Fear Not

I am one of millions who looked forward to retiring with financial security and good health in a nation much like the one in which I grew up. I didn't start out on life's journey thinking of or planning for retirement. But, along the way, I accumulated some material assets. As I neared age 60, I thought about the time that would follow the end of my regular working days.

The last year has surprised me and many my age with the fleeting nature of "wealth." By wealth, in this case, I mean the purchasing power of material assets. The price that my home would fetch if sold has gone down. The sale price of assets held in my retirement accounts has fallen. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those assets I chose directly are worth a larger share of their peak price than those that were managed by others. What's more, experience warns us that the cash we keep on deposit to cope with unpleasant surprises will be stripped of its value by runaway inflation when the current economic program of our national government runs its natural course.

And on the subject of disappointing developments, it's clearer with each passing day that the places human beings gather to live are much less attractive than before they got there. And they get even less attractive as more and more people congregate. I won't deny that the Manhattan skyline is awe-inspiring, so much so that you can't appreciate it unless you have witnessed it personally. No city on earth can match a small fraction of it. But the skyline is only beautiful from far away. Manhattan is a brutal place, and it would be uninhabitable were it not for services provided from miles away. Southern California was a paradise and still enjoys a Mediterranean climate, but overpopulation has made it a miserable place to work and live for many of its residents.

Most people on our planet don't have the mobility to live in a "beautiful" place, and the last two centuries have seen literally billions of our fellow beings crowd into urban living space. Cities have sprawled into once empty prairies, up hillsides, and along the banks of rivers. With the cities have come pavements, sewers, lights, smoke, smells, and noise that are about as far from the garden of nature as one can imagine.

But the most saddening turn of events for my household in the last year has been the decision of our body politic to trash the principles of government that allowed free men and women to develop their potential and - acting individually - to build a prosperous, generous, and thriving nation. We can now look forward to a sad and downward spiraling culture, where political mullahs set the limits of achievement, expression, and expectations for a dependent class, and those rebels among us who still have ambition and choose not to be co-opted into the system will be ostracized and penalized for our faith.

Shall we just give up? Shall we be swept along like sheep by mongrels that lied their way to power and deceived a gullible and illiterate electorate? Shall we "go along to get along?"

No!

We shall overcome. We shall ally with one another to support men and women who believe that God - not government - confers rights on human beings, and that government exists to serve, not to rule, the citizenry. We shall not let our diminished material wealth spoil our relationship with our Creator, not let it reduce our charitable giving to worthy and freedom-focused organizations, not let it ruin our enjoyment of beauty: of the sunrise; of the natural world; and of the spark of God's glory in the eyes of the people we love.

God gave us the freedom to succeed and to fail, to obey and to sin, to seek forgiveness and to reject His grace. God gave us government to defend the rights of the individual. He did not give us government to stand in His place as our provider. Any government that usurps God's role is wrong, and it is up to us to change it.

We shall take back our nation, though it be our grandchildren who see the victory. The Dark Ages lasted a millennium. We don't have to let the current crop of socialists send our culture into such a long, dark night. It is only one generation after the fall of European Communism. We can stop the poison in our schools, fire the bastards we elected, and tell the featherbedders that the free ride is over.

We won't get our country back by watching silently as the current elected government and their bureaucrat allies usurp the market. We won't get it back by writing strong letters to the editor. We will get it back by investing in candidates who support freedom. We will get it by speaking up at work and with our colleagues about the immorality of taking the sweat of one man's brow by the forceful hand of government to give it to someone else who doesn't earn it. We will get it by refusing to be silent when our rights are abridged, when political correctness steals our right to speak, and when smooth-talkers tell us our children can't express their God-given views lest they "offend" others.

Don't let them shut us up! Fear is their weapon against us. Every one of the usurpers has an in box. Deluge their in boxes with the truth. Make it impossible for them to go anywhere without seeing their lies debunked. Stand by your allies in speaking the truth.

We have a long, hard battle ahead. Many who should be our allies do not acknowledge that our nation is in peril. They confuse policies with principles. They would rather be polite than remain free. Like Neville Chamberlain, they have chosen to give up their principles than to wage war, and now they will experience both. Don't give up on them; we need them to see the light, too. We need everyone left who believes that it is better to be free than to be a serf of the political class to rise up in righteous fury against the socialists and take back our nation. Stand up for freedom now.

And while we are fighting for freedom, let us enjoy the individual freedoms God has given us: freedom to love, freedom to give, freedom to thank God for all that He gives us, and freedom to accept the great gift of His forgiveness of our sins. No man can take these freedoms from us.