Expediency Trumps Honesty, If One Is a Leftist

There is a tradition in Eastern Europe that we should say only good or nothing of the dead. Given the ratings of Chris Matthews, decency requires that I say only good or nothing of his show on MSNBC. If it ain’t already dead, it is a “dimly burning wick” (Isa. 42:3) so it doesn’t need my help to get extinguished. After all, Chris Matthews is the guy who said that American companies are sitting idly on trillions of dollars and refuse to spend them, only to do harm to Obama at the next presidential election. (He never mentioned what inflation would be produced by trillions of dollars poured into the economy and how that would hurt the workers and the poor.) With such statements out of Matthews’ mouth, he doesn’t need critics.

The only reason I am talking about his show is that Matthews said something that is a very important principle for all political action on the left that is used by Communists, Nazis, socialists, and American Democrats. It is important to know it if we want to be informed about the real state of affairs in the American political life.

Last week, Matthews admitted that America is basically conservative. He didn’t say he was hit with this revelation in the last few days. He must have known it all along since he commented that Bill Clinton knew it back in the 1990s and acted accordingly to stay in power. If Bill Clinton knew it, Chris Matthews must have known it too. We don’t know what made Matthews admit so much. He may have had a road-to-Damascus experience the night before that show. Or he may have just been too careless and let the truth slip out of his mouth – such things happen even to Communist media anchors once in a while. Whatever the reason was, Chris Matthews said it: America is basically conservative.

He didn’t elaborate on the moral issues of it. For example, if America is basically conservative, what in the world is a liberal President doing representing it? Wasn’t democracy all about “rule of the people”? Well, if the people are conservative, as Matthews rightly observed, they should be represented by a conservative President, and conservative politicians, n’est-ce pas? Isn’t that the very point of democracy? And if it is, isn’t the Democrat Party the one that should insist on what the people want, and give them conservative policies and a conservative President?

But no, Chris Matthews doesn’t worry about the moral issue of a liberal President representing a basically conservative population. His problem is exactly the opposite: There is danger that the liberal President will lose his next elections because he wasn’t expedient enough in his words.

Matthews praises Clinton for his approval rating. Why is Clinton’s approval rating so high? Because Clinton was able to tell the “middle” what they wanted to hear. Not what he believed, note that, but what they wanted to hear. Matthews just loves that. He elaborates in his own words:

Scare off the middle and you lose the country. You hold the middle by hugging to their main concerns. You focus on the economy, yes it’s the economy, stupid. You convince people that you want government involvement when and only when the private sector can’t act. You do it out of necessity, not out of desire.

Note the last sentence: “You do it out of necessity, not out of desire.” Clinton didn’t desire to say the words he said; but he had to, if he wanted to stay in power. Staying in power by saying things he didn’t believe deserves admiration, Chris Matthews says. The voters won’t like your big-government schemes? Lie to them. Then lie to them again. Then lie to them again, and again, and again. Until you are secured in your political seat. Then you can do whatever you want to do. Of course, that’s not where you stop, warns Matthews. The “big things” that need to be done by a President also need to be “sold” to the political middle. So he advises Obama to do the “things,” and sell them.

Notice that in this whole tirade there isn’t a single word about what Clinton and Obama believed. It’s of no consequence. It doesn’t matter if what they sell to the public is what they actually believe or do. The important thing is to stay in power, no matter what. Political success is everything in Matthews’ morally twisted world. And he advises politicians to have the same views.

Such resort to lies and fraud is not new for the socialists and other leftists. Lenin, for one, the founder of the bloodiest regime that ever existed in history, was a master at using political deception. In his first editorial in Pravda the day after the coup on October 25, 1917 he declared that,

As a democratic government we can not disregard the decision of the people, even if we do not agree with it. If the peasants follow the Social Revolutionaries farther, even if they give that party a majority in the Constituent Assembly, we shall say: so be it.

The Social Revolutionaries (SR) were a rival socialist party, much more moderate than the Bolsheviks, and they had very large following among the Russian peasants, the single largest voting bloc in Russia at the time. Lenin didn’t feel strong enough to oppose the majority of the population, so he resorted to lies. The Bolsheviks adopted the SR’s slogans, “give the land to the peasants” and “the factories to the workers.” He simply did what Matthews advises Obama to do: Lie to the middle about your views, tell them what they want to hear, not because you desire it, but because it is expedient. Of course, Lenin never believed his own propaganda. In his State and Revolution written just a couple of months before the October coup, he already declared the role of the state in the “first phase of Communism”: After the revolution, in a socialist society, the state will “safeguard” the common ownership of the means of production, will safeguard the equality in labor and in the distribution of goods. “Safeguard” turned out to mean “control” and eventually “own.” Any peasants or workers who believed the Bolshevik propaganda that the land would be given to the peasants and the factories to the workers were completely deluded.

A month later the SR’s did win the elections with a staggering 58%. Trusting the promises of the Bolsheviks, the SR supporters appeared in Petrograd unarmed to witness the first democratically elected Constituent Assembly. Lenin’s supporters were armed. By the end of the first day it became obvious this would be the last day of the new democracy – armed Bolsheviks disrupted the first meeting of the Assembly, and the next day the building was closed and the delegates forced to go home. So much for Lenin’s promises. Within several years all the factories were made state property and all workers forced to join the only existing government-established labor union. In another ten years all land was made government property and the peasants were forced into collectives. The slogans the Communists used to get to power were just that – slogans – and they had no other function but to get to power.

And Chris Matthews is advising Obama to do exactly that: Use slogans to keep being in power. Whether he believes them or not is of no consequence to Matthews. Honesty plays no part in the socialist political strategy.

In a sense, it is unfortunate so few people actually watch Chris Matthews show. Had they watched it, they would see Chris Matthews eager to utilize methods of older times that are hopelessly outdated in the modern world of Internet. Matthews calls the conservatives the “Cro-Magnon political party,” and then he exposes himself as a political Neanderthal. He has completely missed the arrival of the new times. The Tea Party is moving America in a completely opposite direction: Conservative politicians are now forced to actually believe what they say, and act accordingly. The Tea Party’s main thrust is not even against the Democrats, it is against the RINOs, those that have used conservative rhetoric and votes for decades while believing and acting like leftists. The new political climate is not only not tolerant to politicians who say what they don’t believe; it is actively hostile to them, and the new conservative voting majority is actively working to remove those dishonest politicians. Matthews is completely out of touch with reality if he believes that the old game of “tell them what they want, do what they don’t want” is going to work anymore.

But Chris Matthews has no other choice. The Bible tells us in Matthew 13:30 that in history, the tares and the wheat grow until harvest, which is the end of the age. Reformed theologians interpret this as the growth of believers and unbelievers to the logical maturity of their respective worldviews. Christians will grow in righteousness, non-Christians will grow in wickedness. More and more Christians will grow consistent with the Law of God and obey its precepts. More and more non-Christians will grow consistent with their rejection of the Law of God and therefore indulge in greater and greater iniquity. Lies, theft, murder, terrorism, fraud, envy, will become more and more the preferred methods for action for them. Non-Christians like Matthews will see no problem in using immoral behavior to stay in power; in fact, as we see, they will openly call for it. Leftists will resort to lies more and more, as Christians will be faithful to the truth more and more.

The problem for the leftists is that the more they neglect honesty in the name of expediency, the less successful they will become. Obama’s presidency is a clear example of it. Chris Matthews did admit in the same show that Obama won not for any quality of his own, but because of the widespread perceived dishonesty of Bush’s administration. Obama and his supporters in Congress and the Senate indulged in even greater dishonesty – only to witness the fastest fall in popularity a President ever had. The more lies they try to use, the more exposed they become, and the less able to stay in power. Times have changed, and God is not mocked.

And this is not a temporary change. History is moving toward the practical fulfillment of Ben Franklin’s maxim: “Honesty is the best policy.” (He got it from Cervantes’ Don Quixote.) Which means that history will become more and more hostile to Chris Matthews and the likes of him. Socialism has only a generation or two to live. Not more.