The New York Times just published an opinion piece titled, “The Capitol Insurrection Was as Christian Nationalist as It Gets.”

Nice try.

This is the left’s next go-to weapon for taking down Donald Trump supporters, patriots, limited government conservatives and Christians who understand the founding roots of America rest in the concept of rights coming from God — not government.

It’s that “not government” part that has the Democrats’ panties in a bind.

Anything that degrades government’s influence, including God — especially God — is the enemy in the left’s mind.

The left, the progressive left, the democratic-socialist left, the Democrat left, the socialist left, the Marxist left, the communist left — they’re all the same; they’re all part and parcel of the same package. And it’s a package that is labeled with this one word: globalist.

The left is on a wild warpath to strip America of all that makes it great, beginning with the most noble elements of its history, moving to the brilliant creation called the Constitution and finishing with an utter collapse of godly governance. That requires the removal of the idea that individuals are bestowed at birth with certain unalienable rights; that requires the rewriting of core American truths that the Constitution is there to protect those individual rights — not to give government opportunities to strip those individual rights.

The left is very clever at using rhetoric to disguise its end game. That’s why neither Hillary Clinton nor Debbie Wasserman Schultz could provide MSNBC host Chris Matthews with a proper clarification of the differences between Democratic and democratic-socialism, or between Democrat and socialist, when asked several years ago in widely played media spots.

The left knows there is no difference — the left just doesn’t want you to know there is no difference. Why? Because if you know there is a difference, then you might start to get the sneaking suspicion that the left’s love of socialism is rooted not in love of country, but in power — and that the left’s soft sell of socialism in U.S. politics is really a frog-in-the-boiling-water way of ushering in an utter elitist squashing of sovereignty and utter anti-American system of top-down, global governance where only a few carefully selected get to live free. Get to rule free.

So here comes the left’s newest phrase: Christian Nationalism.

Here comes the left’s latest play to turn good to bad, virtuous to evil.

What’s wrong with Christian Nationalism?

What’s hateful and intolerant and aggressive and hostile and angry about Christian Nationalism?

Nothing. Nothing at all — nothing at all until the left takes the phrase, twists it, turns it, squeezes it and spits it out so that it becomes something dirty, something tainted, something dark.

Don’t let the left redefine this phrase.

Christian Nationalism is all about Founding Father visions for this country — the ones that say our guiding principles are those rooted in Judeo-Christianity; the ones that say America is indeed exceptional because America was indeed blessed by God at the beginning; the ones that say this country did indeed have a covenant with God, called the Mayflower Compact; the ones that say it’s this basic beginning that led to all the greatness that America was, is and truly will be.

So long as we don’t let the left corrupt a phrase that describes all that’s blessed about America.

So long as we don’t let the socialists and collectivists and globalists convince us that patriotism is divisive and Christianity, intolerant.

So long as we don’t let the left turn Christianity and patriotism — of love of God and country —into something shameful and wrong.

So long as we don’t cast our pearls before the swine.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.

First appeared at The Washington Times.