Changes

3. There are many, but two stand out: the trend of becoming more conservative, if that is indeed true, and the overarching trend of America having high and commendable aspirations: the “City on a hill”- and having a can-do, ingenious attitude: many if not most of the world’s most influential inventions and ideas.  Unfortunately, we have begun to lose our traditional can-do attitude, but becoming more conservative means returning to our roots and traditions.  Hopefully one trend will work with the other to restore our nation to the trend of ingenuity and can-do which has guided us through so much of our history.

3. There are many, but two stand out: the trend of becoming more conservative, if that is indeed true, and the overarching trend of America having high and commendable aspirations: the “City on a hill”- and having a can-do, ingenious attitude: many if not most of the world’s most influential inventions and ideas.  Unfortunately, we have begun to lose our traditional can-do attitude, but becoming more conservative means returning to our roots and traditions.  Hopefully one trend will work with the other to restore our nation to the trend of ingenuity and can-do which has guided us through so much of our history.

4. I’m going to choose atheism, perhaps controversial and without much history to back it up.  Atheism is more than a belief system; it is a philosophy.  And the harmful philosophical ideas that come out of it are, among others: denying objective morality and a moral code which guides all men; antagonizing religion and especially Christianity, which is a foundation of our culture from the very beginning; reducing man to no more than an especially advanced ape, and reducing the meaning of life to nothing more than personal ambition and enjoyment.  Even more than Communism, atheism threatens our nation because it undermines who we are from the very first second of our existence.  The Pilgrims and Puritans who built our nation were inspired by the cruel oppression of a state Church to create a new place to worship God in freedom.  George Washington believed Christianity and morality to be the foundation of a good society, and John Adams said that the Constitution could only govern a moral people.  Abraham Lincoln, who was not without faults, was finally inspired by a renewed spirituality to support the end of slavery.  And the majority of those who oppose the horrible crime of abortion belong to a religion.  Religion and especially Christianity are written into the very fabric of who we are, and to eliminate them first from the public square, and then from men’s hearts, is more destructive than almost any political ideology or foreign threat.  It is to unravel and unstitch the American fabric.

4. I’m going to choose atheism, perhaps controversial and without much history to back it up.  Atheism is more than a belief system; it is a philosophy.  And the harmful philosophical ideas that come out of it are, among others: denying objective morality and a moral code which guides all men; antagonizing religion and especially Christianity, which is a foundation of our culture from the very beginning; reducing man to no more than an especially advanced ape, and reducing the meaning of life to nothing more than personal ambition and enjoyment.  Even more than Communism, atheism threatens our nation because it undermines who we are from the very first second of our existence.  The Pilgrims and Puritans who built our nation were inspired by the cruel oppression of a state Church to create a new place to worship God in freedom.  George Washington believed Christianity and morality to be the foundation of a good society, and John Adams said that the Constitution could only govern a moral people.  Abraham Lincoln, who was not without faults, was finally inspired by a renewed spirituality to support the end of slavery as a moral goal.  And the majority of those who oppose the horrible crime of abortion belong to a religion.  Religion and especially Christianity are written into the very fabric of who we are, and to eliminate them first from the public square, and then from men’s hearts, is more destructive than almost any political ideology or foreign threat.  It is to unravel and unstitch the American fabric.

5. Certainly culture contributes to a nation in general.  Politics is ideas, and most politicians just sign onto ideas they like; most of the ideas are abstractions and aspirations created and molded by inventors, churchmen, and even common citizens.  A nation is driven by an almost indescribable sense which exists in the people as a whole.  For example, Jacksonian democracy was not so much a creation of President Jackson, but the culmination of the desire of the common man to be represented in government.  Manifest Destiny was not a law or a treaty written by Congressmen and Senators, signed by the President, and interpreted by the Courts, but a feeling, a movement, which drove the country westward, and swept up the politicians along with it.  These two periods, which came from the culture, are two memorable and important periods in our history.  In contrast, the federal programs of Herbert Hoover and the New Deal of FDR were inventions of politicians, and they failed to lift up the nation, failed to create a movement- it was empty rhetoric.  Hoover’s “A chicken in every pot and two cars in every garage” and FDR’s “Four Freedoms,” which captivated people during campaigns, ultimately did little more, and they did much less than ideas which originated from culture and the collective national mind.

5. Certainly culture contributes to a nation in general.  Politics is ideas, and most politicians just sign onto ideas they like; most of the ideas are abstractions and aspirations created and molded by inventors, churchmen, and even common citizens.  A nation is driven by an almost indescribable sense which exists in the people as a whole.  For example, Jacksonian democracy was not so much a creation of President Jackson, but the culmination of the desire of the common man to be represented in government.  Manifest Destiny was not a law or a treaty written by Congressmen and Senators, signed by the President, and interpreted by the Courts, but a feeling, a movement, which drove the country westward, and swept up the politicians along with it.  These two periods, which came from the culture, are two memorable and important periods in our history.  In contrast, the federal programs of Herbert Hoover and the New Deal of FDR were inventions of politicians, and they failed to lift up the nation, failed to create a movement- it was empty rhetoric.  Hoover’s “A chicken in every pot and two cars in every garage” and FDR’s “Four Freedoms,” which captivated people during campaigns, ultimately did little more, and they did much less than ideas which originated from culture and the collective national mind.