“All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” “It was the best of times and it was the worst of times… It was the season of light, it was the season of darkness”. The opening lines for Tolstoy’s ANNA KARININA and Dicken’s TALE OF TWO CITIES could easily be applied to the United States today.
Happy families and countries are alike because of the way they love and care for each other. When difficult times happen in a family—and they will happen, they either make the family stronger or weaker. And always the base from which that strength occurs is grounded in faith and a belief in God and the promise that He made to all of us. Some of us may call this Devine Providence or a Great Spirit. My faith tells me that the only way for man to approach Our Maker is through Jesus Christ, but that doesn’t mean God can’t approach man in any way He so desires. Blasé Pascual talks of the “Hole in The Heart” that can only be filled by God. This is a hole in all men’s hearts no matter our color or ethnicity or our gender. In Chapter 6 Book 12 of his METAPHYSICS Aristotle argues in logic for the existence of God. So according to Tolstoy the bases for happiness” in good families is their faith in God. Unhappy families have many reasons for being unhappy but all those reasons come about because of their lack of faith—selfishness, self-centeredness, ego centric behavior—you name it. It is the same for countries.
A book about our current times could have started with the opening sentence of Dicken’s TALE OF TWO CITIES. When we look at the material wealth in our country and the ease that we enjoy going about the process of living, nowhere else in the world or at no other time has a people felt so unthreatened when it comes to their ability to take care of their material desires. Even during this political pandemic the poorest amongst us have had unfettered access to food, clothing and medical care. But instead of being a time when we could all come together and help and sustain each other, one side has used the pandemic as an opportunity to drive home a political narrative. A narrative if allowed to continue that would make all our lives less comfortable and less free. It is a narrative that replaces faith with government placing the individual in a position of dependency on government. Like all top down social, governing or economic systems that are based on secular principles—or any system based on pragmatic goals of outcomes that are never realized, and that are also based on transactional or situational ethics, a few people at the top of the pyramid—oligarchs or bureaucrats, will make decisions for all of us making sure that their positions and material needs are 1st met, even to the exclusion of the needs of those lower down on the pyramid. A perfect example of this kind of thinking is our Congressmen and Senators going to the front of the line for Covid-19 vaccinations when so many of our elderly and high risk patients have not been vaccinated. Talk about conceit and self-centeredness. Where do we find these angels sitting on pins to govern us in totalitarian regimes?
For the secularists, globalists, and situationalists to call for a “meeting in the middle” regarding governing of our country at all levels requires little effort on their part. When you have no basic ethics, when your decisions are always transactional, when pragmatism is a primary guiding principle, common ground is easy to find. For most conservatives and libertarians our principles are incontrovertible. The words of Barry Goldwater come to mind in this regard:
“Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of (social) justice is no virtue”
In that same inaugural address he remembered the words of Abraham Lincoln in 1858: “Our republican party is composed of strange, discordant and even hostile elements. Yet (because of shared values) we can agree on one thing—arresting slavery” I find very little to agree with the Kasich, Boehner, Ryan, Romney, branch of the Republican Party. Can we not at least agree on the principles of our founding and that those in the other party have shown a disdain for those principles by tolerating the desecration of our flag, kneeling during The National Anthem, and openly disrespecting our Veterans and those who are currently serving in our Military?
And finally in that same inaugural address were these words: “The beauty of our very system is in its’ reconciliation of diversity and unity.”
If those who are about to take power respect the ideas and traditions of our Founding, if they follow principles based on THE NATURAL LAW I will always support them and pray for their success. If they continue to show a disdained for our founding and not show gratitude and appreciation for the sacrifices that have been made for us to be at this place in time in man’s march toward liberty, I plan to fight them every step of the way and I’ll pray for their failure. And I plan to fight them just like our Great President has done.
“It’s the best of times and the worst of times”
