Election Thoughts

"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster."
Douglas MacArthur 

I only occasionally venture into politics here and only as I think it relates to Christianity.  After watching the election returns last night, these are my reactions: 


I find it difficult to be optimistic about the future.  Not only did Barack Obama win four more years of power just days after painfully transparent lies about the Embassy attack in Libya were repeatedly and thoroughly exposed, and after four years of 8% unemployment and economic malaise, but it seems recreational pot was legalized in Colorado and Washington and and gay marriage in Washington, Maine and Maryland.  That tells me the public is ideologically committed to both moral and political liberalism, and the chances of turning that around are slim. 

It is now almost certain that Obamacare will be the law of the land.  The consequences of this law are many.  Never mind that it was passed before it was read, passed as "not a tax" until a single Supreme Court Justice inexplicably decided it was constitutional because it was a tax.  The consequences are that doctors will begin refusing to take medicare patients, some doctors will simply hang up their shingle for good creating a shortage of doctors at the same time that the numbers of patients demanding fuller services will go up.  Since Obamacare raided Medicare to pay for itself, rationing for seniors will kick in sooner rather than later.

Taxes will go up dramatically, not only because of Obamacare, but because the "Bush" tax cuts will likely be allowed to expire and because Obama's "tax the rich" obsession will apply to small businesses.  Businesses that were poised to hire in anticipation of a pro-business president being elected will remain cautious.  The stock market, not surprisingly, dove 300 points today, a fitting reminder of what is likely to come starting January 1.   With the Obamacare tax looming over them businesses will likely drop private health coverage meaning the entire private health insurance industry will vanish leaving our health care in the hands of bureaucrats who will only see utilitarian dollars as opposed to patients.   

Our kids will suffer the weight of crippling debt.  Each and every taxpaying citizen (about half of the population) is already saddled with $141,000 in debt, just from federal overspending.  Add in the interest an the burden tops $186,000 per citizen.  But worse still, as the debt goes up, and it will because increased taxes will further suppress the economy, we will hit the fiscal cliff.  The interest on the debt will be so large that it will be impossible to stop the balloon from expanding.  The USA will see its credit rating further reduced and the dollar will collapse.  When that happens, oil prices will skyrocket (oil is priced in dollars) and as a result hyper-inflation will kick in.  We may not be like Zimbabwe, but it will be ugly.

I believe under four additional years of Obama, race relations will continue to erode as Obama's class warfare rhetoric bears fruit.  The Alinsky strategy for organizing that Obama learned early in his Chicago career depends on fanning the flames of grievance.  As the economy continues to limp along, the poor and minorities will continue to be hurt.  I fully expect race riots before Obama's second term is over.

It is clear that African Americans vote largely on the basis of race and not policy and Hispanics also seem to vote as a bloc.  The great idea that was once the great underachieved ideal of America, that all men have equal rights has been swapped for political tribalism - "my group jockeys for power over your group". 

Under Obama radical Muslim groups will continue to expand knowing that our government will refuse to even utter the word terrorism even as the bombs blow up our own Ambassadors.   War between Israel and Iran seems inevitable.  The crippled economy will gut our military and terrorist attacks on our soil will occur and some will succeed.

This outcome is what a slim majority of Americans, primarily in urban centers like Chicago, New York and L.A., still believing the rhetoric that Wall Street greed is bad but main street envy is not, voted for. And sadly, this is what Christian progressives like Jim Wallis and Frank Schaeffer have enabled by accusing Christian conservatives of politicizing the faith while reducing the gospel to collectivist social justice politics without shame.  Based on hatred of the rich and contempt for middle America's love of "faith, family and freedom", a slim majority of residents of this land voted collectively to follow the economic path of Greece.

So, the most obvious issue is this:  The fiscal cliff looms and there is no shred of a plan to avoid it - the Democratically controlled senate refuses to comply with the law and write a budget and Obama's own attempts have been voted down 98-0. 

And yet, he has been reelected and Harry Reid remains in control of the Senate.  Amazing.

I may feel different in a few days, but for the moment, I don't see much fruit in fighting a losing battle against a collective insanity.  There are no arguments that will win the day.  If folks on the left cannot or will not see that we are about to drown in debt, that the policies of the last four years have done nothing good for our economy, that the tenor of discourse has worsened and that the country is more divided than ever, that there is no plan to move forward save for populist slogans that mask radical leftist intentions, that social decay is destroying first the black family unit and now the white family as well, then there is nothing that will reverse the slide short of divine intervention.

Unfortunately, many conservatives are now calling for political expediency and the abandoning of the foundational principles which make liberty and justice possible.  Listening to an otherwise "conservative" talk network tonight, I heard the host insist that the only way to win elections in the future is for the "old white guys" of the republican party to fade away because their insistence on taking positions on social issues is unattractive to the younger voters.  So, his recommendation was to "stay out of the bedroom" and abandon one-man-one-woman marriage as one example.  In other words, be a fiscal conservative but a social liberal and maybe we'll win an election.

But to do so would be to forfeit everything that matters most for a win in a single election cycle.  Without the underlying principles of liberty and law based on virtue, democracy is nothing more than mob rule.  If we will not stand for the family unit and for the lives of the innocent, what is the point?

"[Liberty] considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom."
Alexis de Tocqueville

"The only foundation for... a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments."
Benjamin Rush
 
Those ideas ARE the United States.  Grasp at liberty without virtue and liberty will be lost.  Grasp at virtue and liberty is a natural result.  The United States may live on, but the ideals that this country was founded upon have been discarded by a majority of Americans first on the left including the "Christian" left and now increasingly on the right.  The scenario I now see is bleak.  The chaos is beginning.  The imposition of order will follow and freedom will succumb to tyranny.

Am I over reacting?  I hope so.

We'll see.