Our Republic has endured multiple threats to its survival. So far, by the providence of the Almighty, all foes have been defeated. Of late, concerns have emerged causing us to ask, have we reached the endpoint? Are we what we used to be and if not, what have we become and where are we going as America?
Almost everyone, regardless of political persuasion, senses and vocalizes their belief that we are not what we used to be. What we are becoming remains a mystery. There is a measurable and undeniable nervousness about our direction.
People, liberal and conservative, acknowledge we are entering a new phase of American history. Some say, our new landing point is in the making, yet undefined. Magnified complexity now gives rise to national doubt and insecurity, forcing us to ask, have we reached the endpoint?
Has the United States of America entered its final lap in the race to a more perfect union? Is a more perfect union even possible, some ask?
The Great Spiritual Chasm
Conservatives recognize the moral and spiritual chasm carved between our past sense of national strength and the contemporary and dominant voices of global secular humanism. Differences in worldview and a seeming worldwide abandonment of historic orthodoxies have provided the western world with a sense of who we are, where we came from, and our destiny, all seem to be dissolving.
Can America and the western democracies and nations thrive in a vacuum of spirituality? Is humanity equipped to write new rules that will govern our rapidly changing social order? The answer to the larger question, Is man spiritual, seems almost unanswerable.
The secular man seems to position himself and his reason at the nucleus of a self-made universe, one where the co-existence of conflicting opinions ultimately delivers a form of individual and collective despair. While we decide the broader God-like questions of life and death through abortion and infanticide, we seem to be degrading. Freedom allows us to make bad decisions, killing our unborn is our most egregious and unforgivable trespass.
Perhaps the question we should ask and answer is whether we are even remotely qualified to simulate the characteristics and power of God. Should we shove our tendency for spirituality into orbit around our sense of control?
Am I qualified to sit on a thrown issuing edicts derived from the recesses of my stunted imagination? We still seem insecure in such a role. We still crave meaning. We still exhibit apprehension and that nastiest of all human traits, insecurity. We want to decide big things but recognize we shouldn’t. We want our existence to have a purpose beyond ourselves. While we pretend to be in charge we secretly want someone else to decide things for us. And of course, the government is good at stepping into the gap to quickly usurp even God Himself.
Striking a Selfish Pose
Although man strikes the pose of self-assurance, the evidence of decline shows itself in the tone of social and political disorder and our inability to maintain Aristotle’s civil society. American society is hardly civil anymore. Hate, discord, and forms of evil continue to grow…they are the norm now, not the exception. But we continue to put on a face, to strike the pose, flexing our feeble muscles in the mirror of exaltation.
In this climate, opinion is subordinate to a new dogma where all rationale is co-equal. All opinions are co-equal. Every day we hear someone say, “He’s entitled to his opinion.” But am I entitled in every sense to my “own opinion?” The harder question is whether I’m entitled as a mortal to create the kinds of opinions that eventuate into issues contrary to moral rectitude.
Can I be cut loose from any and all precepts of virtue, of true spirituality? Am I adrift without guidance? Is the ship of life all mine to control?
As we move along the continuum of time and history, things in which we once found solace, stability, and security seem to be eroding quickly. What was once sacrosanct is cast aside, even scorned.
Putting ourselves on the throne, doing as we please, thinking as we desire, and acting out every impulse seems tenuous. It should; it’s secular humanism. These secular impulses eventuate into tyranny and the oppression of an all-powerful government. Anarchy is what happens when humankind is left on its own, swollen with pride, entirely self-determined.
The question we face at the end of it all is whether man and government left to drift without the security of attachment to predictable mores, can sustain itself. In the end, can we avoid plunging ourselves into complete anarchy? Do you want to trust me with your life, its outcomes, and your beliefs? Do you want to trust “them,” whoever “them” is, to chart a course for you, for all of us? Are you willing to consign your authenticity, existence, and security to some collective body of elites, typically known as the government?
Security, whether individual or corporate, can only be created initially and sustained in perpetuity by specific anchors, adopted by and accepted within the plural society. There is no security and no authenticity in the kind of pluralism that allows “every man to do that which is right in his own eyes.” How would such a notion even work? The interrogative cliche, “how’s that working for you?” ought to be asked and answered regularly, even daily.
The Cusp of Eradication
After a century of grinding, progressive influence places constitutional and cultural conservatives on the cusp of eradication, being overwhelmed by and having given reluctant consent to the notion that there can be equality of secular humanism to that of true spirituality. Can a man’s direction be both north and south at the same moment? Can boiling water and ice coexist in perpetuity in the same container? We are now being told a person born male might not be male at all, and that we possess the innate power to reassign ourselves from one sex to another, at will. Can one man’s truth really be another man’s lie?
This Republic, having been founded and sustained upon the bedrock belief in a Creator who endows (instills) certain unalienable rights, now pays homage to the voices of little men and women, males and females with enlarged egos. Our speech is shallow, and our thoughts are feeble, fragmented, and disconnected from what our secret thoughts tell us is right…what we know secretly to be true. We must lie to ourselves and to one another in order to keep playing this deadly game of charades.
At some point, we are forced to ask inescapable questions about right and wrong. Tell me, are we able by the power of our ego to sustain ourselves and the durability of this nation?
Look around. The members of our debt-ridden, pandering government boil with pride, power, and pretense, being phony almost to the person, unrestrained in its lust to tell us who we are, what we believe, how we must live…to control us. While believing we are controllers, we are controlled.
Anarchy demands a government be a confederation of liars, their product being a sea of doubt, suspicion, and angst where we all thrash about drowning others to save ourselves. Our plight gives the elites additional opportunities for more structured control. Chaos is but another tool of tyranny.
Within this cauldron of social and political decay, we are asking, “Usque ad terminum?” Have we reached the point of no return? If we wanted to return, to what, or to whom, would we respond?
These are the hard and haunting questions.