Lost Greatness, Today's Leadership and Tragedy

I am one who has long contended that we must see Islamic terror for what it is, and treat all those who participate in, albeit it as our foes. But this is not because we fear them, even in our midst. The right response to archenemies mercilessly bent on evil is not to fear them, but courageously to confront and defeat them – preferably where they live and conspire their havoc, but here at home, too, if need be, with all the confidence the American military have ever demonstrated against the armies of past totalitarian regimes, and every other merciless adversarial enemy.

We should not fight terrorists by suspending the Second Amendment. Instead we should understand, respect and implement its stated purpose, while by all means sustaining the good character required to do so. Instead, the elitist parties presently in control of our politics foment our fears and systematically degrade our character. They then take fear and the lack of character as excuses for curtailing, discarding or suppressing our God-endowed unalienable rights. This is the agenda of tyranny, true to no principle but that of despotism.

Dominated by themes that evoke the nation’s fears and play on nostalgia for lost “greatness,” this election cycle has an air of a Shakespearian tragedy about it. The presentation of tragedy is always punctuated with death, and what may prove to be the tragedy of the American people is no exception. It began with the smoldering Twin Towers in New York City, claiming the lives of thousands as they collapsed. It now includes the deaths in attacks at Fort Hood, Boston, San Bernardino and Orlando. But the most ominous shadow of death is the one that extends across the future of the Republic itself, its Constitution and the premises of God-endowed right, including liberty, on which it stands.

Recently, as I was thinking about the aforementioned themes of this election cycle, FDR’s famous assertion about fear came to my mind, from the opening of his First Inaugural Address. Reading it again, I was struck by its juxtaposition of fear and greatness. But unlike the small-minded, ambition-obsessed politicians of our day, FDR did not play on our nation’s fears, or exploit nostalgia about its supposedly lost greatness. He challenged our fear, and spoke to the greatness ever present within us. Roosevelt’s thinking was not unlike that of Washington and Lincoln who preceded him, and as Reagan would thereafter, appealing to the things we love, not to our fear of our enemies. In facing the challenges of war and peace, they knew that, to be true to itself, our nation must always act with the same heart by remembering the ties that compel us to act for our loved ones, for our nation, and for the God whose rule of right is what makes just people free. no matter how the world derides.

This appeal was based on the fact that, for all their faults, many of the people Americans chose in the past to represent them in government shared their commitment to preserve the republican form of government, which relies on the decent character of the people. In light of this reminder of American statesmanship at its best, consider the corrupt political appeals of our times. In response to such assaults as the Orlando massacre, Obama, Hillary Clinton and their ilk urge us to be overcome by fear. They focus on guns as a totem of the forbidden fruit we must surrender to avoid destruction. Because guns may be used for evil, we must act as if we have suddenly become no good – a people so helpless against our own unruly passions that the very presence of things that require character and responsibility will destroy us.