Senator Jim DeMint is standing in the gap and drafting a blueprint to restore and protect the economic and social freedoms our founders fought for.

Some say the United States – the world’s great bastion of freedom – is sliding towards socialism. Others characterize the slide as fascistic.

One thing is certain: high-profile bailouts and a stimulus bill have toppled the walls between government and private sectors. Federal control now extends in various ways to education, healthcare, financial markets, real estate, businesses and even religion.

Out-of-control spending is increasing America’s debt to unsustainable levels. All signs point to an impending national bankruptcy and a drain on the political strength our framers fought for and our people worked so hard to achieve.

But there is hope. According to Senator Jim DeMint, we can stop America’s slide into socialism. In his book, “Saving Freedom,” DeMint has laid out a complete action plan to reclaim America’s freedom based on legislation that would reduce the nation’s debt. His plan also emphasizes reversing America’s cultural decline by restoring a strong spirit of faith, family and freedom.

The Voice magazine sat down with Sen. DeMint to discuss his strategies for saving freedom.

You’ve said that socialism is the true enemy to freedom. Explain the dangers of socialism for our audience.

We almost have to explain first the principles of freedom, because if Americans don’t know what made us exceptional, what made us prosperous, what made us good and compassionate, then the policies of socialism will go unnoticed or they will seem natural. Socialism is when the government owns or controls a large part of our economic system – and in the case of America today also our culture – determining what is right or wrong and what our morals should be. 

Freedom, on the other side, focuses on the individual. The key to being able to live in this freedom is for those individuals to be able to restrain themselves. That’s why the Christian-Judeo principles and value system was so important to the founding of our country. It made not only our culture work, but also our political and economic systems.
Socialism is the complete opposite of building on an individual. It is building on the power of government and a collectivist approach to governing people.

What are some of the subtle ways you see socialism creeping in?

In “Saving Freedom,” I focus on the Great Depression and what FDR did during that period of vulnerability in our country to convince Americans that our free enterprise systems had failed. That’s how he ushered in the whole idea of labor union power that’s supported by government. Since that time we see every decade several new agencies at the federal level taking over education, a large part of health care, which they’re trying to finish that control now, transportation, energy, now General Motors, and the banks. We can see it over long period of time, particularly since the depression and FDR. We seemed to turn the corner in America where we no longer resisted government but we started looking to government for solutions.

As Christians, we look to God and Christ as our provider. Looking to the government is the total opposite of what we should be doing.

You’re right. We can’t serve two masters. It’s no coincidence that Socialist Europe is post-Christian because socialism and secularism are two sides of the same coin. Basically as you become dependant upon the government for your income, health care, and the education of your children, that becomes a spiritual sickness. We see it in America today where people no longer look to God to help them in crisis. When a crisis comes, everyone seems to be looking to the government. I shouldn’t say everyone because I think a large number of Americans still know that we don’t want government running our lives. But, I think, particularly in the last election, at least emotionally, that we just wanted someone to take care of things for us. But there’s no evidence that has ever worked, whether in Europe or in the United States. 

I think we can look at Europe as a model of where we seem to be headed if we don’t stop this slide.

You’re right. People need to know this has been tried before and it has been tried many times in the world. Our founders warned us that there is a tendency for your freedom to rescind and government to grow and that’s why they took such pains to divide the power of government between the federal, state, and local, assuming most of our economic growth would come from free people in the private sector. But once the government seeks to attempt to manage things by force, a lot of the things that work in a free society stop working. 

Now we see health care moving in that direction. The government has already infiltrated GM. We’re sliding quickly under the new administration. Are we nearing the point of no return?

I think we are and I think that’s the urgency of “Saving Freedom.” It’s my cry for help, in a way, because I can’t change the Senate. I’m out numbered there unless Americans stand up and speak out all across the country. Forget the labels Democrat, Republican, or Liberal or Conservative. We have to think about what has worked and will always work in America. Two of the chapters in this book focus on how important the Christian faith, particularly after the Protestant restoration, was after the founding of this country. And how all observers, when they looked at this country, saw this amazing phenomenon where government was separated from religion but religion was key to making government work. 

We do want a secular government. We don’t want a government forcing secularism on our society, on our schools, on our business, on our Boy Scouts as they’ve been doing. So it’s so important to our whole system that we have a people that have strong religious convictions that focus on the accountability of the individual to God. When that happens you don’t need the force of government to restrain you. That is why the Christian faith has proven to work so differently than any other religion around the world, particularly in secular societies, because it focuses on that individuals relationship with God and our accountability to Him. That’s what compels us to live a life that’s worthy of the Kingdom of God, but also improves our countries and our communities. It has always made America different. 

That’s a really good point. That’s undeniable. Looking at government’s spending, we see spending increasing at breakneck speed. What is the real cost of unrestrained government spending?

Spending is at such unprecedented levels that it’s mind numbing right now. If you think back to Bill Clinton, he proposed an $18 billion stimulus and everyone was astounded at that extravagance. Now we’re talking about well over $700 billion just for one bill, and that’s not working so we’re talking about another one. This is not money that we have. This is borrowed money. The increase in debt and the cost of that debt is threatening the future of our country. I’ve heard it from our allies and trading partners when I’ve been in Europe. The other countries that depend on our economy working are just astounded at what we’re doing to ourselves and they wonder if we will continue to be the economic and military power in the world. 

I’ve seen some surveys in which the respondents seem to think that we won’t be a superpower within 10 years because of the decisions we’re making now.

Well that’s true. We’re mortgaging our future to try to make some political promises and help people politically now. America is great for a reason and we’re sliding away from that towards a type of government and a type of country that has always failed in the past. But this country doesn’t belong to the government. It belongs to the people. I have seen on a number of occasions over the last few years people stand up against an immigration bill or against the auto bailout and a lot of Congressmen and Senators changed their minds. I think we have the ability to bring change now, if people would start standing up more, speaking out, e-mailing, calling their congressman and senators, and getting informed.

Courage is a key. To get involved in public life, even as someone writing an ad in the local paper or starting a blog or sending e-mails to print, there’s always a sacrifice because you’re going to always find enemies as soon as you express your opinion. I’m afraid Christians have been intimidated with this idea of separation of Church and State (which is not in our Constitution at all) and that maybe their views aren’t welcomed in the public square; that maybe expressing a value judgment about right or wrong is no longer welcomed. But we can’t have that anymore, because if a society can’t speak out about what’s right or wrong according to their religious convictions, the culture will continue to decline and those who want lower and lower standards will continue to prevail. But the biblical standards have preserved our country to this point. To what point we’re declining you can trace to a loss of those biblical standards. 

You really can. You can trace a lot of it back to taking prayer out of schools.

You really can. I put that prayer in this book because it was not any kind of denominational prayer at all. It was asking God to protect the teachers and the parents and it was showing honor to those people.  When the courts threw that out a lot of things happened. Up to that point, the federal government had not gotten involved in education and the “State” as defined in this separation of Church and State did not define schools. They were not federal schools. But that court decision not only took prayer out of schools, it also began the process to separate values from our culture. That has really destroyed a lot of what makes America work.

People of faith are going to have to stand back up. Our pastors have been relegated to just preaching on Sundays. They’re afraid to go out in the community and say what’s right and wrong and challenge the culture. When I speak to pastors today I challenge them and say, “Don’t let this government make you hide within the walls of your church.” We need leaders. If we didn’t have pastors to lead this country in the revolution, America would never be free.

What do you think about these TEA parties? Are they making a difference?

I think they’re real important. There were 30 of them in South Carolina on the 4th of July and the media largely ignored them. I think that happened all over the country. Literally millions of people came out to protest our government and the media didn’t cover it very much. People are starting to see, when they show up for [these TEA Parties] that a lot of other people feel the same way they do. It’s giving them courage to continue their involvement.

I can tell you as someone who’s been a congressman and a senator, if I get a call from one of my offices in the state that 50 people are standing out there with signs telling me not to vote for this cap and trade electricity tax, I know that it is a serious issue. I know if 50 people come stand there that means thousands of people feel the same way. If I think I can vote for something like that to appease special interest groups and that the people back home are not paying attention, then I can have it both ways. That’s what politicians have been doing for years. They will say one thing at home and then they will go to Washington and vote with special interest groups. They’re not afraid of their constituents.

Why aren’t we seeing the fraud prosecuted? I know you have taken up the fight to audit the fed with Ron Paul. But so far the only guy we saw prosecuted was the only guy that confessed: Bernie Madoff.

A lot of this – I don’t know if I would call it fraud, ineptness, or just laziness is really with the politicians. They’re trying to blame everyone else, but this came down to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac a government entity that got in the middle of our financial system and encouraged banks and mortgage companies to make loans to people who couldn’t pay them back. Fannie Mae bundled all these up and sold them to securities all over the world and once some of these people started defaulting it was like a set of dominoes starting to fall. This wasn’t a problem with free enterprise and deregulation.

The government, with a lot of bad policy, has hurt our whole financial system and now a lot of us are concerned about the Federal Reserve, which is set up as an independent organization that was supposed to protect the value of our currency by regulating the money supply along with working with our banks. But now it’s doing so many other things and our laws forbid us from actually auditing all aspects of their operation. They can bring our whole country down by destroying our monetary system and a lot of us are concerned that they might. They’ve doubled our money supply in the last year and that’s something that has a lot of us concerned. Ron Paul in the House and I in the Senate and – even people to the far left like Bernie Sanders – are on the same bill to force an audit of the Federal Reserve. So far the democrats have blocked it, but we’re going to keep bringing it up until we get a vote on it.