With Republicans winning their largest majority in the House of Representatives in over 40 years, Christian conservatives suddenly find themselves back in a position of power. The question now is what Republicans should do with their spectacular electoral gains. Will Republicans make the same mistakes that led to the loss of both the Congress and the White House by pursuing a Big Government agenda that puts Washington in the center of change or do the lessons of the past point to a better way?

In his provocative new book, Freedom Nationally, Virtue Locally - Or Socialism, first-time author Kevin Miller argues that the way forward for Christian conservatives and the Republican Party is to pursue Freedom at the federal level, while leaving the expansion of Virtue at the local level. President and co-founder of the Vanguard Roundtable, a public policy forum for politically conservative evangelicals, Miller argues that the federal government cannot deliver both freedom and virtue without losing the former.

"As part of that Federal power-grab by the most powerful government in the world, you see new 'virtues' being created every day, agendas crammed down by people who have never even been to your community and who don't really care about your values and your freedom," writes Miller. "These agendas are really just socialism."

Freedom Nationally, Virtue Locally - Or Socialism takes a hard look at the ways in which our federal government, under both Republican and Democratic control, use the levers of power to pursue their own definitions of 'virtue' for political gain. The result, writes Miller, is not an expansion of virtue as the Christian conservative would understand it, but an expansion of government. The pursuit of virtue at the federal level merely plays into the hands of the Big Government statists, whose existence is determined by telling Americans how to lead their lives.

Although a Christian conservative politician might have the best of intentions in legislating virtue, his power in the Capitol is fleeting. His virtue agenda has simply opened the doors for secularists to employ the power of government to further their own "virtuous" ends, which rarely coincide with individual freedom.

"The reality is crystal clear to millions of Americans on the receiving end of countless Federal virtue cram-downs," writes Miller. "Americans are routinely losing their basic freedoms. Ironically, they are losing these freedoms to the unchecked whims and wishes of the very people they are paying to serve them."

The solution, argues Miller, is Christian conservatives must resist the temptation to use the federal government to enact policies that run counter to the purpose of government as articulated in the U.S. Constitution. Rather, those policies can only be pursued at the local level, where a community of individuals can decide how best to live their lives.

Freedom Nationally, Virtue Locally - Or Socialism is a critique on the way the Religious Right has attempted to further its goals. But Miller's book is also a warning. In an age where freedom is on the retreat from Big Government intrusions, it is up to Christian conservatives to reform the way we view government's role. Otherwise, he writes, we will end up with the very thing that we abhor the most: Socialism.

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• Print Length: 147 Pages
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