Christian Worship of the False God of Politics
Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Millions of American “evangelical” Christians have been indoctrinated in the idea that they must be worshipful of Israeli politicians and bureaucrats. This is so because they are taught by preachers like John Hagee that the Bible says that God will bless those who bless the nation of Abraham. The absurdity of it all is that pop religionists like Hagee falsely conflate the Israel of the Bible with today’s politicians and bureaucrats of the seventy-six-year-old government of the country of Israel. The two have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. Israel’s politicians can be just as sleazy, immoral, corrupt, criminal, and murderous as any politicians anywhere. Hence the spectacle of American evangelical Christians cheerleading the killing of fellow Christians in Gaza by the Israeli military (and of the killing of even more fellow Christians from Russia by supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia).

What exactly are evangelical Christians worshipping when they so slavishly worship the government of Israel? They are not worshipping God or Godliness – just the opposite. They are worshipping the kind of people described by George Washington in his Farewell Address as “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men.” Ordinary politicians, in other words.

When politicians of any country use the coercive powers of the state to confiscate one person’s property, give some of it to political supporters, and keep some for themselves they are engaging in theft. Calling it “democracy,” “majority rule,” or “the only democracy in the Middle East” does not make it any less sinful. 

In order to get elected all politicians everywhere must promise to steal money from those who have earned it and give it to others (and themselves) who have no moral right to it. Calling it “progressive taxation” does not make it any less sinful.

All politicians make promises to allocate other people’s stolen property to their political supporters, most of which they know they cannot keep. They lie, in other words. As Murray Rothbard once wrote, a master politician is a masterful liar, conniver, and manipulator. That is why so few moral people are ever elected to political office. And if they are they are usually quickly beaten down by harsh criticisms and condemnations, or ignored and marginalized. 

When F.A. Hayek titled one of the chapters of The Road to Serfdom “Why the Worst Get on Top” he was referring to totalitarian socialist societies, but the same thing is true of any democracy anywhere. Just look at the current makeup of the U.S. House and Senate “leadership.” 

To a large extent politicians become politicians because they can enrich themselves by soliciting and taking bribes. The late Yuri Maltsev, who defected from the Soviet Union to the United States after working for Mikhail Gorbachev, once remarked about how similar the U.S. government was to the Soviet government because, in his words, “government is all about taking bribes.”

It is a common practice of politicians in Washington to propose onerous taxes or regulations on an industry, then sit back and collect millions of dollars in bribes, euphemistically called “campaign donations,” and then once sufficient loot is collected, call the whole thing off. They call such proposed legislation “milking bills” because they milk “campaign donations.” Legal scholar Fred McChesney even wrote a whole Harvard University Press book about this phenomenon entitled Money for Nothing. 

All politicians everywhere, including Israel, are showcases of the Seven Deadly Sins. Self-pride trumps humility for starters. What member of Congress is not an egomaniac? Envy poisons the heart of every proponent of “income redistribution” schemes, the cornerstone of welfarism everywhere. 

Wrath is what one experiences whenever one opposes the state. Ask all the doctors who had their medical licenses cancelled after questioning the covid “vaccines.” Even Tucker Carlson was smeared as a “Russian asset” for opposing the American financing of Ukraine in its war with Russia. 

Sloth has always been associated with government bureaucracy. No one likes being called a “bureaucrat.” Then of course there is greed. Greed for power and money animates national and state capitals everywhere. No institutions anywhere are more greedy for money than public employee unions, for example or the thousands of other “special-interest groups” that scheme endlessly to rob the treasury. 

Gluttony is on display everywhere as well with the ostentatious lifestyles and conspicuous wealth of ruling classes. Nor are politicians unfamiliar with the sin of lust, especially the lust for power over others, dubbed by Judge Andrew Napolitano as “libido dominande” or “lust to dominate.”

All of this, evangelical Christians, is what you have been suckered into “worshipping” by your church “leadership” when they tell you that you must worship the politicians of Israel if you want to go to Heaven. What a sin.

 

Thomas J. DiLorenzo is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and president of the Mises Institute. He is a former professor of economics at Loyola University Maryland and a longtime member of the senior faculty of the Mises Institute. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and he has taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo, George Mason University, and University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Professor DiLorenzo is the author or co-author of numerous books, including Hamilton's Curse: How Jefferson's Arch Enemy Betrayed the American Revolution; Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe; How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country from the Pilgrims to the Present; The Real Lincoln: A New Look a Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War; From Pathology to Politics: Public Health in America (with James T. Bennett); The Food and Drink Police: America's Nannies, Busybodies, and Petty Tyrants (with James T. Bennett); Underground Government: The Off-budget Public Sector (with James T. Bennett); Unfair Competition: The Profits of Nonprofits(with James T. Bennett); and CancerScam: The Diversion of Federal Cancer Funds for Politics(with James T. Bennett).

His articles have appeared in such scholarly journals as Public Finance Quarterly, The Independent Review, Review of Austrian Economics, and Public Choice.

 

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