Editor’s note: The following is based on a speech David Kupelian recently delivered in St. Louis as the lead-off speaker at the Constitutional Coalition’s annual conference.

Many people think Americans are more divided today than at any time since the Civil War – and further, that we are involved in another albeit different sort of “civil war” between two intensely opposed groups of Americans.

If this is true, we are in desperate need of understanding what we’re dealing with and why our beautiful, once-unified nation is being ripped apart – and hopefully reversing course.

There was a time when our nation’s conflicts could be understood through a political lens – liberal versus conservative, Democrat versus Republican. Liberals wanted bigger government and more free stuff, conservatives wanted smaller, less intrusive government, and our nation was a compromise between those two opposing forces. We had a powerful, capitalist, free-market economy, but also a sizable social safety net – and most Americans were happy with that balance.

Such compromise was possible only because, underlying the give and take between liberal and conservative, most Americans were on the same page culturally and religiously: Deep down, pretty much everyone embraced our country’s Judeo-Christian moral foundation.

Not anymore. You cannot understand America solely through a political lens anymore. A new California law, SB 219, signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, says you can be thrown into prison for 12 months for failing to use the correct transgender pronoun. That is, for refusing to use words that never existed before – newly created pronouns like co, en, ey, xie and yo, which correspond to dozens of new genders that also never existed before in human history, like genderqueer, pangender, hijra and genderfluid.

How does that fit with traditional notions of “liberal versus conservative”?

Another example: the growing trend of branding all white people, especially white males, as racist – just for being white. Is that liberal or conservative?

Another example: Taxpayers shell out hundreds of millions of dollars every year to fund an organization whose primary business is butchering unborn human babies and selling off their mangled body parts for profit – Planned Parenthood. Is that liberal or conservative? Neither. It is, however, evil and insane.

One last example: There’s huge ongoing pressure in this country, exerted by Democrat politicians, journalists, “immigration activists” and others, to import into our nation as many people as possible from regions and cultures that don’t love us or our Constitution, are unlikely to assimilate, and whose core religious, political and cultural values are wildly incompatible with ours. In fact, some of these immigrants admit, when surveyed, that they would very much like to replace our Constitution with a barbaric, medieval 6th-century legal system called Shariah.

Is this a liberal or conservative value? Neither. The Democrats do this because they hope to convert these people ultimately into Democratic voters so they can finally achieve their holy grail of a “permanent progressive majority” – that’s their term – enabling them to rule America forever and not have to worry about elections.

But we’re talking here about a policy that destroys a great nation for the sake of establishing rule over it. If any outside power tried to do that, we would surely find ourselves at war with it.

Get David Kupelian’s latest blockbuster, “The Snapping of the American Mind: Healing a Nation Broken by a Lawless Government and Godless Culture.” Also available in e-book, audiobook and autographed versions.

Follow David Kupelian on Facebook.

So clearly, there’s a war going on in our midst.

Sun Tzu, in “The Art of War,” famously said: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

Unfortunately, I would say America is pretty much in the last category right now; most of us today understand neither our enemy nor ourselves, as I will explain.

In trying to understand the enemy, right away we have a problem. During America’s Civil War, the “enemy” was not far-off Nazis or ISIS jihad zombies, but our brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and friends – people who actually believed most of the same things we did, but who disagreed violently on one big issue: slavery.

So I’m going to use the word “adversary,” rather than “enemy,” to refer to the other side. In this civil war, we don’t want to destroy the other side. We do want to stop them, overcome them – in fact, crush, neutralize, defeat and annihilate their insane agenda – but still have a decent regard for them as our countrymen.

By the way, I’ve used the word “insanity” a couple times now. This is neither hyperbole nor rhetorical flourish on my part – I do mean insanity. When you’re talking about putting people in jail because they refuse to enter into your delusional world wherein you’re some gender that doesn’t exist and they must use some pretend, unpronounceable pronoun – we are way beyond politics and into genuine madness.

So, who is the adversary? Many of you would say “the left.” And you would be right.

To understand the left, you need to simply ignore all the great-sounding, high-minded things they say and focus instead on what they do. So let’s measure what they do against a simple, clear standard we can all agree on: The Ten Commandments.

For brevity’s sake, we’ll take the last five commandments, the ones governing man’s relationship with his fellow man.

The Sixth Commandment is “Thou shalt not kill” (or “commit murder”). Setting aside the 100 to 200 million people slaughtered or starved during the last century thanks to the left’s wonderful utopian system, just look at today’s America: More than 3,000 beautiful, innocent babies are slain in their mothers’ wombs every single day. Three thousand – the same number of people who died in the 9/11 terror attacks. Abortion, the murder of the unborn, is a sacred cause to the left.

The Seventh Commandment is “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” The entire sexual revolution of the 1960s, which has metastasized into total sexual anarchy, brought a host of plagues and is literally destroying our country, is entirely the brainchild of the left.

The Eighth Commandment: “Thou shalt not steal.” That sounds pretty cut and dried. Don’t steal other people’s stuff – who could argue with that? The left! After all, what is “wealth redistribution” but the left’s euphemism for stealing from one group to enable it to buy the votes and loyalty of others?

The Ninth Commandment is “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” The left violates the Ninth Commandment as easily as breathing. In fact, leftists’ No. 1 battlefield tactic for pushing us back and occupying new ground is their nonstop defaming, demonizing, lying about, intimidating, threatening, suing and prosecuting conservatives and Christians. We have become so accustomed to the left demonizing us – constantly labeling us as racist, anti-immigrant, fascist – that we roll our eyes and move on, thereby losing sight of just how genuinely wicked this is.

Now, whether they really believe we’re all racists is another matter. Some do, some don’t. If they do believe it, they’re delusional; but if they don’t believe it and are just defaming good people as a political battle tactic, then that is evil.

The Tenth Commandment: “Thou shalt not covet.” The great Winston Churchill described socialism as “the gospel of envy.” He’s saying socialism is a religion to its followers, but one that appeals to and institutionalizes envy, covetousness – one of the darkest parts of human nature.

There’s a great nugget of truth buried in this, which explains why the left is so destructive to human society – but also why it has such powerful appeal despite its abominable track record. The left appeals to the lowest regions of human nature: Envy is a bad thing, but the left ennobles it and makes it seem virtuous. Sexual immorality is a big problem, yet the left glorifies it.

If the left appeals to the ignoble side of human nature, the flip side is that Judeo-Christian values, crystalized in the Ten Commandments, have always been so successful precisely because they encourage the higher, nobler side of human nature and restrain the evil side.

Remember, at its core, the left is essentially godless, embodying a utopian worldview crystalized by the famous quote from Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov”: “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.” In the secular left’s world, everything is permitted (except refusing to use the correct transgender pronoun).

What’s the bottom line here?

The left, which poses as protectors of women, blacks, gays, immigrants, students, the poor and other supposed “victims” – in reality is the primary cause of most of the misery and suffering and injustice it claims to oppose.

I document this head-spinning cause-and-effect relationship in my most recent book, “The Snapping of the American Mind.” I argue that not only is the left mad, but it is literally driving tens of millions of decent Americans right over the edge as well – into dependency, debauchery, addiction, corruption, despair and suicide. Not long ago, Rush Limbaugh confirmed my thesis, saying: “Liberalism is driving people insane. It’s literally driving them insane.”

 

It gets worse. Even though you and I may want to cultivate a Christian hate-the-sin-but-not-the-sinner attitude toward our brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles caught up in all this terrible deception – hence the Civil War analogy – they have a different war they’re comparing our conflict to – namely, World War II, in which they’re the good guys, we’re the Nazis and Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler.

And here I suggest a corollary to the saying, “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.” That would be the left’s unspoken commandment governing everything it does during the Age of Trump, namely: “Donald Trump is Hitler, so everything is permitted.”

Think about this: If we really did have Hitler as president, every sort of “resistance,” obstruction, lying, sabotage and worse would be not only justified, but morally obligatory. There were at least 16 different plots to assassinate Hitler, including “Operation Valkyrie” which was made into a big movie starring Tom Cruise as the heroic ringleader, Col. Claus von Stauffenberg. Even the revered Lutheran theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was hanged by the Nazis for his role in that plot. To this day, the people who attempted to assassinate Hitler are regarded as patriots and heroes the world over.

Therefore, this fantastically reckless left-wing strategy of likening Trump to Hitler permits virtually anything to remove him from office. Which is why “the swamp” is engaged in this ongoing campaign to destroy Trump, including spending well over a year falsely accusing him of being a traitor who conspired with Russia to rig the election.

How do we fight and win a strange war like this, preserving all that is valuable and good about our nation while also keeping our own souls intact?

A nation is only as strong as her families – and many of ours are being ripped apart. The hard truth is, despite the incredible technology we’re immersed in, which confers on our society the appearance of great progress, we are living in a cesspool of moral depravity – and, as many experts have documented, the hallmark of a declining, disintegrating civilization is its increasing obsession with sex. That’s us. Plus, we are sending our precious children off to Marxist indoctrination centers where they really are being brainwashed. And then there is this outrageous new war against freedom of speech. And so on.

What we’re experiencing is beyond politics, folks, it’s beyond rationality. It’s madness.

Have you noticed that the left always seems to be extremely angry? And have you ever considered that the word “mad” means both angry and insane? If you get mad enough – you go mad.

Here’s the point: If hate – along with rebellion against God and His laws – is our adversaries’ downfall, how can we possibly prevail against the evil that has captured them by being hateful ourselves and, therefore, disobedient to His laws?

Back to Sun Tzu’s comment about understanding both our enemy and ourselves: We don’t know ourselves – too many Americans have forgotten what made our country great, what made it work, its core operating principles. And though three out of four Americans still self-identify as Christian, they’ve allowed the secular left to thoroughly de-Christianize America’s culture and major institutions.

In “The Marketing of Evil,” I document how today’s Americans have been conned into accepting and embracing all sorts of bizarre things that every previous generation, going back to the Pilgrims, regarded as evil. And in the final chapter, I show how Christians have not been immune to the sales pitches and seductions of the marketers of evil.

The problem, of course, is that we all are flawed, sinful human beings saddled with the same fallen nature that has allowed so many of our fellow countrymen to be lured over to the dark side. How do we win what is at core a spiritual war and, hopefully, even change the minds of our misguided countrymen?

Whatever else we do to counter the angry, irrational left’s toxic influence on our great country, there’s one truth we must adhere to, or all is lost.

In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ commented on the Ten Commandments, saying – and I’m paraphrasing: You all have heard it’s wrong to commit adultery, but I say if you lust after a woman, you’ve committed adultery with her in your heart. You’ve heard it’s wrong to commit murder, but I say if you hate your brother you’re in danger of God’s judgment. The Apostle John even said, “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.”

We are commanded not to harbor hatred for our brothers and sisters caught up with evil. Oppose them, yes! Fight the evil they are doing every way you can, but be a happy warrior – one without hatred, bitterness or vengeance.

If we want God to be on our side, we need to make sure we’re on His side. That means we need to repent of our own sins and obey His Commandments – first and foremost to love God and love our neighbor – and even, as Jesus Himself said, to love our enemy. Hate the sin, but never the sinner. There’s real magic in that.

Somehow, my friends, we have to discover how to overcome the angry, delusional, hysterical, anti-American, anti-God agenda that has captured the minds of too many of our fellow Americans, while at the same time embracing Christ’s way, when He said: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.”

Do that, and I promise, you’ve won the war.

Get David Kupelian’s latest blockbuster, “The Snapping of the American Mind: Healing a Nation Broken by a Lawless Government and Godless Culture.” Also available in e-book, audiobook and autographed versions.

Follow David Kupelian on Facebook.