America Needs a New Class of Leaders

American Thinker 

In the United States — and the civilizational “West” more broadly — we are a society divided by slogans, propaganda, and social media memes.  It is an unfortunate part of our present reality that we no longer engage in honest “public debate.”  We haven’t done so for a very long time.  

The Founding Fathers wrote essays and pamphlets and delivered hours-long speeches during which they articulated the reasons for their beliefs.  We get pink-hatted people — who may or may not identify as women — “shouting their abortions.”  We get automatons screaming, “Black lives matter,” “Free Palestine,” “Trump is Hitler,” “Hands off Iran,” and whatever other mindless chants billionaire-funded NGOs churn out.  

If you approach people yelling these things and ask them why they believe what they believe, they have no idea.  They can’t explain why “all human lives,” more generally, shouldn’t matter just as much as those with dark skin.  They don’t know anything about Israel’s ancient history, the United Kingdom and France’s colonial carving of the Middle East, the Soviet Union’s promotion of a “Palestinian” identity to cause the United States and its allies problems during the Cold War, any of the multitude of ways that the international community has broken its promises to the Israeli government for the last century, or how the United Nations has spent most of its existence targeting Israel for alleged “human rights” abuses while ignoring unspeakable evils committed by far too many regimes in power today.  They can’t explain why illegal aliens are breaking into America if “Trump is Hitler” or why the president’s determination to protect American citizens from foreign nationals by paying for those foreigners’ return to their own countries is somehow equivalent to Nazi atrocities that included the mass murder of six million Jews and millions of Soviets, Poles, Romani, disabled people, and other so-called “undesirables.”  They don’t have any idea why Iran’s theocratic tyrants and Islamic terrorists deserve to be protected when those tyrants and terrorists have killed, maimed, and kidnapped Americans, Europeans, and Jews around the world for nearly fifty years.  

Our ancestors benefited from Thomas Paine’s polemical pamphlets in favor of American independence.  They listened to Sam Adams’s fiery arguments for revolution.  They attended church services where they heard political exhortations from learned men delivering passionate sermons.  They read newspaper editorials and political essays aloud while drinking ale in local taverns.  Common people heard and debated uncommon ideas that birthed a new nation and altered the historic trajectory of the world.  

We, on the other hand, get hypocrites such as Senator Chuck Schumer, who was last year telling Americans that President Trump was “chickening out” on holding Iran’s Islamic regime accountable for nuclear saber-rattling before telling Americans this year that Trump has no business holding Iran’s Islamic regime accountable for its nuclear saber-rattling.  We get Democrats calling federal law enforcement agents “Trump’s Gestapo” because those agents put their lives on the line arresting criminal illegal aliens — including murderers, rapists, and other violent felons.  We get apocalyptic doomsayers such as Al Gore and Barack Obama who have told us that the “science” of “climate change” is “settled,” even though nothing those frauds have predicted has ever come true.  We get public school teachers indoctrinating students with ridiculously false ideas, such as (1) biological sex isn’t real; (2) the January 6, 2021 protest for election integrity was worse than the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks, the Pearl Harbor attack, and the Civil War all wrapped up together; (3) Muslims built America; and (4) America has never been more racist, fascist, or authoritarian than it is today.  We get a left-wing corporate news media establishment pushing the ludicrous argument that requiring voter identification (a basic electoral safeguard enforced around the world) is both racist and an impossible burden for legal voters to surmount (even though Americans must present valid ID to board planes, buy liquor, and enter government buildings).  

Notice that these sources of misinformation never advance anything that remotely resembles a rational argument.  Democrats don’t explain why they used to consider Iran a major national security threat but no longer do.  They don’t explain why it’s perfectly reasonable to attack federal law enforcement officers arresting criminal illegal aliens, even though they’ve spent five years calling the January 6 election protest an unacceptable “attack” on cops.  Barack Obama and other wealthy “global warming” fanatics can’t explain why they own expensive beachfront homes if those homes will soon be under water.  Democrats can’t explain why it’s too difficult for their voters to get photo IDs, or why boys should undress in girls’ locker rooms, or why white men are a “viral disease,” or why all of their political opponents are “racist, fascist Nazis.”  

All of these false statements are simply represented as undisputed “facts” that cannot be questioned.  As a kind of “political correctness” tripwire meant to ensure that these false ideas are never questioned, Democrats further insist that anyone asking questions must be a “racist, fascist Nazi,” too.  Rational argument no longer exists.  In its place, Democrats give us name-calling, self-censorship, circular reasoning, and empty tautology.

America is very divided today.  For most of its two-hundred-and-fifty-year history, though, America has been divided.  It was birthed in revolution.  It survived numerous attacks from foreign powers while still in its infancy.  It grew up through radical social change, profound technological innovation, and endless waves of immigration.  It has gone to war against itself, and it has gone to war against the world.  It has endured hardships that have destroyed other nations.  Nevertheless, its people have persevered, united, settled the wild frontier, built a continent, and prospered.  We look over our shoulders and applaud American achievement without reflecting on our near escapes from American disaster.

Division does not signal disaster.  Division is also opportunity.  When societies are forced to confront great change, some wilt, while others rise to the occasion.  America has been blessed with rare resilience.  Our nation is unique in human history because it is predicated on the still revolutionary principle that legitimate political power originates with the people.  We do not look to kings to tell us what we may or may not do.  As our rights come directly from God, aristocrats just get in the way.  Our institutions matter not because they are invested with power over us, but rather because we have lent those institutions some of our inherent powers so that they can properly defend our inherent rights.  Neither presidents nor congresses nor corporations can grant us what is already ours.

It is with this understanding of our natural rights in mind that I encourage everyone to protect those rights personally.  Read, learn, debate, and most importantly don’t give up just because giving up is in fashion these days.  This country has been through far worse and survived.  People who tell you that this is the end for America have a vested interest in seeing America end.  Those stubborn enough to resist will ensure that our country lives.

To be sure, we deserve more than slogans, propaganda, and memes.  We deserve civic leaders who can speak in complete sentences.  We deserve members of Congress who can introduce cogent arguments — supported by salient facts and not calumnies, falsehoods, or red herrings.  We deserve a new generation of leaders who remind us of Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Sam Adams, and George Washington.  Perhaps they already move among us.

Do not mistake division for disease.  Division is the engine that often spawns greatness.  What we require is discernment.  We require wisdom.  We require courage.  We require leadership.  We require renewed faith in God’s grace.  These are not always in abundant supply.  But they are very American things.