Lux Lucet

Nicholas Maduro, who at least for today is President of Venezuela.

“…Large protests all across Venezuela today against Maduro. The fight for freedom has begun!”

    – Donald J. Trump

“To end the Maduro regime with the minimum of bloodshed, we need the support of pro-democratic governments, institutions and individuals the world over.”

    – New York Times Editorial, January 30, 2019

Much is made of the current acrimony in American politics. Trump supporters can’t stand Nancy Pelosi, and the SJW’s in the orbit of the Democratic party detest the very mention of Trump’s name.

What is more, the longest government shutdown in American history just ended with a temporary cease fire between the White House and Congressional Democrats over funding for the border wall.

America is a house divided, so we’re told. Quite obviously, the cold American civil war some have written about is ready to explode into a real civil war. Right?

Well, not so fast. It seems there’s more unity, at least among the American establishment, than one would gather from watching the evening news.

Want proof? Just consider the two quotes above, one from a recent Tweet by President Trump, the other from today’s New York Times editorial page.

Some may find the agreement between Trump and the Times surprising. After all, the Donald and the Times have pretty much been locked in a state of verbal warfare ever since the New York billionaire declared his candidacy in the summer of 2015. Trump is the Yin to the Times’ Yang, how is it possible for them to agree on anything?

And yet, they do.

In this case, they both believe in America’s exceptional right to decide who the leader of a foreign country will be.

Of the two, I find Trump’s support for regime change in Venezuela far more disappointing than that of the Times. In my view, the Times has long been an organ of the Deep State establishment and I’m not in the least bit surprised that they would run an editorial supporting Maduro’s ouster. And not only that, but an editorial penned by none other than Juan Gauido himself, the man who would be king, or at least president, of Venezuela. His arguments for giving Maduro the boot are music to globalist ears.

Trump, on the other hand, has positioned himself as a nationalist, which is to say, someone who eschews foreign entanglements. His campaign slogan “America First” hearkened back to the lead up to WWII when the America First was the slogan of those who wanted to keep the US out of the war raging in Europe.

In his time in office, Trump has made many excellent statements defending the principle of national sovereignty. Writing about the folly of Trump’s decision to intervene in Venezuela, Ron Paul quoted the President’s own words in a speech he gave to the UN where he said, “I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship. We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.”

In essence, President Trump was stating the time-honored, Biblically defensibly principle of Westphalian Sovereignty. Westphalian Sovereignty is named after the Treaty of Westphalia which settled the Thirty Years’ War in 1648.

Not many people today talk about the Treaty of Westphalia, but the principle of national sovereignty that resulted from it did more to shape the modern world than just about any other single declaration.

Westphalia established the principle that each nation state, regardless of how big or small, had a right to conduct its own affairs apart from outside interference. To give a practical application of this idea, the United States doesn’t have any business meddling in the internal affairs of Mexico, and Mexico has no right to tell the government of the US what to do. This system of international relations is called the Westphalian World Order.

Most people would call this common sense. But it took the Reformation and a brutal three-decade-long war to establish it as the principle of international relations.

The Westphalian World Order is geopolitical Protestantism. Donald Trump, himself a nominal Protestant, has at times spoken very powerfully in its defense.

Opposing the Westphalian World order is the globalist New World Order. The New World Order is geopolitical Romanism. It is all about empire building and domination of one nation by another. It’s the sort of thing Christ talked about when he spoke about the rulers of the Gentiles lording it over them. Jesus commanded his disciples not to act like that.

It seems that in the case of Venezuela, unfortunately the geopolitical Romanists have prevailed over our President’s better angels.