2022. A new year. A new start. A new nation?
Am I the only one with the feeling that the USA is in a car that’s just a quarter of an inch away from the top of a very, very tall cliff? And the people in the bus are so busy arguing over the color of the sky (is it greenish-blue, or purplish-blue?) that they don’t even notice?
Or maybe we’re at a crossroads, and one road leads to a meadow, and the other leads into a bomb-infested rocky mess, and everyone is busy looking at the flowers on the roadside, and paying no attention to what’s up ahead?
Crossroads or cliff, I get the feeling that we are on the very brink of something very big.
Are we going to lose the USA as we know it? Are we going to turn into a Marxist communist hell? How close are we to being transformed into something that is fundamentally different from what the Founders created?
As Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
Will we, in our sunset years, tell our posterity “what it was once like in the United States where men were free?”
In other words, we could be on the brink of becoming a new nation, for if the foundation has changed, can it really be said that we are the same USA?
Do We Want A New Nation?
The first question we should ask is this: do we want a new nation?
Granted, this nation – and it’s people – are flawed. But that is human nature. We are flawed. What we make will be flawed. Perfection – and utopia – are unattainable in this life.
At this crossroads, we have three options:
- Become a Marxist nation (reorganizing ourselves as a socialist/communist/Marxist nation, or in other words, choosing ‘security’ over liberty)
- Become a free nation (realigning ourselves with the founding principles and ideals of the USA, or in other words, choosing liberty over security)
- Stay as we are (kicking the liberty-or-security can down the road for future generations to deal with)
Now, I’m not certain that the third option is possible. To my understanding, it is an illusion that will take us to the first in very little time. As Edmund Burke (theoretically) said, “all that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” So if we procrastinate our choice, we might find that we’ve been hijacked by the Marxists.
So in other words, our three options are:
- Bow down to the elites (reorganizing ourselves as a socialist/communist/Marxist nation, or in other words, choosing ‘security’ over liberty)
- Choose personal liberty, and make sure those elites understand they can’t tell us what to do (realigning ourselves with the founding principles and ideals of the USA, or in other words, choosing liberty over security)
- Let the elites choose if we bow down to them or not (theoretically, kicking the liberty-or-security can down the road, but in reality, we’ll end up bowing down to the elites)
So yeah, the choice is ours. But we need to make sure we understand our options.
Personally, I’m strongly in favor of the second option.
Do We Understand The Foundations Of The USA?
If we’re going to take the second option – realigning ourselves with the founding principles and ideas of the USA in order to become a free nation – we need to understand what those founding principles and ideas are and how they influenced the original culture, education, government, and lives of the first Americans.
Now believe me, I haven’t mastered these principles and ideals yet, but here are some that I do know:
- Personal liberty and responsibility
- Limited government with checks and balances, separations of power, and clearly defined roles
- A personal and national allegiance to God, good, and freedom
- Self-government
- The unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
That is a tiny fraction of the principles and ideals that influenced the founding of America, but it’s a good starting point.
We need to constantly search out, study, and come to understand the founding ideals and principles of America. One way to do this is to understand the founding documents.
Do We Understand And Cherish The Founding Documents?
The Declaration of Independence. The Mayflower Compact. The Bill of Rights. The US Constitution. The Monroe Doctrine.
The founding documents of a nation are important. They are the table of contents, thesis statement, and theme, and symbolism of a book. They are the foundation and structural supports of a house. They are the skeleton of a living creature. If the founding documents are good, the nation is good – to the extent that We The People understand and hold ourselves to the founding documents.
Do we understand and cherish the founding documents?
Do We Know Who The Enemy Is?
One of the major themes in The Hunger Games is knowing and remembering who the enemy is.
Who is our enemy?
It’s not the person on the other side of the aisle.
Well, it’s not the normal person on the other side of the aisle.
Our mortal enemies are the elites. They are on both sides of the aisle. Do we bow down to them? Or do we hold ourselves erect?
Our immortal enemy (yes, we have immortal enemies) is Satan. And his devil-angels. Do we bow down to them? Or do we hold ourselves erect?
Know who the enemy is. Remember who the enemy is. Understand how they fight.
Sun Tzu wrote, “If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle” (The Art Of War, Chapter 3).
Now What?
I’ve asked ‘what can I do to aid the cause of freedom’ a thousand times if I’ve asked it once. And each time, I’ve been given vague answers: do what is yours to do. Use your talents. Be ready.
Not exactly the checklist I want to be given.
But I’ve started to come to terms with those answers. The precise details are highly individualistic. God uses us in different ways. But it will involve our talents, what is ours to do. And we must be ready.
Though I can’t give you a detailed checklist, I can give you some ideas to help you get started.
- Study the founding documents. Come to understand and cherish the underlying principles, ideals, and values.
- Read tons. There are so many great books out there. Here are just a few of my favorites: The Making Of America (Skousen); The Price Of Freedom (Coolidge); The US Constitution And The 196 Indispensable Principles Of Freedom (DeMille); Unmasked (Ngo); United States Of Socialism (D’Souza); How To Destroy A Nation In Three Easy Steps (Shapiro); Rules For Radicals (Alinsky); Witness (Chambers); Wild Swans (Chang); The Righteous Mind (Haidt); and on and on and on. Read, read, read. And share what you learn!
- Get involved. Run for office, sign petitions, write your congressmen, campaign for people you support, etc. There’s tons to do, and if we’re going to win, everyone needs to be involved.
- Search for and amplify other freedom-loving voices – and use your own voice, too! Even though they can be easy to miss, these voices are out there.
New Nation?
2022. A new year. A new start. A new nation?
Well, it depends. The choice is ours to make. The verdict is ours to give.
But time is running out…