Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly
Barely a day after President Trump’s inauguration, Episcopalian Bishop Marianne Budde used her public pulpit as an occasion to shame newly inaugurated President Trump by quoting Micah 6:8 with its call to ‘do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.’ This would certainly not be the first or only time a social, Left-wing progressive has used a quotation from the Old Testament out of context to endorse the unbiblical, irrational dogmas of their moral-political regime. In fact, abusing Micah 6:8 in the manner Bishop Budde did is almost a predictable trope amongst liberal Christian activists, spokesmen, and influencers. Budde’s denunciation of Trump (which is simply that of most Democrats, progressives, and liberal Christian denominations) is that he is (allegedly) authoritarian, tyrannical, xenophobic, racist, homophobic, and transphobic – and his elevation to the presidency allows him to trample cruelly and monarchically upon the dignity and rights of the oppressed and marginalized classes. Such an interpretation is proving more ridiculous and irrelevant by the day, but I think it reveals a fascinating paradox: Trump’s opponents claim to be radically concerned that he is about to violate rights and trample the oppressed – and yet Trump has risen to political power precisely because he has become the outspoken defender of the genuinely marginalized and oppressed classes in America: those who have been trampled, disregarded, abused, and silenced by the establishment and the progressive regime that has been ascendent for so long.
President Trump challenges the prevailing regime and architects of wokeism, globalism, and progressivism by defending older, classical, traditionally American, and – dare I say – Christian conceptions of justice for individuals and doing right by those who have been wronged. A new sheriff is in town, and the outlaws know it. The Democrats’ predictably outrageous responses to Trump’s actions so far indicate how much of a threat he is to the ‘emperor’s new clothing’ that they have paraded in the public square for so long as ‘justice’ for the ‘oppressed’. He has exposed their fraud on countless occasions, and he is now situated in a position to use the power of his executive office to rectify injustices, lift up the downtrodden, and restore law and order in the land.
March 4th Joint Address to Congress
As a prominent example, President Trump’s recent March 4th joint address to Congress, with its recognitions of special guests, was an incredible display of how Trump works to lift up those who have been genuinely oppressed, silenced, and disregarded.
President Trump honored the families of Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungray, and he publicly acknowledged the horrific tragedies of their assault, rape, and murder at the hands of Venezuelan gang members, illegal immigrants who were let in by the Biden administration’s reckless open-border and catch-and-release policies. These girls are the ones who have been sacrificed to the disastrous border and immigration policies of the woke, globalist regime. Their families have been ignored and disregarded by the elites in power who have perpetuated these broken policies for so long at the expense of victims like Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungray, as well as countless more families who have been harmed by the influx of crime, drugs, human trafficking, homelessness, and competition for low-wage jobs, housing, and benefits. To effect a complete 180-degree turnaround on border policy – as Trump put it so memorably in his speech – “it turned out all we really needed was a new president.” Trump is the executive who takes seriously his duty to protect American citizens, and the contrast with the prior regime could not be clearer.
President Trump also called out the radical, progressive soft-on-crime policies pursued by the Biden administration, Democrat-controlled state governments, and many Soros-backed D.A.s and prosecutors throughout the country. Trump acknowledged and honored the widow and son of NYPD officer Jonathan Dillon, who died in the line of duty, shot by a violent criminal in Long Island. Once again, Trump made the sides morally clear by exposing the ugly moral corruption of those who enabled crime and lawlessness, committing his efforts to restoring law and order, and honoring the families of those who have suffered due to these lawless policies.
President Trump also honored the family of Corey Comperatore, the courageous firefighter and protector of his family, who died at the Butler rally on July 13th when would-be assassin Thomas Crooks fired on Trump. President Trump is right to acknowledge and honor the family of this patriot who died as a result of government malfeasance – either through the inexcusable lack of competence and efficiency in the Biden administration’s Secret Service, or potentially due to more sinister forces (it remains alarming how little we know about Crooks and the July 13th assassination attempt). The speed with which Democrats and the legacy media so quickly discarded and buried this story is astonishing (and raises many questions yet to be fully answered), but it also demonstrated their complete disregard for the tragedy of Comperatore’s death, which puts Trump’s words and actions once again into stark contrast.
On the transgender issues, Trump also knows how to defend the cause of the true victims. In his March 4th speech, he honored his guest, January Littlejohn, a mother who was forced to fight the advocates of transgender ideology when they sought to help ‘transition’ her daughter at public school without the mother’s knowledge. He also honored Payton McNabb, a female high-school athlete who was seriously injured in a volleyball match by a biological male playing on a girls’ team. These are just a few of the many real victims of the transgender madness: it is their stories that have been silenced by the media, their rights stripped away. Trump clearly takes their side, and his executive orders have declared the objective truth about biological gender and expressed his intention to protect children from transgender ideology, castration, and mutilation, as well as protecting women’s spaces and sports.
Rectifying Lawfare and Censorship
Beyond the guests at his March 4th speech, President Trump has shown courage and determination in using the executive office to vindicate those who have been seriously wronged by the government. Trump has pardoned many victims of lawfare, including peaceful pro-lifers convicted by the Biden administration under the FACE Act and the January 6th protesters who were selectively, severely, and disproportionately prosecuted and sentenced. He also ended the baseless federal prosecution of Ethan Haim, the whistleblower who exposed the illegal transgender operations that were being conducted by the Texas children’s hospital. These people are the real-time victims of lawfare and abuse of government power, and they have suffered tremendously through destruction of their reputations, costly legal expenses for their defense, criminal sentences, and even time in prison.
Similarly, Trump’s championing of free speech and his attempt to root out all government-sponsored censorship is a victory for all those who have been censored for years by media and Big Tech – and, which we now know, often at the behest of government agencies. These are the countless victims of the progressive censorial regime that nearly succeeded in quelling dissent and free speech, and Trump has come to their aid and defense. His promotion of prominent figures like Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, and Jay Bhattacharya, who have been falsely maligned and censored, is a fitting and appropriate step in his attempt to rectify the egregious systems of censorship that have operated virtually unchecked until recently.
And of course, President Trump is the chief advocate for those who have experienced lawfare, censorship, and injustice because he has himself been the primary victim of such measures since 2016. As Trump put it famously on the campaign trail, “They’re not after me, they’re after you, and I just happen to be standing in the way.” There is plenty of truth in that, which is why the architects of the established progressive regime have tried everything from media slanders, censorship, impeachment, deep state collusion, lawfare, and assassination to prevent him from challenging their status quo.
Fighting the Federal Government
President Trump’s existential conflict with the administrative state and the federal bureaucracy is also an arena in which he is fighting to protect the American people. His attempts to root out corruption and wasteful spending through Elon Musk’s D.O.G.E. commission, as well as his critical battles to control the administrative state, control the appointment of executive officials, and reduce the workforce of federal agencies, are not mere political theatre. These actions are a serious attempt from President Trump to remind the nation that the government must serve the American people and must be accountable to elected officials. Wasting taxpayer dollars and degrading the currency through endless borrowing (i.e., debt spending) are actually injustices against the American citizens, and Trump is taking steps to combat them. Though it remains to be seen how effective his measures will be in the long run, they are to be applauded and encouraged by those serious about restoring limited government that serves and protects our citizens. For too long the rights and interests of hardworking Americans have been sacrificed to the inefficiency, corruption, bloat, and grift of a vastly outsized federal government with its regulatory tentacles touching every part of our lives. Once again, here as in other policies, Trump is the champion for the ‘little guy’ downtrodden by the government.
The International Stage
Even President Trump’s militant posts on Truth Social threatening Hamas with swift and unyielding vengeance unless they restore American and Israeli hostages are a refreshing breath of moral clarity and defensive strength following four years of Biden’s fumbling and failed foreign policies and projection of American weakness abroad. President Trump’s message is clear: as chief executive, he will fight for American citizens, demand justice on their behalf, and go to bat to protect them. He is threatening those who ought to fear the United States and signaling his protection for our people from vicious harm and indignities such as those American and Israeli hostages have endured at the hands of Hamas.
And President Trump’s realpolitik approach to the Ukraine conflict demonstrates his desire, as he emphasized in the recent heated exchange with Zelensky, to save Ukrainian and Russian lives that would otherwise be thrown away in a conflict that cannot realistically end in total Ukrainian victory. Compared to the Russia-hawk ideologues of the D.C. establishment and intelligence community who promote endless war against Russia without regard for the casualties or risks involved, President Trump and VP Vance are genuinely interested not only in prioritizing American interests, but also in ending a bloody conflict that is costing thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives. These are lives that would otherwise continue to be fed into the meat-grinder of war if the progressive, internationalist regime had its way. Trump has the courage and moral clarity to advocate for something different that could actually save lives and establish peace.
Pro-Life?
My survey of how Trump is turning the tables and fighting for the oppressed would not be complete unless I mentioned his victories in the pro-life arena, including his appointment of originalist, conservative justices to the federal judiciary and his rescinding of the Biden administration’s radically pro-abortion policies (from the HHS and within other federal agencies and departments). Trump is certainly a mixed bag on the pro-life issue (his stance on IVF, for example, continues to raise legitimate concerns with many religious and intellectual conservatives), but it would be unfair to dismiss the remarkable accomplishments Trump has wrought for the pro-life cause, most notably the appointment of Supreme Court justices who finally overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed many individual states to move forward with pro-life protections at the state level. Let’s not forget that Trump pardoned pro-life activists in his first week in office, not to mention expressing his open support for the March for Life. VP Vance’s address was also incredibly supportive of the pro-life cause. It is not an overstatement to remark that Trump is indeed the most effectively pro-life president we have ever seen in terms of actions taken that have moved the ball forward in defending the unborn – who have also, of course, been the victims of the sexual revolution and the progressive regime that champions ‘reproductive rights’.
Conclusion
In all these actions, President Trump shows that he clearly understands that the chief duty of the executive is to protect citizens by executing the laws – to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” (U.S. Constitution, Art. II, §3). The president is duty-bound to provide American citizens protection, which is the sine qua non of a social compact. Without the guarantee of protection of natural rights by the laws and law enforcement, no man would have entered the social compact. Alexander Hamilton described the executive office thus in Federalist 70:
Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks: It is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws, to the protection of property against those irregular and high handed combinations, which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice, to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction and of anarchy.
President Trump is certainly an energetic executive focused on the protection of the community against threats from foreign attacks, from domestic criminals, and from the abuses perpetrated by our own overweening government. He understands that protection and allegiance are reciprocal in any just government, and he is sincerely seeking to fulfill his duty to provide protection to the American people.
Trump is obviously a mere mortal–fallible, sinful man–and the sincerity of his alleged Christian faith is certainly unclear (and the sincerity of his faith is actually entirely irrelevant to the following). Nevertheless, I wish to commend him because he takes seriously his duty as a magistrate who “does not bear the sword in vain” and who is called to serve God by doing justice – “an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom. 13:4). We are thankful to finally have a ruler who is “not a terror to good conduct, but to bad” (Rom. 13:2). For too long, we have experienced a government and society where the scales have been flipped – where the virtuous and innocent have suffered and been penalized while the immorality, lawlessness, corruption, and deception have been enabled, endorsed, and protected. We have experienced a government and society where good has been called evil and light, darkness (Isaiah 5:20-23). The emperor has no clothes, but many have been too afraid to challenge the lies and criticize the regime. Trump is drastically changing this status quo overnight, and hopefully, it will inspire courage in many.
The Westminster Confession of Faith describes the office of magistrate thus: “God, the supreme Lord and king of all the world, hath ordained civil magistrates to be under Him over the people, for His own glory and the public good; and to this end, hath armed them with the power of the sword, for the defense and encouragement of them that are good, and for the punishment of evildoers” (23.1). I’m thankful that President Trump takes this duty seriously and seeks to restore justice and to defend those who have been harmed, overlooked, ignored, and downtrodden. After all, magistrates are accountable to God to fulfill the duty He has entrusted to them. I will continue to pray for President Trump as he fulfills the office entrusted to him that God will use him to accomplish justice, to do good for our citizens, and to govern in the fear of the Lord.
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