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restoring our biblical and constitutional foundations
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The Trinity Strategy:
The Key to Lapping Nader and the Libertarians While Tripping King George W. Bush
(Pastor Mark Dankof gave this speech at the Maryland State Constitution Party Convention on May 22nd. In it he offered the gathered faithful and presumptive presidential nominee Michael Peroutka the achievable means to lap Ralph Nader and the Libertarians while tripping King George W. Bush. An excerpt of his remarks follows:)
I am pleased to be invited to address the fine people of Maryland in this auditorium who have given their Favorite Son and Daughter-in-Law, Michael and Diane Peroutka, an official blessing and sendoff before these two fine people stand on a stage at the Valley Forge Convention Center in Pennsylvania June 23-26 and receive the formal endorsement of the National Constitution Party as the next President and First Lady of these United States. We pray for them today–for their physical sustenance and protection; their spiritual discernment and wisdom; and their encouragement in this most incredible undertaking that has only just begun.
I am also pleased to tell you that my own credentials as a political prophet have been underscored with the developments of recent days. David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times, Pat Buchanan, CBS News, and the 3rd Party Project of the Hubert Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota all agree with one voice that George W. Bush is coming apart like a cheap suit in winter. More significantly, they are in complete accord that his undoing will come at the hands of an increasingly fed-up and angry American Right. The Real Right is now emerging to reject the Bush dynasty, their sleazy alliance with Corporate America and the Neo-Cons, and their continued sellout of the average American foot soldier in the war for control of our country’s destiny and future both domestically and abroad.
It has finally occurred to someone that no credible American conservative analysis of Mr. Bush’s record can conclude he is worthy of the votes of any Christian voter; any working-class American; those sickened by a Leviathan Federal government and New World Order; or those of us who are seething at the results of an un-Constitutional, preemptive war and foreign adventure in Iraq which is costing more lives and money by the hour, even as it creates a new breeding ground and recruiting center for anti-American activists and terrorists on a global scale. Woodrow Wilson Franklin Delano Bush seeks to export his version of "democracy" to the people of Iraq, even as he and his seek to rob all of us as Americans of every ounce of our own political, economic, and Constitutional wherewithal---for the well-being of less than 1% of the total populace of the United States. We must stop him–and not next year or in four more years. As the late Redskin coach, George Allen would say, The Future is Now.
The Bush record can be summarized as follows: a $550 billion dollar Federal budget deficit; a $600 billion dollar manufacturing trade deficit; the achievement of the dubious high bar figure of $7 trillion dollars in national debt; the outsourcing of another 2.7 million jobs abroad since his inauguration in January of 2001; the carte-blanche acceptance of another 12 million illegal aliens within our boundaries; the ongoing legitimization of New World Order trade agreements like NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, and PMFN for Communist China that preempt American law and sovereignty; a USA Patriot Act that destroys 4th Amendment guarantees against unlawful search and seizure by empowering Federal intelligence agencies to break into any home or business in this country without a warrant or even a consultation with a Federal judge; the continued tax subsidization of stem-cell research and Planned Parenthood abortuaries nationwide; spending increases for un-Constitutional and counterproductive Federal departments like the Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Arts; a closer alliance with the Log Cabin Gay Republican caucus; and a preemptive military strike against a foreign nation on faulty intelligence, false pretense, and without a formal Congressional declaration of war. In this latter instance, Mr. Bush has followed the script of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC); Ariel Sharon; and his Likudnik advisers, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Wurmser to a tee. The results are evident–a war costing $150 billion dollars and counting; 800+ American dead and counting; 20,000 Iraqi dead and counting; and the eternal animosity of everyone in the Middle East--Shiite and Sunni Moslem and Palestinian Arab alike–who does not support the Israel First foreign policy of the Republican-Democrat-AIPAC bankrolled crowd which continues to support death and destruction at the behest of Empire and the acquisition of a non-negotiated hegemony in the et ernal quest for oil, natural gas, and the accompanying pipeline routes---along with Mr. Sharon’s expanded vision for settlements from the Nile to the Euphrates.
So we know what the cataclysmic problems are, along with the impending arrival of the consequences. Bush and Kerry are two sides of a fake, disastrous, and largely identical counterfeit coin as they lead the American public like the Gerasene swine over the edge of the Republic’s last cliff with these clinically evil policies. And in my humble judgment our Party is the only one with the correct policy prescriptions and recommendations. We also have in Michael Peroutka a man I truly believe to be the best Presidential candidate extant for all the reasons previously enumerated at this Maryland State Convention. And yet as Pat Buchanan observed recently in The American Conservative, our Party has yet to prove it can take our vision and our showroom Presidential candidate into the Political Marketplace of Ideas and Voter Preferences in a way which will begin making the difference in a national election at the polls in the first Tuesday in November.
This is why I have accepted Mr. Peroutka’s invitation to spend Saturday with all of you here in Maryland this morning and afternoon. For without braggadocio and pretension, I come with humble heart and spirit before our First Couple and each and every delegate in this auditorium to suggest that I believe I possess the keys-- by God’s grace alone-- to a stunning performance for our Presidential nominee and National Constitutional Party that will confound the Republicrats and their Corporate Media lapdogs in the first Tuesday in November. I offer it to Michael–and to all of you in the Party nationwide as the roadmap to victory in our attempt to reclaim the Old Republic again.
Directive Number One is this: While we would be most grateful for the services of an Alan Keyes, a D. James Kennedy or James Dobson [or the like], or a Senator Bob Smith in the implementation of our vision for this nation and the Constitution Party that will lead it, we must lose no further time or breath in waiting for them to leave a bankrupt Bush-led Republican Party. We must be grateful to God for the incredible leadership He has bestowed upon us with gifted servants and political leaders within our midst who have stepped out in discernment and faith-filled courage to jettison the hopeless Party of Lincoln. We are not in need of the galaxy of Republican and Christian superstars who contradict their message and claim by riding the horse of George Bush and Dick Cheney into the moral and political abyss. We are presently in possession of the components of the team that can recover our nation and what was the Old Constitutional Republic once more.
I discovered this in 1996 on Coronado Island outside of San Diego after the Republican National Convention, in that ill-fated year when our hopes of attracting Pat Buchanan as our Presidential standard-bearer were dashed on the Pacific’s rocks and shoals in the wake of Pat’s endorsement of Bob Dole. Driving across Coronado Bridge to the Constitution Party convention held that fateful summer at the Hotel Del Coronado, I was invited to a even brighter galaxy of stars who understood themselves to be our servants–and the Lord’s. These names included Howard Phillips, Thom Holmes, Daniel New, Debbie Hopper, Jim Clymer, Franklin Sanders, and Janine Hansen; since that time, new names have been added to the galaxy of lights I first discovered in 1996, including the two people in this auditorium–Michael and Diane Peroutka, who have put everything they have and are into this fight for those things that speak to the eternal and the transcendent in our lives--and in American and world h istory--at this moment. With no intended disrespect to Mr. Keyes, Mr. Dobson, Mr. Kennedy, Senator Smith, or my friend Pat Buchanan, I will not trade our players for theirs, nor the head of their Party for ours, nor their future for ours. The Future is Now and It’s Ours because this is our moment in history, with leadership that has jettisoned the comforts of book contracts, TV contracts, consultant fees, Washington cocktail parties, and all the rest of it, to lead you and me–the common foot-soldiers of God, Family, and Republic--in a movement that cannot be stopped. Michael Peroutka was not exaggerating earlier when he told each and every one of us that we are a part of the Express Train of History, even as those who stay on the passenger coach of the Bush-Republican-Kerry-Democrat Amtrak are headed for the most apocalyptic crash and derailment America has ever seen. We will not follow their course, but the great Biblical principles of our God and Party a nd Presidential standard-bearer into a new and brighter future for the City and Nation on a Hill.
Directive Number Two is as follows: We must become political guerrillas by taking the modern technology God has graciously given us, and adopting the unconventional hit-and-run tactics used by the great Gray Ghost of the War Between the States–John Singleton Mosby–to hit Mr. Bush, Mr. Kerry, and their Corporate Neo-Con pals whenever and wherever we can. These jaybirds have committed our American young people to a fruitless battle of counterinsurgency in Iraq. We will commit them to a battle of political counterinsurgency with us in our own homeland–with our own rules. We will engage them in battle in times, places, and with methods of our choosing, not theirs. And in the long, linear journey of history, it is we–not they–who will win.
How do we do it in an age of Corporate Media Conglomerates dedicated to the Leviathan State, the Empire, and its Babylonian front-men? I am convinced that the first and most obvious gift to be used is one already employed by most of the folks in this room today–the World Wide Web. I invite all of you to examine my links page on my Mark Dankof’s America web site. Contained therein are a spider-web of American Right, libertarian, and foreign news sites and agencies who are all in the business of circumventing the agit-prop and lies of Big Media and its benefactors. Never before in the history of humanity has a tool like the World Wide Web existed to contradict the Orwellian lies of central governments and their mercantilist friends in the multi-national corporations. Post to these sites; write Letters to the Editor whenever you can as our friend John Lofton has urged us to do today; consistently send your closest family members and friends the articles fr om these outlets that have stripped the Emperors of Their Clothes. Information is power. Determine who has it, and develop the network to disseminate it at the touch of a button. Eric Garris’s Antiwar.com; Strike-the-Root; LibertyPost.org; and SARTRE’s network of sites at Breaking All the Rules are prime examples of what currently drives Bush, Kerry, and Tony Blair to desperate drink. The Leviathan State and Empire are losing their ability to control your access and mine to information that contradicts the Party Line. To the extent that we learn how to use this tool, we can free more innocent people–while making the lives of our opponents miserable in perpetuity. Turn off prime-time TV and enter a world where you and I can make a difference nationally and globally–by finding information; by digesting the meaning of the data; and by disseminating that data to those who are most important in the battle between the Powerful and the Powerless. It is your choice and mine.
Another component in Directive Number Two is this: Worrying about the Corporate Cash we will never have is as fruitless an endeavor as worrying about the Christian and Republican superstars we don’t need in our army of volunteers. But the cash of the average foot-soldier can compete when the network of ideas and contacts begins to coalesce in an Internet and Information Age. The $5 and $10 dollar contributions will add up to the dollars needed to fund full-page ads for Michael Peroutka in these next few months in some key publications with targeted constituencies. I recommend The American Conservative, Human Events, The Washington Times, Christianity Today, Christian News, and The American Free Press for openers, with special attention and priority placed on the first publication listed because its readers and positions are virtually identical with who and what we are–and what we can attract with any degree of targeted communication and advertisement.
And the final component in Directive Number Two is as follows: Corporate Media can also be circumvented yet again with the development of State, County, and Precinct organizations built for the long-haul. The more foot-soldiers we enlist in each of these jurisdictions is an additional component for a larger Internet Network and Communications Highway that Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry cannot preempt. Can you imagine what the impact of the distribution of the new Michael Peroutka campaign CD will be in such a nationwide network? Each contact is a victory. We will build the Campaign Network and Tree nationwide brick-by-brick, tribe-by-tribe, household-by-household, and State-by-State, until the Republican and Democratic National Committees wake up some morning to discover that there is a new game in town–and their carefully crafted charade is up.
And finally, I will ask all of us–Michael included–to pay the most attention to Directive Number Three. It shall be called The Trinity Strategy. It is the key to our fortunes in November. Follow its basic and obvious precepts and Michael Peroutka and the Constitution Party will walk away with 5-7% of the national vote in the first Tuesday in November, determining the eventual winner of the Presidential election in key battleground states while charting a course for future victories ahead. Ignore its precepts and risk garnering less than 1% of the national vote in less than six months, with consignment to the political wilderness for another four years I am convinced we may not have left in history as it is. The hour is late. The future is now. And the plan is this:
The Foundational Premise of the Trinity Strategy:
The Leviathan State is Not Divine. God Alone is Divine. The belief in the former is the foundational error that has led us into disaster in key three areas of subsequent endeavor.
The First Corollary of the Trinity Strategy:
War, Empire, and Military Draft are Destroying the Old Republic
Never before in the brief history of our Constitution Party has an effective issue been dropped in our lap like the tragedy of what Mr. Bush and his minions have wrought in the last 14 months. Billions of dollars spent, American sons and daughters dead, and thousands killed on the other side with no end in sight. Poll after poll now shows sagging American support for the war, along with a corresponding anger at the revelations emerging about how and why this war was fought–and for whom. Most incredibly, I am informed by Daniel New and Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) that the passage of House Concurrent Resolution 398 on May 6th is paving the way for an expansion of this lunacy into Iran. How many of you want to lose loved ones in this adventure and expedition? How many Americans at large do you think yearn for a return to military draft conscription for the purpose of supporting Oil and Sharon? The fact is this: Undeclared War and Draft illustrate th e principle and danger of a central governmental elite out of control and out of touch with the needs and desires of the American people. There are thousands–literally thousands–of votes for a Constitution Party candidate who takes what he already believes in his heart, and what is in our Party platform, and makes it the preeminent issue in his case to be taken to the American people. Michael Peroutka can lap Nader and the Libertarians--and begin drawing blood from George Bush and John Kerry–but only when he makes the issue of War, Empire, and Military Draft the First Corollary and the First Issue in his campaign proclamation, rhetoric, and initiatives. It is on this issue that our Party’s fortunes will rest in November–and on this issue that the rest of our presentation and appeal can unfold. The emphasis on this critical, paramount issue must emerge now–it and it alone will drive our public visibility and credibility upward. The Future is Now.
The Second Corollary of the Trinity Strategy
The Economy and the New World Order
I simply ask you this: Can the average American who figures out that the Central State is killing our loved ones in a War that has nothing to do with God, Family, and Republic get additionally riled enough to jump the Bush-Kerry ship when he or she similarly determines that the Central State is deliberately destroying the economic survivability of our families through the outsourcing of American jobs, the importation of slave labor, the imposition of confiscatory taxation, the spiraling of public debt as the dollar devalues, and the support of a full-fledged drive to World Government? It is self-evident that this must be the second leg of the Trinity in Michael Peroutka’s campaign and the national direction of the Constitution Party.
The Third Corollary of The Trinity Strategy
Reining in the Runaway Federal Judiciary
This is obviously the third leg in our national campaign strategy. But I will insist to Michael, to Howard Phillips, to Judge Roy Moore, and anyone else who asks that this is the third leg in the Trinity and not the first one. We are making a fatal mistake if we fail to recognize this.
Why do I say this? For a simple reason. This Third Corollary is an essential component in who we are and what we hope to achieve in the recovery of the Old Republic. But the American electorate will consider our claims in this arena of public policy only after we convince them that a runaway Federal judiciary purloining the rights of the States and the People is an extension of the same Central State and Federal Government that has committed us to a War for Empire and a World Government and Economy robbing them–and their children–of their very lives and sustenance. I am convinced that making the case of the First Corollary and the Second Corollary will cause our case for the Third to reach an audience that presently does not hear–and may not yet care–about what to us is painfully self-evident–the need to return our Federal government and courts to their Constitutional boundaries. Using the Third Corollary as our First will lose those who will hear us later–and vote for us now. It will also guarantee our loss of scores of votes–and subsequent political clout and capital–among those who will cast their ballots with us if they understand our commitment to the First and Second Corollaries of the Trinity: 1) War-Empire-Draft; and 2) Economy and the New World Order.
There is no question that we must not hedge on this Third Corollary. Yes, we must unequivocally support the Constitution Restoration Act in the Congress. Yes, an American President and Congress must appeal openly to the existing remedies in Article III, Sections 1 and 2 for reigning in a Federal Judiciary that believes it can also be an Executive and Legislative Branch of government whenever it so chooses. Yes, we must support the Right-to-Life of the unborn and oppose homosexual marriages not simply on the basis of our nation’s Constitutional heritage but on the basis of the natural and revealed law of the Biblical God. And yet I will insist today that when Michael Peroutka and the Constitution Party are perceived as the Party of pro-lifers and Christian homeschoolers exclusively, with no reference to the First and Second Corollaries of the Trinity in our appeal to voters in a national Presidential election, we are losing the war of communication for the heart s and minds of American voters who will seriously consider us this fall if our package and presentation follow The Trinity Strategy.
I conclude today with two Biblical passages for your consideration, as well as for the counsel and encouragement of Michael and Diane Peroutka in the days ahead. In contemplating the campaign plan and advice I bring before your State Convention and your Presidential nominee this afternoon, I would simply like you to meditate in coming days on the following text from Matthew 10:16 where our Lord informs us that:
I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.
There is yet another verse for our prayerful consideration and conclusion today. I was thinking of it while making the drive today from suburban Philadelphia to your present location here in Maryland between Baltimore and Annapolis. It is one of my favorite Old Testament verses, as it speaks of an ominous and impending Babylonian Exile for a rebellious Judah. Yet the Lord assured His people through the prophet Jeremiah in chapter 29, verse 10f that the Exile would have a termination point after 70 years, to be followed by the restoration of the fortunes of a godly remnant recommitted to following God and His Word.
This is what the Lord says: ‘When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.’
This is God’s promise to Michael; to Diane; and to all the faithful who have committed themselves to serving the Biblical God and His Son while undertaking the seemingly impossible recovery of the Old American Republic and our Constitutional heritage long dormant. Our exile in these last few years and decades has been a long and arduous one. Our trials, tragedies, and tribulations may only be beginning. But the Lord who sustains His people will end our exile; He will restore our fortunes; He will grant us a future; He will again be found by us as we seek Him, His Word, and His Son. On that note we move forward into a perilous and uncertain time, buoyed by our knowledge of the Savior and the anticipation of a glorious Kingdom of God for His devoted Saints, at a future time to be chosen by a sovereign and purposeful Father.
God bless you all. And may he be with each and everyone of you in your journey to Valley Forge and beyond, in the recovery and revival of the presently flagging fortunes of our land, people, and American Republic.
May 28, 2004
Mark Dankof is a Lutheran pastor and free-lance journalist, occasionally contributing to Breaking All the Rules, Iran Dokht, Al Bawaba, Nile Media, CASCFEN, and other Internet news sites. Once a third party candidate for the United States Senate in Delaware (2000), he maintains the web-site Mark Dankof’s America while pursuing post-graduate theological education at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.