Wow! Two Hundred Fifty years, America. It’s a worthy milestone.
I’m going to gush just a bit today as this is one of my personal, favorite holidays. Also, this departure comes because I think that too much of what is happening in our world today is based in selfishness and ignorance.
Good, I can hear the screams, the scent of smoking vitriol, and imagine the stressed and damaged feelings spreading like wildfire. “Where do you get off calling people ignorant and selfish?” That’s part of the problem. We don’t understand the language any longer and every word from every person or source we encounter is just one long chain of insults, triggers, and abuse of our personal, internalized utopia. Let’s all take a deep breath and step back for a moment. Remember, we’re thinking here.
Many years ago I read a book by Thomas Sowell titled “The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy”. The basic premise was a discussion of the two “visions” of our world. As you might imagine the first is the “vision of the anointed” and the opposing view is names as the “tragic vision”. Stay with me, there’s a payoff here. For shorter reference we will refer to these as the anointed and the tragic.
In the anointed vision, Sowell postulates that the adherents of this view see problems stemming from a lack of understanding, compassion, or power amongst the unenlightened masses. This is a problem that the elites in academia, the media, and government see as something they can solve with the right amount of power and control to institute the kinds of laws, rules, and social structures. Sounds a bit familiar doesn’t it.
Then we have the tragic vision which, at its heart, recognizes that the world is broken. Humans are flawed and self-interested. We live in a world with conditions that stem from limits on resources and options to deal with people and nations. In that vision we must rely on “evidence, traditions, decentralized processes, checks and balances, and incremental change over grand elite-driven schemes”.
OK. So what does all of this have to do with America 250. Stick with me for just a few more moments and I’ll tell you.
Our founders, despite all of the horrendous things that many today want to have you believe, were genuinely brilliant and inspired men. They studied the great and the failed civilizations of history, learning from each the lessons of power, failure, human nature, and mans incredible capacity for both cruelty and greatness. What they realized was that there were patterns in the past and those created roadmaps to the future. When you read the words they wrote and look beyond just the moment or the situation you realize that they understood that there is evil in the hearts of men. They also recognized that those driven by Judeo-Christian principles and allegiance to Christ were unique. They recognized that government must have limits because it wasn’t an institution so much as a collection of men that would be attracted to power and personal remuneration. Without check, mankind will always attempt to gather more power and then use that power against their fellow men for their own advantage.
Mankind itself, outside of government would do likewise in their own affairs. Absent the tenets of faith in general and Christianity in particular, men would require constant monitoring and a proliferation of laws that would ultimately lead the institution of a tyrannical government. When you listen to the founders words you see over and over again a melding of these viewpoints. The government they created had to restrain the power of the government to protect the people. The people had to be, in the words of John Adams, “a moral and religious people” capable of governing their own passions and ambitions. From these they expected that people to select the best leaders possible based on the populace remaining informed and involved in their own governance. The truth is that the entire process is a dependent ecosystem that relies not only on the restraint of government, but also on the constant vigilance and engagement of an informed populace that is guided and governed internally by its own moral compass.
In the end we depend on the patriotism of our people, the efficacy, fairness and candor of our press, the upright objectivity of our judiciary, and the moral guidance of our houses of worship and our civic organizations.
Two hundred and fifty years. We’ve done well to make it this far. I tremble as I write these words, however, because I fear for our future. If we do not find a way to check the unbridled avarice and power grasping of those who lead us at the local, state, and federal level then faith in our institutions will crumble completely and governance will not be possible; the republic will die. If we cannot stop the drive to destroy all moral guidance from our society while we constantly permit the defamation and destruction of our history and our traditions by elements in our society that are pledged to foreign laws and nation states we will not last much longer. If we continue to permit investors, foreign agents, and foreign nations the freedom to divide us and obscure the greatness of our nation and the inheritance that belongs to all of us then we will not last. If we do not cease permitting people to cross our border with no intention to assimilate and become a proud, functioning member of our society then we will lose our culture and become something else that we no longer recognize or control.
There’s much more that can be discussed here, but that’s good enough for today.
GOD BLESS AMERICA! HAPPY 250th. May Almighty God continue to shed his grace on thee. May our people wake in time to save the republic. May we turn our faces to God and may his countenance shine once again on the United States of America.
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