If Not Now, When? If Not You, Who?

Like many Republicans, I have been bathing in the afterglow of the Republican convention. “Kumbaya”. We should celebrate for a day or two and then get back to work. Where are the voices from two years ago from the corporate mercantilist wing of our party that preached from the pulpit of Tolerance—not acceptance? Mitt, Romney, Paul Ryan, the “Bushy-Boys, John Boehner, and Liz Cheney have yet to endorse our Republican ticket for President. What do any of them stand for except for themselves?

The “old republicans” of the past are being replaced with a new populist conservative group. This is happening at the Federal level and in our own State of Idaho. Look at what happened at the Idaho Republican Convention in CDA. IACI. IMA/IHA/IEA are shaking in their boots right now.

So are local developers and City Fathers who have been part of the collusion between themselves and the corporate financial out of State Financers who are trying to take over our State from Lava Ridge, to Eagle and Garden City. We the people have an opportunity this election season to regain our voice and regain the leverage that we were promised over 260 years ago in our Founding Documents

I grew up in Central Ohio on the edge of Appalachia. I went to college in Springfield Ohio in the middle of Appalachia just a few miles from Yellow Springs and Middletown Ohio where J.D. Vance grew up in drug infested dysfunctional poverty. I played college football with many teammates from Southern Ohio, Western Pa. and Kentucky. I very much recommend both J. D. Vance’s book HILLBILLY ELIGY and former Defense Secretary James Webb’s book BORN FIGHTING. Both are a study in the virtues of individual courage and familial love. For me both were testimonies that no matter how disruptive government programs can be to a community or to an extended family, the unconditional love of just one person—in J. D.’s case his maternal Grandmother who probably was a borderline schizophrenic and was a gun brandishing drug abuser—certainly, a bad combination, can fill the emotional and spiritual “holes in our hearts”. Government poverty programs can only “feed a man for a day”. “Teaching a man to fish”, providing a person with the moral structure upon which to climb out of poverty and move upward materialistically and spiritually, is something only the love of another person can provide.

The “New Republican Party” of Donald Trump and J. D. Vance has certainly embraced the spirit of a new Great Awakening. Acknowledging that “God is always amongst us” provides the humility and understanding that no matter how hard we try—and we are given the duty and free will to always try hard, things may not always go the way we think they should go. “Divine Providence” always has a plan and is “always amongst us”.

The 15-page Republican Platform is focused on what is most important: Faith—Family—and Freedom. It is patriotic and conveys a respect for our country and our Great Founding Documents.

The Democratic positions always place “things”—materialism, and “classes of people” at the front of their political philosophies. Class struggle between the oppressed, the disenfranchised, those who are different—skin color, sexual orientation, the economic marginalized and national origin are looked at as the cause of the problems we have instead of the symptom. The position embraced by Conservative Christians is that the diseases of the heart are the cause, and the effects are the result of the cause. WE are called on as Christian Conservatives to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are called on to help the poor “to help themselves”. We are called on to teach our fellow citizens to fish, not to give them a fish. Most of all we are called to recognize that all men are created in the image of our Creator and because of that fact every person no matter how young—think little baby boys and girls who are being aborted, or the old, think of those near death who were denied being with their families as they passed away in hospitals during Covid, and because we are all created equal, we should judge others just as God judges us—as equal. Celebrity, money, status and political position have nothing to do with our individual intrinsic value before God and hopefully before each other.

When government programs address only the materialistic needs of citizens, not only are those needs seldom met, but conditions deteriorate within communities and families as individuals lose their spirits and hopes. Think of the Great Poverty Programs of the mid 1960’s. Over 20 trillion dollars later there is more poverty today than in 1965. Before 1965 75% of Black children grew up in a home with at least two adults (sometimes grandparents). Today that number is less than 40%! Think of the AFFORDABLE CARE ACT’s promise of “access, quality, cost” or “you can keep your doctor or keep your plan”. All those problems have not addressed the underlying nature of human poverty—a loss of hope for the future.

Both J.D. Vance and DJT have a belief in a more expansive view of government than we Classical Conservatives have. They do have a belief that individual citizens have not fared well anyplace in the world, under progressive-socialist—command and control political and economic policies. The head of the Teamsters Union Sean O’Brien gave a great speech at the Republican Convention. What he showed was the corporate-mercantilist philosophy of many corporations, their Boards and their CEOs is not aligned toward the welfare of individual workers—American workers. Their allegiance to the corporation stands ahead of their allegiance to our country. They embrace the notion that we are all citizens of the world—whatever that means, while failing to acknowledge that there are responsibilities and duties of citizens—the fore most which is to take care of each other first. I wonder what the CEO of Starbucks or Amazon thinks about their obligations to their corporation—fiduciary, compared to their obligations to their country—patriotic. Would they be more willing to locate a new project in the USA knowing that the cost of labor is higher—the quality would be better, but that the corporate bottom line may suffer. We should start asking those kinds of questions of each other.

Conservatives understand that the “self-interest” of our citizens is not “selfish”. WE take care of home and our tribe first—see Thessalonians 2:

I am tired of calls for Environment Social Governance investing by globalists whose loyalty to large multinational companies is more important than their loyalty to The United States. How about conservatives insisting that CEOs, members of corporate boards profess their loyalty to the welfare of our country over the well-being of their companies? In reality, if the United States and Capitalism fail to exist, the need for corporations anyplace in the world will go away. In the United States individual investors and pension and managed investment funds still control the majority of shareholder investments. The people ultimately benefit from corporate profits. In Communist countries it is the governments themselves that receive profits of the enterprises and all means of production—including the profits from cheap labor.

We are at a good place right now for The Republican Party and The Conservative cause. The stakes have never been higher. We must take a deep breath and get back to work tomorrow. The events of the past two years have only shown us the lengths that the other side with the cooperation of the bureaucratic deep state (FBI, CIA, DOJ, IRS) is willing to go to in order to keep their power—not the people’s power.

The time to fight is now.

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Photo courtesy of Bryan Smith