Christian conservative pundit Todd Starnes has built a career prognosticating on America’s future and issuing bold, declarative statements. But in his latest book, “Twilight’s Last Gleaming: Can America Be Saved?” (Post Hill Press; available March 19), he actually raises far more questions than he answers.
And that’s by design. Starnes approaches his readers like an old country prosecutor making the case to an ambivalent jury that the Marxist left is guilty of the attempted murder of America.
“In the following pages, I’m going to provide you with the evidence that our schools, our families, and our churches are under attack. Our way of life, our very existence as a sovereign nation is under assault,” he writes, and you can almost hear him pound his fist for emphasis.
“I know that many of you want a quick fix, but that’s just not how it’s going to work. It’s going to take some time. Hemorrhoids don’t just go away overnight. And unfortunately, our nation is suffering from a raging case of the ’roids.”
Then Starnes lays out his case — the mountains of shocking evidence ripped from today’s headlines about what’s happening right next door and all across the country, from sea to shining sea.
“It’s sad,” Starnes told The Western Journal in a video interview. “But these are the stories that we cover just about every day on the radio show and on the website, just to keep people informed and say, ‘Hey, look, this is happening in your country. Are you OK with this? And if you’re not, what more do you need to speak out?’”
Not very much more, it turns out, after reading Starnes’ comprehensive book. Its brilliance can be found as much in his Jonathan Swift-style musings and instructive vignettes as in the sheer weight of examples he’s compiled that prove “progressives have been waging a culture jihad across the nation.”
Most of that has accelerated over the last four years, while American Christians have been too busy living their lives to look around. As such, the book reads as a call to action for Americans to stay vigilant, get involved, get up off the mat, and, as Starnes repeats, “fight back” — to be “happy warriors for Christ.”
We had a great pre-launch event on Capitol Hill. Thank you, @CPInst pic.twitter.com/PEKiUl7FxR
— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) March 13, 2024
Here’s more of what Starnes told The Western Journal about his book and the dangerous path America may be headed down:
TWJ: You open the book noting that Joe Biden took the oath of office and “promised to protect our nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic. But we had no idea that he would consider all of us gun-toting, Bible-clinging, flag-waving constitutionalists as the enemy.” Barack Obama took the same view, and so have other modern Democrat leaders. So why did you select Biden’s false promise to open your book?
Starnes: Well, Biden is the president. At least, he’s the face of the president. I suppose the argument could be made that Barack Obama is really the puppet master, the godfather of what is happening in this administration.
But I do believe that Joe Biden, at his core, is a deeply flawed man. And I think when you look at his mannerisms, his behavior — whether or not it’s senility or dementia or just old age — it’s very clear that he’s not calling the shots. But on Inauguration Day, you put your hand on the Bible, and the buck stops at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Early in the book, you declare, “This is not America — this is a police state,” and that “Stalin and Lenin would be bursting with pride.” Was it the pandemic, the 2020 election, or some other event that led you to make those declarations?
I think the pandemic was eye-opening for a lot of people. The most troubling part of the entire pandemic is how willing the American people were to give up their civil liberties.
The government came and said, “Hey, look, you’re in grave danger. We can make you safe. We can protect you, but we have to take away some of your civil liberties.” And the American people said, “Do whatever is necessary here. Just take them away.” The problem with that is that when the government takes, they don’t give back. And that’s my concern.
But there was one specific thing that really caught my attention, and that’s when they went after the churches. At first they asked the churches, “Would you do this?” And then that “would you” turned into a “you will, and if you don’t, you will face penalties.” And a number of churches were slapped with draconian fines.
One story in particular out of Mississippi that I write about in the book involves a group of elderly Baptist church members who were meeting at the parking lot of their congregation. They were having drive-in church, and the local police showed up and slapped everybody with tickets. This did not happen in Berkeley or Detroit or in the Bronx. This happened in Mississippi.
And that is a warning sign, because when you look at the communist playbook, one of the first things they try to do is neutralize the impact of the churches. And I think that they have been very successful in doing that with the Catholic Church in America and the Southern Baptists, our two largest denominations that pretty much backed away from the major culture war issues of the day.
And I think that as a result of that, we are a weaker country — a less willing country. And it’s really going to open up the path for the communists to sweep in and take control of this country unless we take a stand.
Many believe the left used the pandemic as a sort of testing ground to determine how quickly people would give up their liberty. But I think they also lost a large part of their old faithful because even some leftists began to realize that our liberties disappeared too quickly. And, as you said, they were often given up by a willing citizenry, correct?
They didn’t have to fire a shot. They didn’t have to arrest anybody. We just said, “We surrender.” That’s not who we are as Americans. And we’ve got to be willing to stand up to the mob. That’s one of my reasons for writing the book, which is to say, “Hey, look, we’ve got a chance to save the country, but first we’re going to have to take some uncomfortable stands.”
I came up with the title for the book based on a speech Ronald Reagan delivered many years ago. He made an interesting observation about our national anthem. He said it doesn’t start with a declarative statement.
I thought about that, and I’m like, no, that can’t be right. And I went back and looked at the national anthem. And sure enough, it really actually starts with the question, “Oh, say, can you see? Is the flag still there?” And it’s a reminder that the flag may not be there one day and that, as Reagan said in another speech, freedom is not passed into the bloodstream. Every generation has to fight for freedom.
And that’s the message in my book. Are we — this generation and the ones coming behind us — doing what our forefathers did, standing up and fighting for freedom?
You ask that question in several ways in the book, and you say that, yes, America can turn away from its wickedness. But then you ask, “Will we have the courage to do it?” Do you think Americans will have the courage?
I don’t know. You know, I go back to the Pilgrims. They weren’t coming here looking to make $1 million. They just wanted to escape the tyranny of England and to worship God in a way they saw fit. So you look at the early founding of the country, the moral underpinnings, and, yeah, our Founding Fathers got a lot of stuff wrong, but they got a lot of stuff right.
And when it comes to this idea that under the Judeo-Christian form of government, we had every single one of our founding documents favored with those precepts and teachings, it works. You can be a Christian. You don’t have to be a Christian. You can be an atheist, or you can be a Presbyterian. You get to decide, and you’re not going to be persecuted for that belief.
We’ve gotten away from that, and I think we have unmoored ourselves from the teachings of our Founding Fathers. Now we’re basically adrift as a country.
The title poses the critical question, “Can America be saved?” There’s the basic definition of saved, as in to be rescued. But then there’s the Christian definition of saved, which comes through accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Did you intend that double meaning? Are you asking if America’s soul can still be saved?
You’re the only person who has asked that question, and I am so glad you did, because that’s the heart of the game, right? It really is about our salvation experience.
And I think for our nation to be saved, it’s not something that mankind can do. We are in a spiritual war right now. And if we really want to get back to our roots as a country, then Americans are going to have to experience that salvation moment. They’re going to have to get back to church, and we’re going to have to get back to our Christian heritage. But ultimately, that’s a personal decision between you and God.
One of the most compelling chapters of the book is a defense of America as a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles. And many times you implore Christian readers to “fight back.” Do you think Christians have been too tolerant and too accommodating as the nation gets stolen from underneath them?
I do, and I understand that. But I think it’s a misunderstanding of who Jesus was and who he is. There’s this idea that he was just a man with soft hands and flowing hair. No, he was a carpenter. He was a rough and tumble guy, you know? So I think the challenge for Christians is how to be ambassadors for Christ and at the same time stand up for our rights as American citizens.
Adrian Rogers, who was one of my favorite pastors at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, said that we are to be civil lambs, not silent lambs. We’re to roar like the lions. There are ways we can be effective without adopting the tactics of the left. When we behave like the left, it never works out. The reason why is that we’re called to be happy warriors. And that’s the point of the book.
We are people of hope. We know this is not our final place. But at the same time, it is our home now. And I do believe that we have a responsibility, as Christians especially, to be good citizens.
You spend a lot of time on Biden’s infamous blood-red backlit speech at Independence Hall, which you characterized as a very frightening moment in American history, a turning point. What did you see in that speech that impacted you so deeply?
I saw evil. I truly did. I remember watching it and thinking, this is chilling. And part of me thought, well, what a series of calamitous misfortunes for the marketing team and for the ops team there.
But then when you actually read the text of what President Biden was saying, you wonder, wait a second, was all of this planned? The placement of the military troops? The blood-red background? It was chilling and just a reminder of how quickly all of this can slip away.
And that’s what really troubled me, going back to Barack Obama, who promised on the campaign trail to fundamentally transform America, which a lot of people thought was just a throwaway line. But in reality, that transformation continues today. And I think that’s ultimately what we’re seeing here. And it is a very dangerous thing for this country.
In terms of that danger, you cite an episode of your radio show where you said multiple times, “There’s no doubt in my mind that Democrats want to see dead Republicans in the streets.” Do you really believe that?
I do. I do. And you have to look at the evidence of where we are right now. I mean, look at what just happened a few days ago in Athens, Georgia, with this 22-year-old girl, Laken Riley.
Her death clearly doesn’t seem to matter to the Democrats, to the Biden administration. This is a national news story, and it’s a national tragedy that could have been prevented. Her story is repeated many, many times over across this country. That one just happened to garner the attention of the conservative media.
And I say that because of the whole Black Lives Matter movement. It really did position people: This person is important, this person is not. This person’s life matters, this person’s life does not matter. And then when you couple in the critical race theory — or whatever they want to call it these days — they’re telling children in grade school that this little child is an oppressor and this child is the oppressed.
Well, what do you think the country is going to look like after 12 years of teaching in the public schools that white people are oppressors and the minority students are the oppressed? They are literally fomenting a race war in this country, and they’re using our taxpayer-funded schools to accomplish it. And that’s a very dangerous thing.
Is that what you meant when you wrote in the book that “our country’s Achilles’ heel is race?”
Well, I was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, and it’s one of the most beautiful and one of the most terrible cities in America — rich heritage, music, best barbecue in America. But it’s as if our city stopped living on the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated here. Everything from that day forward was colored in race, right? Everything has been seen through a lens of race to this day.
You know, we are a majority-minority city. We are controlled by Democrats. But everything is still seen through that lens, even though, you know, white citizens are the super-minority here. And it’s tragic that that’s the way it is.
There are people that make their living trying to divide us along racial lines. And I just find that repulsive and repugnant. You know, they told us we have to tear down all the statues, we have to rename all the streets, all the buildings. And if we do that, then we’re going to resolve all these problems in America. Well, they’ve done that. And it seems like the problems have gotten even worse.
And now we’re in a situation where, you know, the people in charge are literally erasing our history. And when we do that, we’re prone to repeat that history. And that’s a tragedy now.
Throughout the book you say that in America today “there is a sadness and sorrow, a sense of hopelessness.” You reference the R.E.M. song “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine).” And you say you do feel fine. But how can you feel that way given all the things you list as distressing and that are destroying America? Aren’t those contradictory emotions?
I don’t think they are. I feel fine because I know where I will end up. You know, I’m a Christian. I’m a person of faith, and I know that, no matter what, God is still in control, God is still on the throne. As Christians, we are not promised a strife-free life. You know we’re going to go through turmoil, we’re going to go through tribulations in our lives. And so if those days come, then so be it.
I quote John Adams toward the end of the book. And I hope I’ve got this correct. But he said, “Yet, through all the gloom, I can still see the ravishing rays of light and glory.”
And, you know, looking back over the Revolutionary War, those brave men and women put it all on the line, right? They sacrificed everything. They didn’t know how it was going to turn out, but they were willing to do the right thing and put their trust and their hope in God. And regardless of the outcome, they knew that there were brighter and better days ahead. And that’s how I feel.
Note: Answers and questions from the video interview may have been edited and condensed to remove random utterances, such as pauses or filler words that are a part of speech, and for brevity and clarity.
