A friend recently commented on Facebook about how tired she is of the demonization of Obama that seems to pervade the conversations of conservatives. Not because she in any way approves of Obama or agrees with his policies, but because his are substantially the same policies as the preceding administration and would for the most part be continued by a Romney administration as well. My friend was in no way defending Obama, but was pointing out her frustration with what she sees as a ruse that is being perpetrated on the American people who are incessantly told by the leadership of, and operatives for, their favored political party that “if the other party wins, America is doomed.” Yet the more we exchange the parties in power, the more things remain the same.

Now this may be a new and possibly shocking idea to some, the thought that both Democrat and Republican administered government has been giving us substantially the same policies and that their demonization of each other is effectively a ruse, but let me ask this – in the last quarter century, how much has really changed? Since 1988 we have had a Republican President paired with a Democrat Congress (1988-1992), a Democrat President and a Democrat Congress (1992-1994), a Democrat President and a Republican Congress (1994-2000), a Republican President and a Republican Congress (2000-2006), a Republican President and a Democrat Congress (2006-2008), a Democrat President and a Democrat Congress (2008-2010), and a Democrat President paired with a Democrat Senate and Republican controlled House (2010-2012). We have tried every possible configuration of political power, from all Democrat control, to giving the reins of government fully to the Republicans. But again I ask, in all that time and through all those changes of the guard, what exactly has changed? The only noticeable change that I have observed is the national debt – it keeps going up – every time. Everything else remains pretty much the same.

What do I mean when I say everything remains pretty much the same? I mean that undeclared wars continue from one administration to the next; government grows ever bigger, never smaller; extra Constitutional and downright un-Constitutional agencies, policies and programs continue and even expand without regard for which party might currently be in power; executive orders continue from one administration to the next and are only added to, never rescinded, despite how evil the incoming administration says the outgoing one was; more and more “entangling foreign alliances” are entered into by each administration since George H.W. Bush first introduced us to the “New World Order;” the borders remain breached; jobs are outsourced; real income, when adjusted for inflation, has steadily decreased since the 1970s; God’s laws are replaced with the rationales of secular humanism; socialism increases; freedom decreases; the Constitution, along with the intent of its framers, is ignored; government spending increases; debt increases; and the un-Constitutional Federal Reserve plunders the nation through debt, inflation and the unending creation of more fiat currency. Show me a Congress or a President in the last quarter century that even significantly slowed the onslaught of these things, much less turned the tide back toward liberty, limited government or fiscal sanity.

Nevertheless, the demonization of one party, personality or faction by another continues as our favorite commentators or talk hosts assure us that we are in eminent peril and that only the elephants can save us from the donkeys, or vice versa. How many times have I heard people say “I fear that if Obama is reelected, the country will not survive another four years.” I’m sure the liberal left was saying the same thing when Bush was in office and of course the conservatives were similarly horrified by Bill Clinton before that.

So what’s up with all this demonization when it’s plain to see that whichever of the two establishment parties is in power, they keep heading the train down the same track? And it’s not just happening at the federal level. I have friends who have served in state legislatures who acknowledge that the same things are happening at the state level. Democrats have been thrown out to give power to Republicans, yet the state’s policies continue heading down the track to socialism.

I acknowledge that the real issue here is a spiritual one and the root of it lies in the spiritual condition of “we the people,” and I don’t mean “them the liberals,” I mean “us the church.” But that’s a subject for another time.

My friend’s recent Facebook comments reminded me of a speech I once heard Howard Phillips give in which he referred to the “Bogeyman” factor. It’s really nothing new. Parents have used the threat of a bogeyman to frighten disobedient children into compliance for centuries, if not millenniums.

However, today’s adults are far too intellectual to be frightened by some fictional character. No, we need something more tangible to frighten us. Thus the demonization of one establishment party, or its candidate, by the other in an attempt to frighten the party’s base of support into compliance so they will toe the party line and give their money and their vote to whomever they are told can save them from the bogeyman.

You see, sometimes political parties become so abusive of their base of support that the people begin to threaten to leave the plantation. Their supporters start to talk about returning to the Constitution, or supporting a grassroots candidate who has not been certified and approved by the establishment, or worse yet, they start talking about a “third party.” When that happens, what’s the establishment to do? How can they keep their supporters in line? Thus enters the bogeyman, that specter of terror and fright calculated to bring the people back to the only party deemed able to save them from the object of their fears.

As I said in the beginning, Obama isn’t that much different from Bush. He is continuing the same wars as Bush, the same deficit spending (albeit at a somewhat increased pace, but only with the cooperation of a Republican controlled House), the same socialization of medicine (Bush had the prescription drug plan, Obama has Obamacare and Romney wants Romneycare), the same bailing out of “too big to fail” banks and corporations, the same subversion of national sovereignty and immersion into the institutions of the new world order, and the same implementation of the modern “Homeland Security” police state that taps our phones without a warrant and seizes control of our airports demanding to see what’s in granny’s underpants. Nothing has changed, it’s only progressed from one level to the next, from one administration to the next. It’s like one administration opens the door and the next walks through it.

Though Barack Obama is indeed a threat to our freedom and a menace to our Constitutional form of government, he isn’t the only villain in the story of the assault being waged on our beloved republic. Obama is just the current bogeyman being used by the Republican branch of the governing duopoly to scare conservatives into voting for the chosen and anointed “R” candidate that we’re told can save us from the evil and dreaded “D.” Never mind the fact that the “Rs” continue all of the socialist, new world order, big government policies and deficit spending habits of the “Ds,” we can’t address those things right now because first we have to “save ourselves from the bogeyman.”

Before Obama, the Republican Party looked to Nancy Pelosi to fill the role of bogeyman. The party faithful had started to go off reservation, attending Tea Parties, threatening to throw out the RINOS, or maybe even start a third party. But within a year or two, the Republican Party and its operatives had convinced conservatives that they needed to come back to the Republican plantation and invest their political capital in the only party that could save them from the big bad Pelosi monster and the band of ghoulish Democrats that had taken control of Congress. And so the Republican Party was returned to power in the House of Representatives in 2010. That would be the same Republican controlled House of Representatives that provides all of the deficit spending that Obama is being demonized for, as the Constitution requires that all spending bills originate in the House.

When we were ramping up to the 2008 Presidential election cycle, Hillary Clinton was initially cast, and very effectively so I might add, in the starring role of that year’s production of “Bogey-girl Runs for President.” Hillary was so frightening to conservatives that they were lining up to support any “R” that anyone suggested might be able to beat her long before anyone had a clue who the nominees might actually be. And before that there was the Al Gore incarnation of the boogieman back in 2000, and ….

Roseanne Roseannadanna was right when she said “it just goes to show you, it’s always something – if it ain’t one thing, it’s another.” No matter how “not-conservative” the current Republican running for any given office happens to be, there’s always some reason why we have to vote for them anyway lest some greater evil befall us. If it isn’t Obama that frightens us, it’s Harry Reid. If it isn’t Harry Reid it’s … There’s always someone or something to fear – something that the Republican operatives and talk radio hosts tell us only the Republican Party can save us from, though it never really does.

There’s always some reason or another why this just isn’t a good year for Christians, conservatives or Constitutionists to take a stand for principle and support a non establishment candidate or third party that actually represents their values. Maybe next time, but this time we have to save ourselves from the bogeyman.

And so we keep throwing one party out and putting the other in and the more things change the more they stay the same as nothing of substance ever really changes. There’s always a reason to be frightened back into supporting a party that isn’t really going to change anything and there’s always a bogeyman out there that can be used to do the job.

Yes, fear really is a great motivator and an effective tool for bringing people into bondage. As the author of all fear, Satan has learned to use it well and appears to be giving lessons to the establishment party powers that be.

The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe.

Proverbs 29:25