The Fight for Definitions
Democracy, Socialism, and Submission (ahem, "Islam!")
The War of Words
It begins, as wars always do, with words. Not gunfire. Not banners. Not even ballots.
The air of our time is thick with them—justice, equity, freedom, safety—each one shining, each one hollowed. They float like leaves torn from their trees, the roots forgotten.
Quoth the new Mayor of New York, “violence is an artificial construct.”
The promise is that public housing will redeem the poor, that taxation is compassion, that faith in God can now be translated into activism for the state. But what you may not have noticed is the sleight of hand: the definitions have changed.
Democracy once meant rule by the people under law. Now it’s a mood—whatever the people feel should be law. Socialism once meant the state would feed you. Now it means the state will own your hunger. And Islam—at least in its political attire—has never historically been a private prayer, but a public program, in which worship is legislation and the “church” is the court.
It just means, “peace,” they say.
This is the game of the 5th Generation War. Everywhere, words that once described reality now invent it. It is a quiet revolution, precisely until it’s not.
Islamic Nationalism
He whispers salaam, peace. And he means it—after you surrender to Sharia.
While Christians argue the boogieman of a “Christian Nationalism” that is neither our terminology, our idea, nor more than a utopian scapegoat, the political believers in Islam are on a well-documented 1700 year jihad for God’s monopoly of everything.
Where the socialist builds Babel with blueprints promised to “educated” whites still wearing masks, the jihadist builds it with rules from the Satanic Verses that may not be dismissed.
Different Tongues, Same Tower.
And New York, New York, all three speak at once. One shouts justice!, one equity!, one truth!— “for all God’s children!” But the crowd does not know who means what.
Definite Reckoning
The danger is not one creed alone. It is the fusion of all three—the democratic tongue, the socialist hand, the religious heart—forming a new god called Progress, bought and paid for by the highest bidders.
You need not kneel or pinch incense. Just go to sleep and comply. The new priesthood is activism, the new sacraments are subsidies, and scriptures is whatever the talking image says loudest and longest.
“Freedom!” they cry, as the permits multiply. “Justice!” they chant, as law dissolves. “Faith!” they declare, as worship becomes regulation.
And when you finally notice that the old words no longer mean what you thought they did, the coup already happened.
City on an Island
You can house the poor until the plaster peels, but if the soul of the city is lost in euphemism, the roof will not hold. Rent freezes sound merciful until the builders stop building. Tax hikes sound righteous until the jobs leave. Decarceration sounds noble until your neighbor bleeds.
And sermons about equality ring hollow when the same speaker builds a hierarchy of credentials that only the elite can afford.
We have confused mercy with management. We have mistaken subsidy for virtue. And we have let faith become franchise—another banner under which to march instead of a compass by which to live.
It is confusion AS confidence. Each faction absolutely certain of what the others cannot say, unable to hear what is really being said. The democrat fears the theocrat. The socialist fears the capitalist. The believer fears the secularist.
All of them fear being irrelevant to the mob.
Under that noise runs the quiet hum of the ordinary man and woman who still know that truth is not an algorithm, scrolling their meaning away under non-negotiables dismissed with satire, ignoring or shouting down the whistleblowers fighting to keep the lights on with debates about theories of wiring preached by apostles of preferences.
Return to Speech
The only sure step is not more revolution.
It is better definition.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. If “violence” means harm, then call harm by name. If “justice” means fair process, not revenge, then guard the process like treasure. If “freedom” means limits on power, then stop worshiping power in the name of freedom.
The world will not be saved by slogans. It will be saved by Words that hold True in all times and seasons.
We are standing at that threshold of a new era. 2020 was just the warning shot, across our noses (and even up them for some). It’s not as funny as a Druish Princess or being surrounded by the relatives of a Major Asshole.
Without self-restraint, all governance drifts into tyranny. Without humility, the elite will always cannibalize the poor. When Islam—or any creed—is ignored for what it actually says in favor of what we’d like everyone to believe, then those who willfully ignore the meanings of their words will live in a tower that is surely falling down.
The call is neither to hate nor fear, but to overcome evil with good, to discern with distinction the liar for the upright man, to reject the idolatry of ideology in pursuit of the Logos of God the Father.
So tighten your words and guard your ears. Sharpen your heart until it draws no false beat. Guard the grammar of freedom in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
“Have you never read in the Scriptures?”
“It is written.”
“Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.”
