They lied. They spread half-truths. They repeated baseless gossip and whispered insinuations, churned out by the media shops of radical leftist ideologues and Democratic hacks. They refused to extend the slightest charity or benefit of the doubt to folks in their own churches, in the same pro-life movement, and in the same political party. They gave more credence to the guilty Michael Avenatti than to the innocent Kyle Rittenhouse.

They bleated the party line hammered out by backstage globalists, then stuffed down our throats by censors. They joined in when we got called “threats to public health” for resisting fascist lockdowns and an abortion-based vaccine. They parroted the talking points of Pfizer, Fauci, and President Xi’s World Health Organization, but sneered at dissenters as cranks.

They begged for crumbs of approval from powerful media figures who reject all our common values and sneer at our Christian faith. They blushed when Jake Tapper retweeted them, or Vanity Fair quoted them, as if they didn’t realize why these leftists were suddenly willing to quote such “leading conservative Christians.”

Affirmative Action for Squishes

They were cited not for any intellectual merit, but because what they said helped the left, the party of infanticide, child mutilation, toddler grooming, riots, open borders and Marxist CRT. And most were proud to be patsies of those whom they’d once condemned. For one brief shining moment, they could join the Cool Kids, maybe get invited to hipster parties in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Because it was okay to aid the Democrats, the abortion lobby, the Muslim Brotherhood and ANTIFA, as long as the target was that scapegoat and sin-eater, Donald Trump. But not really Trump, exactly.

The real targets of hate were less the candidate himself than all the bucket-heads who supported him, the rabble of blue-collar populists, rednecks, Bible-thumpers, and flag-wavers whom Hillary Clinton deplored. Every snooty, class-obsessed suburban Christian sporting J. Press at the country club who has ever sneered at the “people of Walmart,” or held a scented handkerchief to his nose when driving past a Waffle House, saw Trump as a dream come true: a high-minded pretext for indulging his class-based scorn.

Life’s Too Short, and So Am I

I don’t have the time or frankly the stomach to go back through the writings of Russell Moore, David French, Rod Dreher, Jonah Goldberg, or William Kristol to compile a dossier of the slander. Life’s too short, and so am I. You could pick almost any issue where the left was hurling baseless accusations at Trump and his people, and check what the NeverTrumpers were saying at the time.

They weren’t “holding to timeless values” or “clinging to principles,” but mostly just joining in on the fun. They were using their conservative or Christian credentials to boost the credibility of baseless, made-up charges (“treasonous” collusion with Russia, toxic xenophobia, an authoritarian plan to trash our Constitution, etc.). They were the nasal voices in the media’s amen corner.

The Commandment They All Flouted

And there’s nothing more fun than bearing false witness against your neighbor. In fact, it is so enticing that God had to devote one entire commandment (out of a mere ten) to thou-shalt-notting it.

I wonder how many of these volunteer pawns on the Democrats’ chessboard have stepped back and reassessed themselves, as the lies they gladly repeated, or lent public credence, fell apart in daylight’s glare. As Lynyrd Skynrd sang to Neil Young: “Does your conscience bother you? Now tell me true.”

Rod Dreher might as well have endorsed Hillary Clinton when he told Christian conservatives, mere months before the 2016 election, to give up “failed culture war strategies” like “voting Republican.” He did his best to help Joe Biden when in 2019 he disgorged more than 3,000 words insisting that Donald Trump had unleashed “literal demons … of racism” by mocking left-wing Islamists like ungrateful immigrant Ilhan Omar. He compared Trump’s movement to lynch mobs and the Nazis. But go ahead … vote your conscience, okay?

Dreher sneered with Jake Tapper and the best of them at Christians who questioned the bizarre election results, suspecting fraud. How does he feel now, that the persecution he warned us about is actually coming for Christians … thanks to the President whose opponent (Trump) he tried so hard to destroy? Penitent perhaps? Maybe he has a handy autobiographical book for sale on how to endure persecution … . What are the chances? He does!

The “Racism” Fragmentation Grenade

Do any of these Christians who nuzzle Mammon for Milk Bones and fetch Caesar’s slippers reflect on the Commandment they’re breaking? The real-world damage they do when they flippantly throw the “Racism” fragmentation grenade into a crowd of Trump supporters? They do realize, don’t they, that this is the single most damaging charge you can make against someone nowadays? (It overtook “child molester” sometime in 2016. I wonder why.) It gets people fired, people with families to feed.

Whether or not these souls repent is between them and God. If not, then their guilt will hound them on Judgment Day, as surely as unrepented adultery, theft, or murder. The attempt to kill someone’s good name, based on vague or uncertain evidence or simple gossip, is something God takes seriously.

I Fibbed About Obama

I myself have had to repent mindlessly repeating (though not in print) the rumor that Barack Hussein Obama is “really” a Muslim. He isn’t. He’s really an apparatchik of Marxist Black Liberation Theology, as taught by his longtime mentor Rev. Jeremiah Wright — who married Barack to Michelle and baptized their children. 

Now Donald Trump heads off to jail on trumped-up, ludicrous charges — though unlike the J6 victims he should have pardoned, he won’t rot in solitary, ineligible for bail. Will his Christian slanderers take a quiet moment to reassess? To search their souls? To wonder if they really were the stern, noble Romans who stood against the “tyrant.” Or part of an elite lynch mob that only ever kisses up and kicks down, spurning with their Cole Haans the Election Deniers and “xenophobes.”

As I explained in Part I, whether they repent or not, we must for our own sakes forgive them. And as far as it’s safe, forget them. As History will. Like the Vichy collaborators who loomed so large in 1940, they’ll barely merit a footnote.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”