An old friend, whom I haven’t seen in decades, popped up on Facebook the other day. I had recently introduced all of my Facebook friends to this website, expressing some urgency about our need to get involved in politics.
My old friend praised my urgency. He then went on to say I might as well give up. It’s already too late. I’d be better off studying the principles of liberty so that I could teach them to my posterity . . . maybe they’ll have a chance to begin again some day.
I can at least empathize with his feelings. It is difficult to believe that this nanny-state train, this barreling steam engine of socialism, statism, bureaucrat-ism, and massive government debt-ism can be stopped before it bursts from its tracks and flings us liberty-mangled into a ravine. It’s been gaining momentum for a century and no one yet has really been able to slow it.
Nevertheless . . . and this is my response to my friend: Liberty, wherever it resides in the world today, can trace its origin to and through the United States of America. Moreover, it is the current military and economic might of the United States that at least in some measure continues to stave off enemies of freedom throughout the earth.
If liberty in this nation were to fail — if we were to lose our constitution — then the clearest hope for the rest of humanity will fail with it. The world will enter another dark age.
Now is not the time to give up on the United States. There are still many decent, hard-working, motivated peopled who want to keep this nation free. Their numbers are growing and I thank God for it.
Mark Steyn expressed his reason for hope brilliantly in his recent book, After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. Comparing the people of current-day Europe to Americans, Steyn says,
The United States is still different. In the wake of the economic meltdown, the decadent youth of France rioted over the most modest of proposals to increase their retirement age…. Everywhere from Iceland to Bulgaria angry mobs besieged their parliaments demanding the same thing: Why didn’t you the government do more for me?
America was the only nation in the developed world where millions of people took to the streets to tell the state: I can do fine if you control-freak statist would shove your non-stimulating stimulus, your jobless job bills, and your multimillion-dollar pork-athons, and just stay the hell out of my life and my pockets.
That’s the American that has a fighting chance. . . .
In Mark Steyn, After America: Get Ready for Armageddon (Regnery Publishing, Inc., pg 23).
My personal observation is this. I see a large and increasingly influential section of the American population educating itself in authentic and historical principles of constitutionalism, democratic republicanism, liberty, etc. Many of these people call themselves Tea Party Patriots.
I agree with my old friend to this point: If enough Tea Party Patriots and like-minded Americans do not stand up now, get really busy, and sacrifice of their time, money and comfort to rescue this country, it will be too late. In the words of Mark Steyn, “if you want a happy ending, it’s up to you. Your call America” (ibid).
