Michael Bray

Author of A Time To Kill

Why Say No to Peroutka?

Michael Bray
19 Oct., 2004

In an email notice sent out by the Peroutka campaign on 14 October, a letter from Rev. Joe Morecraft III was attached in which he declared his intention to vote for Peroutka.  He concluded: “The most important political question of the 20th and 21st centuries is: Who is the Source of law? The God of the Bible or man? I am for Michael Peroutka for U.S. President in 2004 because he knows the right answer to that question and is not afraid to say so.”

“I am the only Presidential candidate who is 100 percent pro-life, all nine months, no exceptions,” declares Michael Peroutka.  Moreover, says he, “Under my presidency, Roe v. Wade will not be enforced, and the member states of the Union could again open their criminal codes and begin the prosecution of the doctors and parents who would contract for the murder of an unborn child.”

I would presume from all I know of him that Michael Peroutka holds truth and justice and good citizenship paramount as do those many excellent Christians working for the Constitution Party.  But does he expect to win?  Or is he while expecting to lose campaigning anyway just to advance the Truth and build for future victory for the Party?

Matthew Mosk, writng for the Washington Post on 16 August, said:

Phillips said the Constitution Party doesn’t expect Peroutka to win the White House. His supporters “understand that a party won’t be built in a day.” At the same time, he said, this is not “a lark. The folks I know have no interest in integrating back into the Republican Party.”

Indeed, if Mr. Peroutka expects to win, he is either delusional or impudent reminding us of the campaigns of pacifist prolifer Pat Mahoney for President or Randall Terry for Congress.

Let us assume that Mr. Peroutka is thinking of victory in the more distant future and using the present campaign as a Bully Pulpit to declare the truth and sow seeds for a the building of an alternative party.

We may contrast Mr. Peroutka with George Bush Sr. on the issue of re-criminalizing abortion.   I remember hearing a news clip while in jail when he was running for election in 1988; Mr. Bush was surprised by a reporter’s question regarding his tepid support of the “pro-life” position. She asked: What will the punishment be for abortionists or aborting mothers if abortion is outlawed?

The Vice President didn’t seem to have thought about that and answered accordingly, giving a distinct impression that he was without any real interest in the goals of the movement; even that he had assumed the anti-abortion position for political advantage.  But what if he had given the right answer (capital punishment)?

Michael Peroutka’s opposition to abortion, it is fair to assume, is more visceral.  He seems to be in greater earnest that the holocaust be ended.   Evidence includes the fact that he and his brother (and business partner) have donated to local pregnancy centers and even protested in the streets. But now comes the matter of reforming the law and that requires a proposal for sanctions.  The declaration of a thoroughgoing “prolife ethic” must include the proper sanctions against what is averred to be murder.  The punishment for the murder of adults and children ought to the same as it is for womb children.   If capital punishment is the just sanction for the former, it ought to be the same for the latter.  Peroutka has not made this essential proclamation.

On the assumption that he is using the campaign to instruct the Republic in the Law of God and build the party for future success, he fails on this fundamental life issue.   In the face of the two great evidences of flagrant departure from God’s law – the expansion of legalized abortion and sodomy throughout the Republic – Mr. Peroutka has failed to declare the sanctions against that which he calls immoral and illegal, making his declarations hollow.  He obscures his message before he has assumed political power where compromise becomes a necessity of effective statecraft.

The point is that while Mr. Bush is operating in the realm of real politik where compromises are a necessary part of parlaying political power, Mr. Peroutka is ostensibly operating from a position of theory and  theater, hovering in this campaign above the exigencies of  a victorious 2004 A.D. campaign.  He has a Bully Pulpit from which to declare what is right and good and Lawful. And yet he is compromised already!

Let him declare the words which need to be proclaimed:  the proper civil penalty for abortion and sodomy is death.

Mr. Peroutka is, perhaps, taking a bad cue from one of his supporters. The political realities of this battle came close to Rev. Morecraft in 1988.  In that year he was confronted with the message of Operation Rescue when a flood of activists came to his town in Atlanta.  What would he instruct his parishioners?  Pastoer  Morecraft along with the renowned Atlanta pastorCharles Stanley were being summoned to join in the non-forceful blockades of abortion facilities.  This was the zenith of the Operation Rescue’s crusade of the eighties.  The churches were called by OR to encourage their people to join others from around the nation who had already been jailed for peacefully sitting in front of the abortuary entrances.  But the pastors failed to pass the call on to their flocks; in fact, they charged their flocks to stay away.

In the December, 1988 issue of his then-monthly “The Council of Chalcedon” Morecraft featured several articles by various pastors, all of which inveighed against OR, tagging its deeds  with various epithets: “works salvation,” “humanist strategies,” “civil rebellion,” “social perfectionism,” “tactics of Marxist and liberation theology,” “tactics of the civil rights movement,” and “a mentality. . . pagan to the core . . . a Hegelian nightmare.”

Morecraft himself said, “The point is this: only the preaching and teaching and living of the gospel of Christ . . . is able to awaken an apostate Church to repentance.  Unless the Church repents, the culture will not be transformed by the word of God.”

He retreated from the action of defending, even peacefully, the children of the womb. Instead, he argued that the action to be taken ought to be the preaching of the word of God.

Now, it appears that not only is the call to direct rescue action to be neglected, but the very proclamation of the Word as well.  Peroutka is in the position to do the very preaching in the public square that Morecraft was calling for, yet he does not even do this!  Again, what is that word? The proper civil penalty for abortion and sodomy is death.

Let the one who calls himself the champion of His word preach it. (Would that a church or two would give support and praise for such a preachment.)

As for real politics, George Bush is President of a nation which slaughters millions of their own children, elected Bill Clinton twice, and almost elected Al Gore; it is a nation with sodomites and communists ruling in its Congress, and a rogue Supreme Court which thinks it is the Law of the Land.  Such a nation would: a) not elect a Peroutka, or b) impeach a President Peroutka for carrying out his stated platform.  In this real world, we are fortunate to have Mr. Bush when we deserve a Kerry.

Comments are currently closed.