This week the House of Representatives is taking up the appropriations bill for Commerce, Science and Justice. This is an opportunity for Congress to exercise its constitutional power of the purse through policy riders that can help limit the size and scope of government.

Today, Bernie Sanders’ claimed socialist identity should not be taken lightly. His formidable presence is anticipatory to what is being highlighted in schools and universities across our country. The good senator senses this growing support and thus, the battle begins. So, it’s time we realize that communism is still our foe, and this time around, the battlefield lies within the hearts and minds of Americans.

If you think government is the source of your rights then you will have no problem with them taking certain rights from you to keep you safer. Yet founding father Benjamin Franklin inferred, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Much has been made recently about a Pew Research poll released in May which indicated the number of Christians in America is falling. But while this was met with great glee by the secularist Left and other God-haters, it bears noting that even after over half a century of lies and vilification of Christianity from the Left, still more than 70% of Americans identify with Christianity.

Whoever the Republican candidate is must be ready and able to forcefully carry a conservative message to minority Americans. And that candidate must be ready to fire back when black Democrats call him or her racist (or Uncle Tom, in the case of Dr. Ben Carson) for making the connection between crime, unemployment and failing schools and left-wing policies and unions.

The Christian church on earth is always, in a sense, in exile. Whatever the incidental identities of her members may be—whether of nationality, race, class, or gender—their ultimate identity is that they are in Christ and belong to him. Yet there are times in history when it is more dramatically obvious, and perhaps more painfully experienced.