Early in his political career, Abraham Lincoln made a very observant comment on America’s unique geo-political circumstances in the world when he noted: “All the armies of Europe and Asia…could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. … If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we live through all time or die by suicide.”
Lincoln’s life was given to a central trial when our nation was committing suicide, when a pair of revolutionary twins assumed opposite sides over two issues: slavery and the relative independence of the states. The Civil War was conducted over a continent, with three major theaters of conflict, 50 major battles, and another hundred significant battles among 10,500 military engagements. The dedication of Lincoln to preserve the Union and destroy every vestige of slavery cost the United States over 1,000,000 casualties. But the republic survived with its founding constitutional design, strengthened by amendments necessary to universal liberty.
Today, we find ourselves in a different kind of conflict, which has shown we are a nation divided over a hundred issues, bristling over a thousand fronts, erupting on countless great and small battlefields among us, as we are becoming a nation of diametric opposites. The following are just a few of those battles.
We can begin with our once-common belief system. Today, the left is at war with America’s heritage as the culmination of Western civilization and as an inheritor of the freedoms of Athens’ democracy and Rome’s republic. The left is at war with America as an heir to the common laws and property rights of England and the Magna Carta. The left is at war with our founding and our founders as they attempt to uproot their sagacity and valor from the American mindset.
More materially, the left is at war with our nation’s constitutional design. They do not believe in the separation of powers between distinct branches of government; they prefer an all-powerful executive branch allied to a dictatorial administrative state; they prefer a rubber stamp congress that approves unlimited spending; and they prefer a judicial branch that signs off on a national transformation into a redistributionist, socialist tyranny.
The left does not believe in the Constitution’s definition and provision of federalism, preferring an all-powerful central government to which states, localities and citizens are not equals but dependents. The left is in conflict with the protections of the Bill of Rights and the ideal of common law, as they are openly attacking political opponents through “our common” justice system. They have made our once glorious legal system a political battlefield.
The left is at war with the defenders of our freedoms at home and abroad. The Democrat Party consistently attempts to defund our military while regularly slandering our soldiers and their efforts. The left defunds and insults our police forces around the nation, wherever Democrats are in power. The left has made a battlefield of every military base and police station in this country.
The left is at war with free enterprise. Their entire administrative state is a control mechanism over our economy that punishes and destroys those industries and companies the left doesn’t like while using our tax dollars to fund their families and friends’ start-up ventures. The left makes every economic sector a battleground companies have to survive.
And the left wages a personal war in our neighborhoods and homes. They are in open conflict with everyone of Judeo-Christian heritage, assaulting our individual and communal beliefs and morals through a compliant media which denigrates anyone of faith. The left has made battlefields of our peaceful churches and synagogues.
The left is waging war on every parent who wishes to have a say in what their children are taught in school. The Democrat Party is making a war zone of every school district in America.
Recently, the left’s war has expanded to be one waged against women and girls—against every woman and girl who wants fair competition in their athletics; against every woman and girl who wants personal privacy in public spaces in this country; and against any girl who simply believes they are a girl.
Ultimately, the left is at war with every citizen who disagrees with them on any issue, and there is a reason: socialist tyranny is diametrically opposed to our system of representative government, our system of free enterprise, our system of common law, our protection of spiritual belief, and of the basic social foundation of our society—the family.
Dwight Eisenhower made a keen observation about socialism at the end of his military and political career, having defeated the socialist states of Germany and Italy on the battlefield and having stood against the ideology in a Cold War: “We face a hostile ideology-global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method…”
Today, socialism rages over every issue in front of America and confronts all citizens who believe in liberty at home, at school, at church, at work—everywhere.
This citizen observes that the great liberators, Lincoln and Eisenhower, would agree that it is time… in our time, to stand steadfast for liberty.
It is time we all refuse the suicidal noose the left is fashioning for us.
Richard C. Lyons, author of The DNA of Democracy: Volume I and Shadows of the Acropolis: Volume II is a third-generation printer, whose early career centered on religious and special education publishing. Lyons has since engaged in literary pursuits as a poet, essayist, screenwriter, and indie publisher
Author omits the impact of more than a century of importing poverty into the U.S. It is not possible, no matter how brilliant the system, for people unfamiliar with and untested by republican self-governance to become citizens. That was why Americans once believed it takes about three generations to “make” an American. We cannot continue to import those who represent a threat to liberty, both political and economic, lack respect for, or even acknowledge others’ rights and believe they, too, can “become” Americans. Division results from too many differences. All we have accomplished is to create various colonies within the United States. That cannot ever result in a “United” States of America. Why can’t Americans stop believing this nonsense that somehow immigration policy has no impact on our future? It is the chief culprit for the decline and disintegration we now witness.
It is time we all refuse the suicidal noose the left is fashioning for us.
Although I would certainly agree with the author’s point, I would add that the passive-aggressive approach ain’t working. Mere stubbornness and defiance won’t work against the crowd in authority as it only infuriates them and invites even harsher reprisals and punishment.
Weakness–even in stoic defiance–is not a winning strategy. Or, to use a sports metaphor, the best defense is a good offense.
Dear Alecto, guilt is a powerful tool the left has skillfully manipulated for decades.
As the British actor John Cleese (he of Monty Python fame) recently opined, there are no inferior people, only inferior cultures. Perhaps if we could transition from our fixation with skin color and ethnicity, and pivot to culture–true, American culture–then perhaps we can leave behind the guilt-trip shackles of slavery, oppression, etc., and move to–once again–a color-blind nation that welcomes anyone so long as they agree to embrace it and become a part of our American culture.
And for anyone who sees that as some kind of dog whistle for white supremacy, I’d counter that the American culture which assimilated millions and lifted countless numbers of “people-of-color” out of poverty and into the American dream is not a white thing, its the very best thing.