Reality Check 101

“Government is not reason and it is not eloquence.  It is force.  Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master – Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”  (George Washington)

 With the election of Barack Obama and solid liberal gains in both the U.S. House and U.S.  Senate, America has spoken. 

Some of the lackadaisical support for the Republican ticket was understandable, but not for the reasons proffered by most published and broadcast wisdom.  By all accounts, conservatism was given a sound thrashing because of its out-of-touch, naïve, provincial, and backwater ways.

But it wasn’t conservatism that failed, it was Republican leadership in Congress, the White House and, tragically, at the top of the 2008 ticket.  Republicans lost because they offered few candidates outside of Sarah Palin to trust.  The results?  Too many conservatives, 20%, became convinced that social issues were passé in D.C. with economics and, to a much lesser degree, the war, trumping all else.  Their political and economic values of limited government, free enterprise solutions, strict constructionist courts, controlled legal-only immigration and science–based common-sense environmental stewardship were all compromised to the point of impotency by their supposed standard-bearers.  They ended up with a choice between two evils and 20% of them took the bait.

That was then.  Now we are heading into the future.  The future, which the majority of American’s asked for, is pretty clear.  They want to be rescued and then nannied.  Their desire is that, to use George Washington’s terms, government will reason for them and create eloquent ways to remove the trials and uncertaintities of life in a free society.  They are apparently ready to march into socialist class warfare in order to grab a piece of the pie from those who have had the audacity to be more persevering or more resourceful or more educated or more talented and therefore more successful then they.

 The new future is also expected to include less personal responsibility for the poor, the weak and the infirm.  God clearly did not know what He was doing when He gave that duty to faithful individuals, families, churches, private organizations and communities.  Federal and state governments, with their long histories of fiscal wisdom, selfless service and amazing efficiency, will instead be defiantly commissioned by men to minister for them. 

But elected office holders do not come in single or double issue packages, even if they win their positions that way.  They remain whole people who carry with them opinions and agendas in all areas.  Once in office, the fall-out from institutionalizing those opinions and agendas may last for decades.

The majority asked for change.  We all will get much more than anyone may have bargained for asAmericais remade in the image of the desires of the flesh rather than creation ordinances of the Spirit.  If the past is any indication of the future, which it usually is, what will the new future really look like?

Life itself will become much cheaper.  Already, since Roe v. Wade, well over forty million children have died.  FOCA (the Freedom of Choice Act) will be resurrected, parental notification laws will be gutted, and embryonic stem cell abuses will prosper.  The number of babies sacrificed on the alters of  “choice”, abortion commercialism and scientific experimentation will grow exponentially.

Family, the glue of all societies, will decline.  DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) laws will come under renewed attack.  The well-documented pathologies of cavalier sexual lifestyles, both heterosexual and homosexual, will be visited upon children and adults as the family is remade according to the dictates of newly packed liberal federal courts.  Public schools, adoptions and civil unions will be the focus.  If public dissent raises its ugly head, hate crimes legislation will silence it.

Work environments, no matter what the employer’s mission or purpose, will also change.  ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) will finally clock in.  Under the watchful eyes of government, discrimination against the free expression of one’s conscience, religious and non-religious, unless it conforms to politically correct standards, will be policy.  Regulations will easily be applied to schools, charities and small businesses.

Finally, even our leisure will be affected.  Broadcast media will be subject to the so-called fairness doctrine.  Radio and television outlets who operate by standards not accepted by liberal overseers will be forced to include programming which defies their reason for existence and violates what they stand for.

These are but a few examples of legislative proposals that have already been turned back in the past.  But they do not have to be our future.  George Washington was right.  Government can be a dangerous servant and fearful master – but only if we let it be irresponsible.  It is time for conservative and center-right Americans to care.  It is time to become vigilant and act creatively in the coming battle to ensure the preservation of life, marriage, children, work and rest.