If I Could Re-Make America

Given the tenor of conversations overheard in local places lately there’s not much left of our good old America. Simple things, things we thought never would change, or never could, have. If for example you try to say, about this big new drive for “equity”, that success in life comes best to people left alone to figure it out for themselves, someone will probably call you a racist. So just in case, and to be totally “proper”, you don’t say it. That’s called censorship. Self censorship actually. The more we try to make excuses for it all, the more we realize free speech is becoming terminal. The shaming-mad media pay as much homage to it — and those other personal freedoms that underpin success in life — as we might a field of dead door nails.

People ask, “What can I do?” Let me tell you what I would do. If I wanted to re-make America I’d first be a teacher. On the top of my lesson plan would be the honest truth. Demanding equal outcomes is as useful in life as a cardiac flatline. Would the Steelers and Cowboys draw more than an anthem kneeling protest group if equity reigned over the game? Equal yardage; equal scoring; and Super Bowl participants determined by drawing straws? Equality in this country means free speech and opportunity of everyone. What “equal outcomes” guarantees is the total sapping of incentive, empty store shelves, and a black market economy.

Winners make good things happen. Good economies for example. But you can not have winners without losers. Losing with honor and determination to listen, learn and try again, is the very backbone of what made the American Dream. And, the best bet to win in a horse race is frequently the one that lost her last race by a nose. So the next time some yoyo calls you a loser conservative radical extremist, say “Thank you!”

But if I could re-make America I’d also be a Pastor. And my first sermon would clarify what it means to be an American with the God given right to religious freedom. No matter our religious beliefs, we are not above the law of man (state or nation). But in our self governing republic, laws ought rightly derive from the morés of our culture. In other words, our laws are, or should be, a manifestation of who we are, the culture we accept as defining us, and not the other way around. What is happening now is precisely the wrong direction, the re-making of our culture by a government in the corrupt control of an imperious political and corporate class.

As Christians, or religious of any denomination, we can not accept American as a second culture. What has always kept America the world’s leading destination for immigrants is exactly what the country’s now fading culture made it. Immigrants were expected to assimilate to this culture. And hyphenated though they might be, foreign immigrants have always in the past been proud of becoming an American. Preserving and protecting the values that define us is the sole means by which we can avoid becoming the very place that others left, places where tyranny and malaise rule the day.

Assimilation also means Americans are not asked to abandon the country’s Christian values to avoid offending foreign culture quirks. If immigrants are offended by the American culture, they should not come here. On whose authority are we required to morph the United States of America into Iran, or Afghanistan or China?

I would make my Gospel reading words spoken by Jesus: “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is His.” They are words that should guide every society on earth, not just ours. And perhaps in these few words is a reviving message for the spirit and hope for Americans betrayed by a government looking more each day like it wants to run them more than be run by them.

We are, in the recorded words of America’s Founders, by God given all our freedoms. We are, by God, free to say who and how we shall be governed. We are free to question the justice and fairness of the laws of that government; to speak our mind; and in our homes to be held free from government intrusions.

We are free to wear a mask, or not. Free to seek a vaccination, or not. Free to choose with whom and how we associate. Yet within these freedoms is an obligation to abide by what our government requires of us to safely maintain and protect this free and prosperous society. We bear this obligation of citizens and as well hold our freedoms to be the will of God and no one else. To have the wisdom and courage to clearly recognize and fearlessly defend both government’s dominion and our God given freedoms is about all it would take to re-make America. At least that’s the way I see it. How would you re-make America? I’m sure the Record would like to know.