Left in the Middle of the Desert

The mistranslation of the name Llano Estacado in English – Staked Plains – has been the cause for a number of fancy stories about this huge, flat, waterless, featureless desert the size of the state of Indiana, located in northwestern Texas and eastern New Mexico. The name, of course, properly means Palisaded Plains. The plain is the largest mesa in North America, surrounded from almost all sides with impenetrable escarpments. Francisco Coronado, the first European explorer of the area, gave it the name Palisaded Plains, Llano Estacado, when he saw the cliffs of the Caprock Escarpment from the north, traveling along the Canadian River in 1541. The cliffs were so high and imposing that he compared them to palisades, and therefore he called Estacado the plain encircled and protected by these cliffs. But the name Staked Plains stuck later, and different explanations were given for it, giving occasion for the rise of many legends about this desert.

One of these legends, exploited by European authors of adventure books in the 19th century, is that the name derived from stakes driven into the ground by the first travelers in order to mark the way in the otherwise completely devoid of any landmarks plain. According to that legend, a traveler could survive in the desert only by stocking enough water to cross the desert, and then by following the stakes which would show him the shortest way across, to the sources of water on the other side of the desert. A development of that legend were the stories about the “stakemen”: criminals who would move the stakes and place them to lead to the middle of the desert, where the road would suddenly end. In the beginning, the stakes would point in the right direction but little by little the direction would stray away, until it’s too late for the traveler either to return by the stakes to the place he entered the desert, or try to find a way out to the other side. A wagon train of settlers or traders which made the mistake to follow the misplaced stakes would end up without enough water and without any reliable direction, and therefore die of dehydration. After that, the “stakemen” could safely sack the wagon train of all the valuables.

It’s a legend, of course, not true history. Wagon trains seldom entered Llano Estacado. The only trails through the desert were made and used by the Comancheros, Hispanic inhabitants of Texas and New Mexico who traded extensively with the Comanches and with other tribes in the region: manufactured goods for hides and livestock. The Comancheros weren’t easily fooled in the desert; they had their own trails, and an almost supernatural sense of orientation. No “stakeman” could stand long against these men, trained to survive and thrive in the desert.

But it’s still a good story. And it could teach us a thing or two today, if we pay attention.

This last Tuesday, Rupert Murdoch, the owner of News Corp., which is the owner of Fox News, tweeted the following:

Election: To win Romney must open big tent to sympathetic families. Stop fearing far right which has nowhere else to go.

In the context of previous statements, Murdoch meant, Romney must embrace the cause of sodomite marriage. And since a large voting bloc in the Republican Party, the Christians (the “far right”) could be against it, Murdoch added: They have “nowhere else to go.”

There may have not been real “stakemen” in Llano Estacado in the 1800s. But Murdoch and his Fox News proved to be the “stakemen” for the Christian conservative movement in the last 30 years.

The “return” of the Evangelical voting bloc to politics in the early 1980s was the political equivalent of climbing the estacadas of Llano Estacado. Ahead lied a vast desert devoid of water and of any landmarks whatsoever, as far as a Christian observer was concerned. There was little memory of any principles of Christian political action from the past; and there was no preaching from the pulpits. Even the leaders of those first movements – Jerry Falwell being a prime example – were not very consistent at the beginning. Much of what they did was sometimes self-contradictory; and there were few guidelines that were available for a Christian politician to follow. The “conservative revolution” of the 1990s ended in Newt Gingrich’s betrayal, and there was no clear guidance as to what a Christian conservative politician should do to continue the fight. For the last 30 years, Christian political involvement has been a perfect example of Brownian motion – random thrusts in one direction or another, without any clear idea as to what the main direction should be, nor what landmarks can a Christian politician use to assess his progress.

In this situation, Fox News appeared, and at the very beginning claimed to offer professional guidance. For decades the mainstream media were serving the other side, and were mercilessly attacking conservative Christianity, and even more so Christian conservative political involvement. Fox News seemed to be driving the stakes in the ground, the stakes that would mark the right way. The direction seemed right at the beginning: away from liberal values, toward more conservative values. Christianity was conspicuously present on the screen, even if in a rather diluted form. The absence of conservative Evangelical or Reformed commentators was a little distressing, though: the majority of the hosts were liberal Roman Catholic, with some irreligious conservative types, and a Mormon. But, after all, what mattered was that “Christian values” were represented. Or, rather, what the media declared to be “Christian values.”

Very soon Fox News was “our” media, and conservative Christians made up the majority of its audience. They had nowhere else to go. Very few pastors and Christian leaders dared give the warning that a small deviation from the course, given enough time, will take us far away from the goal. Fox News’s stakes in the desert seemed to go in a straight line, and if there was any deviation, few paid attention. Step by step, Fox News was leading its viewers away from Christian or conservative values. By 2008, Fox News was shaking off any pretense of being “Christian,” and devoted almost all of its resources to praise McCain, known for his distaste of Christians and of their values.

And in 2012, it devoted all its resources in support of a Mormon, that is, a member of an anti-Christian, satanic cult, as a viable choice for Christians, and a politician with proven liberal record on both social and fiscal issues, as a viable choice for conservatives. I said viable. But Murdoch corrected me: the only choice.

“They have nowhere else to go.”

The road marked by the stakes placed by Fox News ended in the middle of the desert. There is no place to go, and Murdoch is so confident in his victory over the Christian conservatives that he knows he can say it publicly without any negative repercussions to himself and to his businesses. He did his job as the professional “stakeman”: step by step, little by little, lure Christians to the middle of the wilderness, until there is no way out. And then leave them there to die. And then take their valuables, that is, their votes, for a liberal satanist. They have nowhere else to go.

And true enough, millions of them will do Murdoch’s bidding and will vote for Romney. Because indeed, they have been foolish enough to follow a TV channel instead of the Bible; and they don’t see a way out now.

It didn’t have to be so. There were landmarks. Long before Fox News appeared, Rushdoony published his Institutes of Biblical Law. The book produced a whole intellectual movement devoted to the restoration of the validity of the Law of God today. Rushdoony himself, and authors like Greg Bahnsen, Gary North, and others developed the teachings of theonomy (the Law of God) and applied them to all areas of life and action. Including politics.

American Christians did not need Fox News and its stakes marking the way through the desert. They did not need any trails. They had God’s GPS in their hands. And since 1973, in the Christian Reconstruction movement, they had a growing body of instructions of how to use that GPS.

They ignored it. Their hatred to the Law of God was stronger than their commitment to redeem the culture, or to redeem the political realm. Christian leaders and theologians devised theologies as to why God’s Law should be kept out of civil government and political action. Murdoch knew they would; he knew Christians would hate the Law of God and would refuse to use it; and therefore would embrace any alternative. He offered the alternative.

He won. The experiment in Christian political involvement is back to where it started in 1980. Except that, this time Christians are goaded by an atheist liberal to vote for a Mormon liberal. When Christians ignore God’s directions in His Law, they inevitably end up in the middle of the desert, becoming a prey to their enemies.

“They have nowhere else to go.”

It’s not too late. The Law of God is still there, and Christians can still turn to it as their blueprint for society.

Let’s hope this time they will turn on that GPS.

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