Waving Goodbye to the America We All Knew and Loved
Article by Ed Brodow in The American Thinker
Waving Goodbye to the America We All Knew and Loved
My
generation believed in the United States. We believed in its respect
for the individual, in its Constitution, in its status as the only
benign superpower in history. In other words, we believed in American
exceptionalism. "Traditional American values are worthy of a passionate
defense," said author and TV commentator Monica Crowley. Referring to
these values as "the American project," Charles Murray, author of Coming Apart,
defined it as the continuing effort "to demonstrate that human beings
can be left free as individuals and families to live their lives as they
see fit, coming together voluntarily to solve their joint
problems." If you boil it down, what makes our society unique in world
history is the respect accorded the rights of the individual
citizen. The Constitution was written as a restraint on the power of
the government to interfere in our lives.
All
that seems to be changing. As we move into 2021, to borrow from
Shakespeare, something is rotten. It is difficult to pinpoint the
origin or the exact nature of America's disintegration. It developed a
head of steam when a man who hates this country, Barack Obama, was
elected president. For eight years, we watched his concentrated assault
on our values. Obama and his fellow Democrats have introduced some new
concepts into our vernacular: democratic socialism, identity politics,
social justice, diversity, inclusion, political correctness, Critical
Race Theory, cancel culture. They were intended for the express purpose
of destroying everything that is laudable about America.
If
you wanted to destroy the USA, how would you do it? "America will
never be destroyed from the outside," said Abraham Lincoln. "If we
falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed
ourselves." Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev said the same thing in
1961. "We do not have to destroy America with missiles," he
said. "America will destroy itself from within." Were they correct?
In
February 2019, astute Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson made this
observation: "[t]he political debate between the right and the left
seems to be moving forward in a manner that indicates the fundamental
robustness of the institutions of democracy in the U.S." Peterson's
observation is no longer accurate — our democratic institutions are
anything but robust. The political debate is flirting with civil war as
progressives in Congress and on social media gang up to censor
conservative viewpoints. Citizens have no confidence in their elected
representatives, the legal system, the media, or each other. Public
officials encourage disrespect for the laws they are sworn to
defend. Our cities are being torn apart with rioting, looting, and
arson as mayors and governors encourage the breakdown of civil order.
There
is no doubt that our government does not run the way it was
intended. Congress seems incapable of doing the country's
business. What has it accomplished in the last four years aside from
the ridiculous impeachment of the president and sending our tax money to
countries that call us names? Using the coronavirus as an excuse,
government is trying to insinuate itself into every facet of our
lives. As we allow the government to tell us when we can leave our
homes, when we can go to work, and under what circumstances we can run
our businesses, we relinquish more and more of our independence.
The
worst shortcoming of our government is its failure to maintain election
integrity. According to the US News & World Report, U.S. elections
from July 2012 through December 2018 rated "lower than any other
long-established democracies and affluent societies." The source is a
2019 report published by the Electoral Integrity Project, an independent project based out of Harvard University. This revelation should make all Americans clamor for improvement.
The
2020 presidential election has brought us even lower on the ladder. We
have more than a thousand sworn affidavits attesting to massive voter
fraud: suspension of signature verification, violation of state election
rules, non-verification of mail-in ballots, backdating of ballots,
double-voting, dead people voting, hiding ballots under the table,
refusal to allow poll-watching, and vote-switching by machine
systems. "People are going on the record under oath and risking being
canceled, doxed, and even accosted, to tell what they have seen about
this election process," said Rep. Michael Cloud. "The apparent lack of
action from the Justice Department regarding a number of anomalies,
statistical improbabilities, and sworn accusations of fraud is
troubling." It may be troubling, but it is consistent with partisan
activities of the DOJ, the FBI, and the IRS. FBI Director James Comey's
refusal to indict Hillary Clinton, Obama's weaponization of the IRS
against conservative groups, and inaction from the Durham investigation
have destroyed the public's confidence in our justice system.
In
spite of the media's efforts to hide the truth, the public knows what
is going on. Actor James Woods tweeted, "70,000,000 Americans are
outraged about this befouled election." "We don't accept this
fraudulent result." Whenever the president tries to expose the fraud,
the media poison the airwaves with the same mendacious phrase: "Trump's
baseless allegations." It makes my skin crawl every time I see this lie
repeated by CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. The
media are no longer free to express conservative viewpoints and have
abdicated their role as the republic's watchdog.
What
kind of nation are we bequeathing to our children? Unless we wake up
soon, it won't be pretty. Perhaps Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World,
was correct when he predicted "a dictatorship without tears ... a kind
of painless concentration camp so that people will have their liberties
taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be
distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing."
