We read in the Revelation of St. John, twelfth chapter and seventh verse: “There was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. And the dragon fought, and his angels—and prevailed not.”
If we take this picture not as a one-time occurrence in the past or the future—but as a continuing conflict that will not end until human history ends, it explains a lot about the world we are living in right now.
Good and evil are locked in a death-struggle that spills over from the heavenly realms into every area of our earthly lives.
War between nations. War between religions. War between classes. War between races. War between the generations. War between the sexes.
Author’s Note: The Western Conservative Summit, presented by Centennial Institute and Colorado Christian University and famed as the largest annual patriot gathering outside Washington DC, convened for the 13th time in Denver on June 3-4, 2022. I helped found the Summit in 2010, and it was my honor to speak at this year’s closing session. This is what I said.
Culture wars. Twitter wars. Pandemic wars. Climate wars. Free speech wars.
War on the campus. War in the newsroom. War in the classroom. War in the courtroom. Even war in the bathroom, if you can believe it.
Remember that Chicago song from the ‘60s, “Does anybody know what time it is?”
My answer is, it’s wartime. We live in wartime, and we’d better know what time it is so we can get up every morning and focus on that.
Because to lose this war is to lose everything we hold dear—and at this point we’re not winning.
But if you expected me then to say fight harder, fight tooth and nail, fight fair or foul, never mind the rules, the stakes are too high—that’s not my message today.
I want to propose to you a different way of fighting. It will not only give us, I believe, a better chance of winning.
It will enable us to hold our heads high, win or lose, conscience clear, honor intact. It will help us pass the Mother Teresa test: Always faithful even if not always successful.
My proposal is simply this: That we who call ourselves conservatives should at all times and in all circumstances conduct ourselves by, and argue from, what mankind through the ages has come to call the Golden Rule.
“Do unto others as we would have them do unto us.”
Act only according to that standard. Speak only according to that standard. Reason only according to that standard. Our opponents will be dumbstruck.
Let us work toward becoming an America where no one uses the power of government to put something over on their fellow citizens that he or she would regard as unfair if put over on themselves.
An America where demonizing those you disagree with is just not done. It’s just not.
Granted, it's all too easy to speak venom in the twilight of social media, rather than in the daylight face to face.
So easy for the one million powerful to inflict a wrong on the ten million powerless far away, rather than the same injustice being done between individuals in person.
But the Golden Rule disapproves both situations equally, regardless of anonymity or scale.
Golden Rule politics is not a magic wand, but it’s a powerful spotlight of clarity.
It works on the things that Americans argue about, the issues.
And it works on the way we argue about them, the process.
Take abortion. If you’re glad your mother didn’t snuff out your life in the womb, why is it okay for some other unborn baby to have his or her life snuffed out in the womb?
Take crime. If you wouldn’t want to be a low-income urban dweller whose neighborhood became unlivable with violence, vagrancy, and drugs, why is it okay to impose those hellish conditions on some welfare mom by way of underfunded policing and permissive prosecutors?
Take critical race theory. If you wouldn't want those in authority to brand your child as “hereditary oppressor” or “hereditary victim” with one look at their skin color, why is it okay to turn loose the schools and the corporations and the military to brand others that way?
Those are some issue examples. Now for some process examples—and here it may get uncomfortable, because few of us these days, on the right or the left, are blameless in the current overheated atmosphere.
If I want the other side to credit me with decent motives, even when we disagree bitterly, where do I get off accusing them of bad motives?
If I don’t like the progressives to dehumanize me with vile names, where do I get off doing the same thing to them?
If I’m disgusted with the left for huddling in their little information bubble and ignoring the contrary facts and logic available on, say, Fox News, how broad and diverse is my own information intake?
I repeat: Golden Rule politics are not a magic wand. The ugly rhetoric and dysfunctional government will be with us for a long time yet. The war will still rage.
But think about how a “Do unto others” ethic can begin to put a new face on the conservative movement, starting immediately.
ts mild, generous, neighborly tone dispels the lie that conservatives are selfish, heartless, and opposed to all change or progress.
Its visionary appeal to renew America’s community spirit breaks up the supposed liberal monopoly over those “fair, care, share” feelings that own the political center.
“Do unto others as we would have them do unto us” is the ultimate unity flag for a war-weary people to rally round.
It commands the moral high ground in every clash of values or collision of willsAcross the cultures, across the faiths, across the ages, all roads lead to the Golden Rule—as C.S. Lewis demonstrates in his wonderful little book, The Abolition of Man.
Western Conservative Summit delegates, brothers and sisters in arms in a world at war, I plead with you.
Whether you are here as a Christian aspiring to live by the Gospel, or as a Jew aspiring to live by the Torah, or as a non-believer aspiring to live as Jefferson did—pledge yourself with me that we go forth from here tonight with one common purpose as People of the Golden Rule.
In this war of good and evil, spilling from the heavenly realms into our earthly struggle, the ethic of “Do unto others” can help us turn down the temperature and bridge the polarization, even as it gives us new courage to stand for what is good and true.
The Golden Rule puts practical force behind our nation’s founding principle of “All created equal.”
The Golden Rule drives the dynamo of mutual benefit that creates wealth in our market economy.
The Golden Rule expresses that beautiful balance of individual freedom and personal responsibility to which I have devoted my whole life in politics, sixty years and counting.
The Golden Rule is a still small voice of conscience reminding us of Solzhenitsyn’s warning that the dividing line of good and evil runs not between nations or belief systems, but through the center of every human heart.
My heart, your heart, President Biden’s heart, President Putin’s heart. All of us, no exceptions. That’s where the battle has to be fought and won.
I close again with our text from Revelation 12. The dragon and his dark forces fought fiercely, we are told. Fiercely they fought, but they did not prevail. What hope, what encouragement, is in that little word “not.”
The war rages on. The dragon is mighty. The outcome is sure in God’s eternity, but uncertain in our human lifetime. The summons to us is simply to be faithful and fearless.
Join with me in pledging to do our part for this land we love, as People of the Golden Rule.
May God bless and keep us, every one.