Gordon H. Clark Comments on Propaganda and History

"Though it may be impossible to fool all of the people all of the time, yet the large majority of the populace is so stupid, so forgetful, or so irresponsible that a moderately efficient propaganda machine, run by the government, a party, or a well organized political action group, can easily fool a sufficiently large number of people to keep itself in power for a long time."

"With amazing foresight he [Jacob Burckhardt] predicted that governments would no longer advance business and industry, but would disregard economic law and base their decisions with absolute brutality on political purposes."  

Dr. Gordon H. Clark

At the risk of quoting too much at once, I want to show how communist propaganda is not a new problem but an old one.  I will save the quote for later but Dr. Gordon H. Clark sounds almost prophetic in the passage from which I will quote in his book on historiography.  The fact is that there is no such thing as objective news or objective reporting of historical events.  History is chosen to be represented by the high points selected by those who control the mass media.  History is written as it occurs in the contemporary news but even the news can be fake as we have observed in recent times during the Trump administration.  It seems that postmodernism has taken over the profession of journalism and even historiography.  History has become so malleable as to be almost pure fiction.

Pure capitalism based on an atheistic materialism, however, is no better than communism or socialism.  Without the Bible as our beginning axiom there is nothing morally wrong with making lots of money selling pornography or performing perverse sex acts for huge sums of money.  So that pretty much does Atlas Shrugged and libertarianism in if you are a Christian.  Christianity is not a religion.  It is an entire worldview, a biblical, theological, logical and philosophical way of understanding everything.  

It is not a "theory" of everything but a rational way of interpreting the propositional system of truth revealed in the Bible and applying that logical and systematic way of viewing the world into practical application in the so-called sciences, including political science.  This is why pure capitalism divorced from God is immoral.  The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.  (1 Timothy 6:10 NKJV).  Gambling is a sin because God commands man to work for a living and because man is commanded to be a good steward of the resources God provides him through providence.  Gambling is based on chance and the house always wins.  Entire cities and even states have been built on the so-called gaming industry.  The Las Vegas shooting that occurred on October 1, 2017 was perpetrated by a so-called high roller and over 58 victims were killed not including the suicide of the shooter. The man was retired and had a large nest egg saved of several million dollars.  At first the news reported that the man was winning big at the casinos.  But in the end it turns out that he had gambled away all of his savings except $250,000, which he left to his girlfriend.  Yet the news and the casinos and law enforcement could not figure out that the motive was apparently linked to the man's huge losses in the casinos.  Go figure.  This is just another example of the propaganda used in the media to excuse an industry that preys on gambling addicts.  Of course the addict has no excuse but neither do the executives in the gambling industry.  Profit for the sake of profit is evil.  Even Jesus condemned prostitution and greed.  In short, attaching the term "Reformed" or the term "Christian" to libertarianism only creates an oxymoron since the Bible nowhere says that our judicial or political system should be based on principles of greed or covetousness.

This is not to say that it is morally wrong to work to create wealth or to become wealthy.  (Psalm 112:1-3 NKJV). It just means that morality is the basis for honest capitalism, not deception or destroying others for one's own profit.  This is also why child pornography, human trafficking, prostitution, drug dealing and other forms of immorality have traditionally been considered vices and were against the judicial and criminal laws of our nation because vices exploit weaker individuals for pleasure or profit and such vices undermine both individual freedom and the moral fabric of society as a whole.  On the other hand, Christian liberty is guided by the moral law of God and is the result of regeneration.  There is no law against walking in the Holy Spirit.  (Galatians 5:22-25 NKJV).

But equally wrong is the totalitarian power grab by the progressive left in the United States.  Ronald Reagan, our former President, once said that if totalitarianism were to take hold in America it would be through the fascism of the socialist left.  While they do not want to own all private property they want so much government control as to make private enterprise almost obsolete.

The irony is that during World War II both the United States and Great Britain fought together to defeat the national socialism of the Nazi party in Germany.  For a time Winston Churchill did cooperate with Joseph Stalin to defeat Adolf Hitler but that was only for expediency in defeating the Nazis.  Churchill was certainly not naive.

Getting back to the original point of my post, however, I want to show how dishonest the political left and the mainstream media in our nation has become.  I will do that by quoting a lengthy passage from Dr. Gordon H. Clark's book, Historiography:  Secular and Religious:

History for the Sake of Philosophy

There is a third possible justification for studying history, one closely allied to but broader than the second.  The second mainly envisaged the utility of history in its bearing on politics.  But already hints have occurred that history stands in relation to other subjects as well:  Philosophy and religion, for example,.  The utility and justification of history may then be found in the position it holds as a part of an all embracing philosophy.

Dr. Gordon H. Clark, Historiography:  Secular and Religious. 1971.  Second edition.  (Jefferson:  Trinity Foundation,  1994).  P. 15.

Here Clark ties history to philosophy and religion and to an "all embracing philosophy," which I take to mean a worldview.  But his remarks on the propaganda tactics of the left are even more to the point:

History for the Sake of the Present

. . . . Whether such lessons [of history] are heeded is a quite different question.  It lowers us from the level of scholarship to that of common politics, where often enough it is the wrong lesson that is learned.  Though it may be impossible to fool all of the people all of the time, yet the large majority of the populace is so stupid, so forgetful, or so irresponsible that a moderately efficient propaganda machine, run by the government, a party, or a well organized political action group, can easily fool a sufficiently large number of people to keep itself in power for a long time.  During the thirties the British Labor Party and half of the Tories favored disarmament and business with Hitler.  Would anyone have imagined that after World War II the English people would have turned Churchill out of office, have held mass demonstrations against military defense, and have tried to do business with Russian and Chinese communists? 

In the United States the government began to impose controls on agriculture in the twenties.  For forty years now these controls have made the agriculture situation worse.  One might think that the obvious lesson is to remove the controls that have so aggravated the trouble.  But nearly everyone, except the farmers who in 1963 voted overwhelmingly against the Kennedy proposals, thinks that what is needed is more stringent controls.  The lesson that seems to have been learned is that controls always need more bureaucrats and therefore a top-heavy bureaucracy will use its political power to increase itself.  And besides, Lord Acton with his "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely" was only an aristocratic fuddy-duddy. 

Now, admittedly, voters know next to nothing about history, and very few people have even the least notion of a philosophy of history.  Yet the study of history may be justified by its present utility to the few scholars who are thereby enabled to silence their ideals in pessimistic despair and, like Jeremiah, offer their lamentations to a heedless and perverse generation.

Jacob Burckhardt saw clearly the . . . tendencies of democracy.  The masses are irresponsible and materialistic; they distrust the educated man and elect unscrupulous leaders who promise them everything.  Government then depends on managing the news.  The result is the totalitarian welfare state, from which and for which dictators arise.  Now, Jacob Burckhardt was not Senator Goldwater attacking President Kennedy.  He was a history professor who lived in the nineteenth century.  But even then he saw the rise of dictators because he understood that the so-called liberals had lost their sense of moral distinctions and were preparing the way for a criminal seizure of power.  With amazing foresight he predicted that governments would no longer advance business and industry, but would disregard economic law and base their decisions with absolute brutality on political purposes.

Ibid., Clark.  Pp. 13-14.

It is difficult not to be concerned about Clark's insights here when we apply them to today's political situation and the outrageous lies and propaganda being used to try to oust President Donald J. Trump from the executive office of the United States.  Not only is the left using every media outlet to attack Trump with political propaganda but they actually broke the law to spy on his campaign before he won the election and then tried to have him removed from office by using the same tactics by way off the secret FISA courts.  It was my opinion long ago that the FISA courts would be used as a political weapon by the leftists and Marxists in the Democrat party to attack political and religious conservatives, including Evangelical Christians.  My worst fears have come to pass.

The same kinds of fake news tactics are being used to spin the border crisis and to actually break long standing laws that prohibit illegal immigration.  The Marxist Democrat party does not want to close the border or support existing laws because they only care about political power, not the welfare of illegal immigrants or the welfare of America citizens.

I have never been so naive as to support civil religion.  But the fact that there are checks and balances in our political system is because no one individual or political party can be trusted to do the right thing.  All men are equally corrupted by sin.  That is why our founding fathers in this country created three equal branches of government to check the powers of the other two branches.  Unfortunately the founding fathers did not foresee the rise of Marxism and totalitarianism.  It seems to me that the great experiment of a constitutional and republican form of democracy has at last come to a point of collapse.  Unless God grants Americans the gift of the new birth and our country turns back to a political philosophy deduced from biblical principles I fear that chaos and anarchy may be on the way.  If so every citizen has a God given right to fight for freedom by force if necessary.  We ought to obey God rather than men.  (Acts 5:29).  We are to obey the judicial laws of the nation we live in but when the sodomite lobby makes Christianity against the law or when public schools teach communist dogma as the official state religion, it is time for Christians to rise up and to oppose the government by force if necessary.  (Romans 13:1-7).