Always In My Prayers

I try to swim 5 days a week and I have developed a group of friends who swim with me. One of them is named Paul. He told me the other day between sets that he was a “conservative Republican” but that he voted for Biden because he couldn’t tolerate Trump’s behavior. We have all become familiar with this line. What they are actually saying is that they were placing their own “feelings” above any principles that support liberty and capitalism. He voted against boorish behavior and for Marxist-progressivism. We all know that he was never a conservative.

After our workout, we met again in the hot tub where we both stretched out. He told me that he considered himself a “humanist “and that he “cares” about his fellow man. I told him that I was a Christian and that my Catholic Christian faith informed every aspect of my life. He then became angry and made this fantastic statement “that all Christians are delusional” and I needed to seek psychiatric care. This was a college educated man telling me that I was delusional because I believed in God and Jesus Christ! I bet many who read this have had similar experiences.

Then about 50 feet away a black man who I have known for 30 years came into the pool area and Paul asked me if “I felt hate for him”? Honestly, this is what he said. I raised my hand and called out to my friend and asked him to come over and join us. As my old friend joined us in the hot tub he informed me that he was keeping his Trump sticker on his car and he hoped that I was doing the same—I am. Paul was now really confused. He was sitting in a hot tub with two Trump supporters and one was Black!

He asked my old friend if he were a Republican and my friend said “No”. A look of relief came over Paul’s face until my friend said “I am not a Republican I am a conservative Patriot”. Not much was said after that for the next 15 mins. Political philosophy and reality can be difficult to square for elitists and experts on many occasions. Especially when they know it all.

What I observed in my friend in my most humble opinion was hate and an attitude of superiority. I told him that he was a bigot. Without knowing what was in my heart he had assumed that I was prejudiced against Black people. He did this without understanding my personal history, how and where I grew up, or knowing that some of my closest friends in life—in the military, medicine, and on my college football team were Black and native American or of Oceanic descent. I finally learned firsthand what it felt like to be a deplorable in the eyes of a “snowflake” who felt himself to be superior to me. Talk about a lack of self-awareness. Talk about a lack of curiosity or compassion.

As we ended our conversation I made a terrible mistake. I extended my hand and told him I “would always pray for him”. He went ballistic and asked me not to pray for him—I will but I won’t let him know about it. “I don’t need your prayers or any other of your delusional friend’s prayers”.

HATE. There is an awful lot of hate in our country and in the world. People who hate first of all don’t respect themselves. Hating another person or a group of people requires first of all hating oneself. Hate is a form of transference. People who don’t understand the message of Christ’s love, who don’t understand every person’s uniqueness and the fact that we are all made in God’s image, and every person’s need for forgiveness and redemption, have made themselves their own god and their own judge of right and wrong, without anything but their own life experience to use as a predicate for the bases of their judgments. They have set the bar at an impossible level for themselves.

My Quaker grandmother told me that everybody we know, everybody we see on the street that we don’t know, is bearing a cross known only to themselves and for this reason we should approach every person understanding their burden—even if we don’t know or see what it is. We must take care ourselves not to hate other people—though I can hate a political philosophy, or an idea that is against my own faith. We must understand that there are issues that require the application of Providential Truths—abortion, the right to protect oneself and family, issues that impact free will and liberty, and then there are issues that require prudence and logic that do not have Providential implications—immigration, minimum wage (I believe I can make a Providential argument against minimum wage however).

The good news is that I believe our country has reached the nadir regarding our defense of liberty and capitalism. As we fight every day for our ideals, let’s not HATE—it will only destroy us. Let us inform ourselves and reacquaint ourselves with the principles that were the bases of our countries founding. If I had any argument at all to make with those people who call themselves “conservatives” who are really RINOS it is that they have forgotten their own conservative principles They can’t begin to explain American Exceptionalism. Some of them even apologize for it. “White shame” is a sham. Virtue signaling snowflakes asking forgiveness for being white—what choice did they have about their color or their race or their gender? —are projecting guilt for their own lack of self-respect. Maybe they have grown up in an environment where daddy and mommy gave them everything, where they never had to compete or learn to win and lose based on their own effort, but again the cause of their shame isn’t their skin color, it is their lack of accomplishment or being unfulfilled in some way. Only they can fix that problem. Confessing for a sin that they have never committed is likewise a sin—it is also an excuse for failure.

The real difference between conservatives and progressive-RINOs is that we understand that we are all created in God’s image and that we are all worthy of His love. God doesn’t make junk. WE are all given gifts and we were all “born to succeed”. Conservatives understand this. They understand the solution to our problems does not come from looking towards the outside of ourselves and our communities, but the solution to our problems are found within our own hearts and souls. When we look to ourselves as the solution to the problems we all face in life, we can’t blame anybody or anything else. When it is all up to you and your back is against the wall your chances of being successful improve exponentially. I always did best when I waited till the last minute to do my homework. Ask any athlete or businessman, or rancher. When we depend and believe in ourselves and don’t blame or look to others for an excuse, our chances of success—no matter how you measure success—let’s substitute happiness and fulfillment for the word success, will always be within our individual reach. When others pave the way for us—parents who get their kids into Ivy League Colleges with bad grades is a great example, or government programs that give preferences to certain groups, we create snowflakes who in their hearts feel unworthy of their own status. Without work, without learning to win and lose, there is no sense of accomplishment. Only guilt.

It is all up to you. Freedom, liberty, and hard work. Make good decisions. These are what conservatives believe.

Take care of yourself and your family first. We don’t pretend to know what is in the heart of others, nor do we try to tell them what is best for themselves.

There is no such thing as utopian virtue, because there is no such thing as utopia. Never take away an opportunity for a man or women to do something for themselves that they are capable of doing for themselves, because you will eventually take away their self-respect. You will end up with a virtue signaling snowflake progressive who can always tell you what is in your heart and what is best for you. Just like my friend Paul. God Bless him.

He is in my prayers whether he wants to be or not. Maybe someday I will be in his.

MAGA “Fight like Hell”