ongoing acclamation for Luigi Mangione, who murdered a health care executive in cold blood on a Manhattan street, the left hums with an undercurrent of savagery.
How else can you explain the coven of Democratic women happily applauding Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey as she signed a law allowing the killing of unborn babies right up to the moment of birth?
It is only by God’s grace that any of us can escape the urge to blame our problems on others and take what’s not ours.
To the extent that it interferes with our growing in the admonition of God and opening our hearts to his offer of mercy, socialism is doing the devil’s work.
Americans need to get it behind us.
Illustration by Linas Garsys / The Washington Times.
Beware of the Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
By Robert Knight
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear appears to be readying for a presidential run in 2028.
The telegenic Democrat was on a speaking tour last year in early primary state South Carolina. In September, he has a book coming out entitled, “Go and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country,” a reference to Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan.
His publisher summarizes it this way: “By regrounding faith in compassion and kindness, he believes we can start to heal as a country.”
Compassion and kindness are God-given, but I thought we were in the midst of healing from the nightmare of the Biden years, with its promotion of atheism, illegal immigration, sexual anarchy, and attacks on Catholics and pro-lifers.
Mr. Beshear, like Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, identifies as a Christian and a moderate and gets priceless media cover while supporting the Democratic Party’s radical social and economic agenda.
In 2023, for instance, he tried to block a state bill protecting minors from “gender affirming care.”
The law prohibits doctors from subjecting gender-confused teens to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible, disfiguring surgeries.
The law also bans males from competing on girls’ sports teams. Most people think this makes sense.
Beshear insisted that such a law “would hurt kids and their families” and violate “parental rights.”
He claimed there was no evidence of widespread harm. To which I would say one butchered child is too many and that evidence of harm is voluminous, including the growing number of suicides and trans-related violence.
On the same day of Mr. Beshear’s veto, both houses of Kentucky’s Republican-controlled legislature overrode it. Naturally, a federal judge, Rebecca Grady Jennings, issued an immediate injunction halting enforcement. The case is still in litigation.
A year earlier, Ms. Jennings, one of President Donald Trump’s few clunker appointees, struck down a Kentucky law prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks and requiring medical oversight for abortion pills.
Gov. Beshear also vetoed that bill, and the legislature overrode him.
In South Carolina, which went for Mr. Trump by 30 points, Mr. Beshear emphasized his Christian faith while boasting that he was “a proud, pro-LGBTQ+ governor.”
This is a stance that ignores Jesus Christ’s clear restating of God’s creation of male and female and God’s marriage-based sexual morality from Genesis.
According to the Washington Post, Mr. Beshear said, “My faith teaches me that all children are children of God, and I didn’t want people picking on those kids.” How about protecting them from quacks who sterilize them and turn them into lifetime medical cases?
By the way, politicians love to haul out the term “children of God” like a magic amulet. The Bible says we’re all created in the image of God, but that we’re not children of God unless we believe in Him and submit to God’s authority. Until then, we’re on the other team, and I don’t mean the New Jersey Devils.
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name,” John 1:12 says. If we’re automatically children of God, we wouldn’t need to be, as Jesus said, born again.
Anyway, Mr. Beshear is not the only wolf in sheep’s clothing. Democrats have become quite adept at using Christianese and buzzwords to fool people. President Barack Obama often gave biblical scholars heartburn over his misappropriating Jesus’s words to justify sexual sin and confiscatory redistribution of wealth.
In Texas, state Rep. James Talarico is battling hard-left U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator. Like Mr. Beshear, Mr. Talarico touts his Christian faith while cleaving to a radical agenda.
“He delivers left-wing orthodoxy in centrist packaging and fights Christian nationalism with Scripture,” the Wall Street Journal explains.
If you’re a patriotic Christian, he’s talking about you and your family as a threat to America.
Much of his rhetoric revolves around Marxist class envy, such as, “Make billionaires pay their fair share in taxes.”
During remarks opposing a bill protecting kids from transgender treatments, he said, “Jesus never once condemned transgender people.”
Well, Jesus didn’t need to, and He welcomed all repentant sinners. The Hebrew Scriptures are crystal clear on sexual morality. Sexual confusion is the province of paganism, which historically often involved child sacrifice as well.
Any comparison to the pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ Democratic Party inferred by readers at this juncture may not be coincidental.
In a 2024 interview with MSNBC, Mr. Talarico said, “Christian nationalism is dangerous. … When politicians use the Bible to push division and hate, they’re not following Jesus; they’re using His name for their own agenda.”
This is classic projection, accusing your opponents of exactly what you’re doing.
Illustration by Alexander Hunter / The Washington Times.