Newt Gingrich Has It Right

I learned along time ago that unless you can define your enemies you cannot defeat them.

During my basketball playing years, when I brought the ball up-court it was critical to discern whether the opposing team was playing a zone or a man-to-man defense. If they were playing zone, you you immediately set up your zone offense. If it was man-to-man, then a whole different set of plays needed to be run.

For many years I’ve been trying to understand and properly describe the forces that are trying to tear down both the United States and Western World. In the past few years, that understanding has crystallized. I think I now understand more of the enemy and his tactics.

So does Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives. In his extremely important new book, To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular Socialist Machine, Newt gives the clearest read yet on what we face as a people.

Newt Gingrich has it right.

Will we “get it” in time to renew our nation?

First, a little history and personal reflection on Newton Leroy Gingrich, history teacher/historian, seven-term US Congressman from Georgia, leader of the Republican Revolution and TIME Person of the Year (1994) and Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1995-1999.

Newt is undoubtedly one of the most influential conservative leaders of the past thirty years. He is an expert on US history and has written a number of books  on the subject (fiction and non-fiction). Through his American Solutions organization he has been a prominent idea guy on common sense policies that bring blessing to a free society. He’s probably the brightest and most experienced mind on the Republican side of the ledger.

Newt also has some flaws. He has been married three times. He first married Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher. The young couple decided to divorce after Gingrich told her of an extra-marital affair while she was recovering from cancer surgery. In 1981, Newt wed Marianne Ginther until 2000 when they divorced and he married Callista Bisek, with whom he’d had an affair during his second marriage. Ironically, this particular liaison started during the Congressional investigation of Bill Clinton’s perjury relating to his affair with 23-year-old intern, Monica Lewinsky–of which Gingrich was highly critical.

This man with strong “family values” hasn’t always walked the walked.

During his time in Congress and as Speaker of the House, he was also prone to some cockiness in his leadership style which got him in trouble with the mainstream media who disliked both his approach and positions. Due to his moral and temperamental outbursts, the press was able to marginalize Newt Gingrich’s influence, which led to his resignation from Congress.

He has been re-habbing his reputation ever since–and possibly undergoing a rebirth of faith and character that is evidenced in his books and documentaries. In Nine Days That Changed the World  he describes how Pope John Paul’s Christian faith was used to ignite a a fire for God in Poland which eventually brought down the Iron Curtain. In his two works called Re-Discovering God in America, Newt makes a strong case for our Christian origins and encourages us to come home.

Maybe Newt Gingrich has personally found his way back to faith and virtue. If so, his story might be similar to Thomas Jefferson’s who was probably a Deist when he was young (and cut out portions of the Bible), but seemed to grow in personal faith toward the end of his life.

At any rate, I believe that Newt Gingrich is a leader to be reckoned with in 2010 and clearly understands the enemies that America faces. They are named in the subtitle of his new book:

“Stopping Obama’s Secular Socialist Machine”

1. Stopping

Newt realizes that we are careening in a wrong direction as a nation that must be stopped in its tracks. He offers many valuable suggestions as to how to change direction. The current moral, economic, and diplomatic malaise must be halted by an enlightened and re-energized American electorate.

2. Obama’s

Gingrich understands that Barack Obama is not your normal American or American president. He is a radical progressive–a type of revolutionary–with an internationalist bent. He has a different view of God, the world, and America’s history and destiny than most past presidents and the majority of Americans today. He overly apologizes for American’s weaknesses and doesn’t appreciate our Christian underpinnings, freedoms, and exceptionalism.

3. Secular

Newt Gingrich is is the first prominent political leader to articulate the battle of worldviews currently taking place in America and the Western World. It is first a fight between Christian faith and secular religion–and secondly, with radical Islam.  The Christian-secular tussle has been raging throughout America’s history, but has intensified since the 1960s when secularism became established in the government schools and atheists emboldened their stance against America’s traditional Christian faith.

Newt is prophetically correct when he says that the current administration wants to destroy any last vestiges of Christian mores and influences in our culture. The battle over “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” taking place today in Congress and pushed by the Obama Administration is one of many fronts where our current leaders are trying to force secular values down the throats of a majority Christian nation. Newt believes we need to fight back and re-discover God in America. This is a welcome call to historic Christian revival and reformation.

4. Socialist

Newt also understands what most American’s are now seeing: That those currently leading our nation are socialists who want America to become a European-style social democracy. They are expanding the reach of government at a break-neck pace, taking over control of many private industries (car companies, and some banks and financial institutions are the latest acquisitions), and want to tax and spend our nation into a dependent welfare state. It was reported today that the private sector of the American economy now accounts for only 42% of economic activity. That’s a frightening statistic to an historically free people. For socialists, it’s an encouraging sign that they are bringing “change” to America–from free enterprise to socialism.

5. Machine  

Gingrich is also right on in describing the political style of the current administration as being an off-shoot of the notorious Chicago political apparatus. In fact most of its main players–including Barack Obama, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod–are products of the Chicago political establishment. They play hardball (national health care), give out bribes (Rep. Joe Sestak), and don’t tolerate criticism and dissent well (Fox News). They are a well-oiled and financed machine that can be ruthless in achieving their goals.

Newt Gingrich could have added one more word to his profound sub-title–the word:

6. Conspiracy.

No, I don’t mean any type of human conspiracy. The only conspiracy I believe in is the demonic one (Ephesians 6:12) that is operating in the world today, warring against Christ and the advance of His kingdom. It is ultimately the satanic world that is trying to erase Christianity from the public square and exalt the worship of man in the from of humanism, secularism, or world government. It is the powers of darkness who are behind the destruction of free enterprise and expression while trying to impoverish America and the world.

We need to vote out these revolutionaries–but we also need to pray out the forces that empower them.

Newt Gingrich’s new book, To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular Socialist Machine, calls the American people to return to God, faith, freedom and hope.

Now that message has a ring we can certainly believe in.