1308 Splintered People, Splintered Nation
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has estimated that in 2012, for the first time in our history, about one third of the U.S. population (101 million people) is receiving some form of subsidized food assistance through 15 different federal programs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics documented a little over 97 million private full-time workers in 2012. More Americans are receiving assistance than are working outside of government.
Dependence has now officially become accepted as independence and entitlement as a livelihood.
George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin was also historic, not because of the trial itself but because of what the actions of the public and its handlers revealed. When Greta Van Susteren interviewedE one of the Martin family attorneys, Jasmine Rand, Rand categorically stated that her commitment to the law was secondary to her commitment to social engineering.
Rand revealed the true substance of the progressive view of law as a weapon to advance a cause. In this understanding, law is not about an ordered society, a protected citizenry or any written statute or constitution.
Want open borders? Ignore existing laws then decree change by executive order. Want to establish non-natural marriage? Refuse to enforce federal law and/or ignore state law then fight to have that law nullified. Want to stifle political opposition? Enlist the IRS for an end run around the First Amendment. Despise privately-owned guns for private defense? Capitalize on horrific tragedies then blame gun dealers for the violence while sending weapons to drug cartels. Need to limit the effect of conservative religious faith in public discourse? Clamp down on chaplains and service personnel in the military while quietly pushing so-called equal employment standards that restrict the conscience liberties of private employers.
Tyranny is becoming clothed as liberty, irreligion as religion and immorality as freedom.
The world is upside down. Fewer and fewer of us understand that Americans, as a people, are falling into thin air but yet keep walking through life as if the floor is still under our feet. We are convincing ourselves that the things that define us are physical or social or legal. They are not. They are moral and spiritual.
Since man was evicted from Eden, he has been grasping for meaning, struggling for power, defrauding God and skulking about trying to find a back door into paradise. His efforts have been honed into skills of intellectualism and religiosity.
It is as if he is desperately trying to discover the security of his original home and reclaim the identity he lost so many eons ago. By all indications, Americans believe that self-centered independence from the confines of immovable truth, humility, modesty, and self-restraint will unlock the door. A cunning liberation of mind and flesh, he believes, will create a new significant and gloriously fulfilled future.
This is where America lives. This is why we are as confused, confrontational and self-serving as we are. Splintered people are creating a splintered nation. The evidence is all around us every single day.