It really galls me. The way our politicians subordinate conviction to the pragmatic, that is.

The church, they say, may be about unchanging standards, but politics is a different story. As Cal Thomas puts it, "You can't apply the principles of a kingdom not of this world to a kingdom of this world. The purists want to apply the principles of a kingdom that knows no compromise to a kingdom that is all about compromise."

I wish these people would wake up. I would suggest that poor public policy is always the result of faulty beliefs. On the one hand, liberals claim that mankind's ills can be eliminated by the right "program," even though government "solutions" to our problems have never worked and never will. Only the Gospel has the power to transform peoples' lives! But on the other hand, when Christian leaders from Pat Robertson to Jerry Falwell invoke God to bless public policies with which they agree, they must conveniently ignore the unbiblical standards underlining those very same policies.

Even our president pursues policies that can only be described as anti-God – despite his constant use of "God-words." By claiming divine approval for his crusade in the Middle East, Bush is guilty of something his blatantly immoral predecessor never was – using God for one's own ends. His vision of the life-changing power of America (note: not the life-changing power of the Gospel) is another case of theological confusion, to put it mildly. It reminds me of what the devil Screwtape said in C. S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters (p. 35) on how to corrupt a Christian:

Let him begin by treating patriotism...as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely a part of the "cause," in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce.... [O]nce you have made the world an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing.

And so our nation is suffering, not from the failure of public policies, but from the failure to think biblically about political issues and to put principle above partisan politics. Political power can never solve the moral dilemmas we face in our nation or in our world! Yet politics has become a secular savior, and the GOP has become an idol for conservative Christians, with George W. Bush as high priest. This is nonsense!

It's time we brought God back into the picture. God is as sovereignly involved in the affairs of Iraq as He is in the affairs of the United States. To think that America is more favored by God than any other nation is idolatry! Yet with the reelection of George W. Bush, conservative Christians have reaffirmed the status quo in U.S. policy toward the Muslim world – a status quo that practically guarantees escalating conflict. And, while the anti-U.S. jihad may experience tactical losses (as in Fallujah), it will keep winning the larger strategic war because our foreign policy enrages Islamists around the globe.

And why are we hated by a billion plus Muslims? It is because of our actions and not, as Mr. Bush likes to say, because of our freedoms. That's why our enemies oppose us so doggedly. Our tiny force in Afghanistan now fights defensively, not offensively, and the war in Iraq has only intensified the Islamist insurgency. What's more, by framing the war as a black-and-white contest between "good and evil," we have only energized our Islamic enemies.

This should be sobering news for the Imperium, but I'm afraid we will have to learn our lesson the hard way – as did the British in Palestine, the French in Algeria, the Israelis in Lebanon, and the Soviets in Afghanistan. Empires die hard, but die they do. It's the curse of hubris.

It's time to confess our sin of nationalism (yes, it is a sin), give up the empire, bring our troops back home, seal our nation's borders, and stop paying other nations' bills, thus restoring the Jeffersonian ideal of "Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations [and] entangling alliances with none."

It's time we went back to being a Republic.