

This is part two of my interview with Indian scholar, Dr. Vishal
Mangalwadi. Part one of the interview can be found here. Dr. Mangalwadi
will be speaking at Northshore Baptist Church in Bothell, Wash. Friday
at 7 p.m. For more information on Dr. Mangalwadi, visit his Web site at
www.vishalmangalwadi.com.
Abortion is another topic that has been receiving a lot of media attention, why is that still such a hot topic today?
Because the Pro-life lobby is in disarray and weak, as it was beaten
badly in the last election. The media is having a great time mocking,
and trying to put the last nail in the coffin.
The problem is not abortion per se. The problem is, in fact, the
question of human life. The greatest discovery of the West–the fact
that made the West different from the rest of the world– was the
discovery of human dignity…that human beings are different from all
other animals. There is fundamental right to life for human beings. A
chicken doesn’t have, a cow doesn’t have , a pig doesn’t have the right
that you have.
Is a human being unique made in God’s image? It was this idea that
enabled the West to create a political system where the whole
government exists to defend the right of the little individual. The
president of America cannot trample on the right of even the littlest
individual. If he does he can be impeached. He can be taken to court
because he has all of the power to do right, no power to do wrong. This
is different from the rest of the world.
The notion of human dignity came from the Incarnation–that God
became man. He could become man because man was made in his image, and
man is so important that God killed himself to give his life for human
beings. So it’s only when you look at the value of human beings through
the grid of the Cross of Calvary [that you see] the value of every
individual. If you give that up, then a human being is nothing more
than an animal.
Idi Amin had 32 wives. When he got mad with one he had her cooked
for dinner. If she’s nothing more than a cow, there’s no reason why he
shouldn’t do so. That’s how Hitler and Stalin treated millions of their
citizens.
And this is what American universities and courts and politics are
saying, so the talk about abortion and making fun of the pro-choice
pro-life groups is really this attempt to amputate the very essence of
Western civilization.
The whole idea of the value of every individual, created the
economic system, the political system, the judicial system, the
educational system, the family system. And without it, America will
turn into a third world country.
How can you be so sure that America will turn into a third world country?
Let me tell you this, how I can be so sure. Right now the FBI is
investigating 52,000 wealthy Americans who are hiding 15 billion
dollars in secret, safe accounts. America is a very rich country with
lots of millionaires, and altogether they have 15 billion dollars in
tax-evaded secret, safe accounts.
India is a poor country. How much money do you think Indians have in
secret safe accounts? It’s 1500 billion, 1.5 trillion dollars that
Indians have in secret accounts. We’re number one. Russia is number
two; Russians have 350 billion.
Now, what does that tell you about America? It tells you that
Americans pay taxes. Very few people cheat. They hire tax consultants;
they save as much tax as they can legally. Very few of them take
illegal means to save taxes.
Why do Americans pay taxes? Is there any reason for you to pay your
tax if the government is going to take that money and give it to
corrupt corporations that have made a mess of your economy by billions
of dollars…trillions of dollars?
While you are making money, they are messing up money. Why should
you pay taxes to bail them out? The reason we pay taxes, is because the
Bible said that you shouldn’t steal –that you should pay your taxes.
The character was shaped by a parable that if you turn five talents
into 10 talents, you will be honored; you will be given more
responsibility; that the one who has more will be given more. That is
what American Capitalism was built on–the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Today, [American character] is a house without a foundation.
A house without a foundation, Jesus said at the end of the Sermon of
the Mount, can stay a long time, but one day there will be heavy rains
and there will be floods, and there will be storms, and earthquakes,
and there will be a Katrina and hurricanes, and the houses that have no
foundations will collapse.
One law, such as anybody who makes more than $250,000 will be taxed
to bail out the corrupt, could bring down the American character, which
pays taxes out of habit, because this is what your fathers and
grandfathers who believed in a myth called the Bible taught you to do.
Once you have destroyed the character that pays taxes, so people are
making money, but they are not bringing the money back to America– they
are hiding it in Swiss bank accounts with the help of Indian financial
managers–how do you then stimulate the economy?
You will have tons of experts saying that we need another war. For
the last 12 months or 18 months serious economists, serious scholars
have been arguing that in the 1920s and 30s America didn’t come out
depression through the New Deal through government intervention. It was
the Second World War that stimulated the economy and brought America
out of depression.
Whoa, Obama won an election on anti-war platform how can he go to
war? He doesn’t have to go to war. America has enough allies. A war can
be started by any number of ways to help stimulate the American
economy. This would be really terrible for the world’s only superpower,
economic super power, military superpower, having destroyed its own
character, its own taxpaying habits then needing to go to war, plunging
the world into a world war in order to stimulate its own economy.
The devil said to Jesus, the glory and splendor and power and
authority of these nations belongs to me. I’ll give them to you if you
bow before me. Do you think the devil was bluffing Jesus? Jesus
acknowledged the devil as the prince of this world. Paul said the devil
rules the children of disobedience. ..He is the lord of the air. John
says in 1 john 5:19 that the whole world is under the control of the
evil one. America was a nation under God. As it ceases to be a nation
under God, it will become a nation under the devil and this is serious.
This is not a joke. The whole world knows what it is to live under
brutal wicked unscrupulous political and military leaders. That is
America’s future—a kingdom under Satan. It doesn’t have to end up like
this, but it will.
What would you say to those who call Christians intolerant?
I have studied tolerance as well as anyone else. Tolerance is a peculiar product of Biblical Christianity.
Europe was extremely intolerant until the 16th Century.
From 1618-1648, during the 30 years war of religious bigotry,
Protestants were killing Catholics; Catholics were killing Protestants.
Anglicans were killing Puritans. Lutherans were killing Baptists.
Everybody was killing everybody except for the Quakers and the
Mennonites because they were pacifists. Of course the Muslims and the
Hindus and the Buddhists, they had all been killing each other all the
time anyway.
There were three intellectual ideas that started the move for tolerance. First John Milton in his little booklet called Areopagitica,
in which he argued that truth and falsehood should be allowed to
grapple with each other freely, without putting the coercive arm of the
state on the side of one idea.
So Anglicans and Puritans should be allowed to debate “what is
truth,” without the state choosing a side. People should be free to
choose because in a free and fair combat, truth will always win. This
was a very modern assumption that the human mind can know the truth
because the human mind is made in God’s image.
This is a very Biblical assumption. Hindus don’t believe that the
human mind can know the truth; Buddha didn’t believe that the human
mind could know the truth. The Postmodern West doesn’t believe that the
human mind can know the truth.
The second foundation of tolerance came from the Long Assembly under
Oliver Cromwell during the Westminster Assembly. It was based on the
Doctrine of Conscience. This says that a citizen is not the property of
the state; a citizen is the property of the Creator. We will give an
account to our creator, and we will give an account based on our
conscience. Therefore people should be free to live by their conscience
and the state should not crush anyone’s conscience. The state is there
to defend the individual’s conscience, not to lord it over anyone’s
conscience.
The doctrine of conscience which was there as part of the New
Testament; it was very important to Luther, but it became a part of
Western political philosophy through Westminster Confession, which was
adopted by the Parliament and came a part of British law.
Now, what is conscience? If a human being is only an animal–only
chemistry– then a conscience is nothing, but culturally conditioned
chemistry. That is why no atheistic country has ever been able to
respect or tolerate conscience. If your conscience disagrees with the
state, you go to the concentration camp because you need reeducation of
your conscience. The doctrine of conscience is a peculiarly New
Testament philosophy based on the Old Testament. It is not a liberal
idea. It is not a Darwinian Evolutionary part of a secular world view.
The third pillar of Western tolerance was John Locke’s Letters Concerning Toleration.
He had a number of arguments. The most important argument was the
cross. That God can use force to destroy evil and destroy Satan, but
God uses the cross, which is self-sacrificing love.
Jesus and his apostles did not use the sword to spread their ideas.
He demonstrated that he is the Messiah and his disciples persuaded
people that he is the messiah. If God uses self-sacrificing love to woo
rebels, we the state should not use force.
The cross, conscience, and the idea of what the human mind is what
truth is, these were the intellectual foundations of tolerance.
Every single one of those foundations has been destroyed by liberal education.
Therefore liberalism has hijacked the Western tradition of tolerance
and destroyed it, calling it political correctness. Now you are allowed
to say what we tell you to say. If you believe that homosexuality is
sin, you cannot say so.
America is not tolerant because it was white; Germany was white;
Russia was white. America was tolerant because the Puritan movement
which shaped America decisively is the source of Western tolerance.
I know you are big into pop culture. What’s on your radar these days?
Of course, the big news is Michael Jackson. That is a tragedy because one of my lectures in my series, Must the Sun Set on the West is called from Paul to Paris Hilton. This was a lecture given in the city of St. Paul Minnesota, so that was sort of the context.
The transformation of heroism from character to talent…
When Samuel was sent to anoint a substitute for Saul, king of
Israel, Samuel told Saul that God rejected, him because he rejected the
word of God.
After that, an evil spirit began to torment Saul. And he became a
tormented soul. He turned his national army against his own son-in law
and his own people; he became extremely oppressive.
God sent Samuel to anoint David; God told Samuel not to look at the
outside. Man looks at outside. God looks at the heart. Character is
more important. Gifts, talents, skills, abilities are important.
David was an extremely skilled warrior, courageous, skilled with the harp; he was a dancer like Michael Jackson.
He was a much greater poet and singer than Michael Jackson. No poet
has been translated and memorized more than David in history has been
translated and memorized.
So he was a great poet, great musician, great singer, great warrior,
etc, etc, but to what matters to God at the end of the day is the
heart—the character.
And here, Michael Jackson was a tormented soul. It just shows how
completely the West is rejecting its perspective of what constitutes a
great man and what constitutes heroism. It’s tragic; If Michael Jackson
is the current icon of American pop culture, it is a powerful
expression of the fact that America is ready not for a David, but for a
Saul, and that’s what it will have.
–Tiffany Orr, the Underground managing editor
