New Year and Fresh Start

It has been a while since our last post. None of us will ever forget the roller coaster year that was 2020. All of us who love God and our country have had lots of opportunities to reflect on just how that love should be manifested, especially in the public square.

This year I want to try hard to stay positive, no matter how our country’s politics evolve. I try not to expose myself to social media but every now and then my dear wife shares a post with me. This morning it was a video of a man questioning the priorities of COVID vaccine distribution. Isn’t it dangerous, he asked, to vaccinate all our health care workers first? What if the vaccine turned out to have unforeseen but deadly consequences. His solution: first, we should vaccinate all our politicians. If it all goes south, we will not have lost anything of value.

At first, I laughed when hearing this guy’s suggestion. And then I caught myself. No! This kind of thinking is at the heart of what is shaking the very pillars of our democratic republic. If millions of Americans believe our political system is hopelessly corrupted and impervious to real change, we have the seeds of a social and political revolution. Compounding this is the apparent fact that millions of our citizens strongly believe in a host of conspiracy theories that have been injected into our culture by hostile foreign intelligence services as well as domestic groups on the far edges of both sides of our political divide through unfiltered social media.

No democracy can long survive without an informed and engaged citizenry. Yes, I understand. We were never created as a pure democracy. The founding fathers never would have agreed to an election system that included voting by uneducated, non-landowning, non-white, non-free, non-male citizens. The United States has an electoral college for a reason. One person, one vote doesn’t actually translate into election of our President and Vice President by popular vote. Never was designed with that goal. Might as well accept that. I find it amusing that many justices on our highest federal court try so hard to discern original intent of the framers when construing provisions of our Constitution. It is a great document, but out of date. I took the oath to defend it multiple times, and kept my word. But it is still like an old pair of jeans that has been patched up dozens of times and still functions...but could sure use some updating.

I have tried very hard to think of positive things our current President has done over the last four years. Yes, he was right to shake up the establishment, at least enough to get their attention, but not to do it to an extent that our basic institutions were damaged. He was right to take a hard look at our overseas military force posture. Our allies just weren’t paying their fair share of the common defense. I was amazed that our taxpayers were funding a new $8 billion hospital complex in Germany to replace the Landstuhl military hospital where I had received care so many times (I am still in their computer as Captain Bristol, from 1972.) Sure, the new hospital had capabilities Landstuhl lacked, but it was clear this new hospital would eventually be given to the Germans. Why? How about building another annex on the mountain at Landstuhl? And I am very happy that our President has been a forceful voice for religious liberty around the world. I even support some of his pardons.

I am praying that we, as a country, make it through the next few weeks and the rest of this decade without multiple political assassinations and civil war. There are just too many voices, many in the Congress, who are using rhetoric and taking highly questionable actions that have the effect of further inflaming our people and widening the political divide. It is a not too gentle reminder of President Abraham Lincoln’s efforts to heal the nation’s wounds.

Fifteen years ago, I owned a small river house just west of Murphy, North Carolina. I will never forget going to a small concert in our little subdivision, and witnessing a local musical family playing and singing a happy song (a jig) that celebrated the assassination of Lincoln. The tragedy is that after over a century and a half, and at least seven generations, many of the descendants of those who fought to secede from the Union still view Lincoln as a devil and federal authorities as their enemy. The recent Netflix movie about the bombing of the pavilion at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 and the efforts to get the good people of Murphy to help the FBI capture Eric Rudolph is well worth a close look.

I pray that the irresponsible exercise of the very precious freedoms enshrined in our Constitution does not cause all of us to lose those freedoms. If we unravel as a United States, our epitaph will read: “Freedom without Responsibility is the Death of Democracy.”

If I were a health care professional in a hospital overrun with COVID patients, and on my way home after a very long shift witnessed a large group of unmasked people in close proximity to each other in the streets, I would have to control my anger. And yet that cultural resistance to any government imposed restrictions on our freedoms, even in the face of a pandemic that could bring our economy to a screeching halt, is a major reason why we have the highest per capita death rates of any country in the developed world. It is pure self-centeredness, draped in the American flag. Shame is no longer an element of our national culture.

That is a tragedy. Truth has become an inconvenience. Lincoln was right when he said “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” My prayer is that all our people, regardless of political persuasion or any other significant differences, will see the need for a national reconciliation that can heal our wounds and work through both political parties to reach viable compromises that can be major steps to progress and increased unity of purpose. Amen.