The Patriot Post® · Lost America

Unlike First Lady, Michelle Obama, I have always been proud of my country. Perhaps it is because I was raised an Army brat, and we travelled to a new assignment every three years. I got to see a lot of America and what I saw made me very proud. Maybe it was because we were stationed in Europe for five years, and in that time we travelled the length and breadth of it.

We saw how people lived in those countries twenty years after Adolf Hitler marched his armies and drove his tanks across their lands. The scars of war were everywhere. Back then, Europeans loved Americans and were grateful for the Marshall Plan and all the enormous sacrifices in blood and treasure Americans had made for them in World Wars I and II. We gave so much to keep them free.

I was raised to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I love those words. And I pledged my fealty, loyalty and allegiance whole-heartedly and still do. We prayed in school and asked God to bless us and give us grace in our lives. It gave us a wholesome starting place for the day and reminded everyone what life was really all about.

Being an American was something to be insanely proud of because our nation was the greatest on Earth. We had done more good for more people than all other nations put together. The USA was more than generous with its wealth and resources: the first to defend the liberty and freedom of those threatened by oppression; the nation that brought light to the spiritually needy; food to the hungry; and clothes and medicines to the suffering. Americans held their heads high before an envious world, proud to be blessed with American citizenship.

To be American meant that you were truthful, honorable, trustworthy and productive. It meant that you understood that our rights derive from our natural God and not from government. You believed in the Constitution and Bill of Rights and the American Way, which meant fair play and blue skies for everyone – without regard to race, color or creed.

But today, fully a quarter of our population truly hates America. They will say to your face that they do not. But they do. They truly do hate America. Such hatred is difficult for the rest of us to fathom, but the devastating effect of it is everywhere. The poisonous leftist hatred is in the White House and in Congress. It permeates our culture and society and is mainstreamed into our homes, schools and businesses. It is everywhere.

Daniel Greenberg, in his Sultan Knish blog, just penned an article in which he dwells on our fate as a nation: Whither Goest Thou, America? Greenberg uses the metaphor of America as a shiny car on the highway of life: entirely appropriate symbolism for our nation.

This dark road we are on now is what happens when the people who have been trying to run our lives for the last hundred years finally got their way. That darkness is there because they tore up the flag, burned the Constitution and put themselves in charge of everything. This is what they have been trying to do for over a hundred years. Now they have finally done it. They have put out the lights and left us in darkness and now they stride out grinning on an empty stage, beckoning us further and deeper into the darkness until there is no way out.

We are engulfed in a maelstrom of destructive ideology, irresponsibility, immorality, decadent living and spiritual death. We no longer have government by the consent of the governed. In 2009, sixty-five percent of Americans opposed ObamaCare. We marched and demonstrated in the streets and flooded Washington, D.C. with record numbers of protestors. We bombarded our elected officials with letters, emails and phone calls. Obama and his ilk turned their backs to us and ignored us. We the People. Just like that. The President and the Democratic Party shoved ObamaCare down our throats and through our legislature by the most vile and illegal methods. We were imperiously informed that we had to pass ObamaCare to find out what was in it.

The progressives didn’t do this to improve health care. They did it to lock the American people onto the hell-bound tracks leading inexorably toward socialism. They did it to “fundamentally transform” America. This was not done by people who love the USA.

The federal government has grown into a monster that is consuming us and condemning our children’s grandchildren to grinding poverty. The civil discourse is rotten. Our nation is divided by our differences instead of coming together as we have always done in times of need. Even the air is bad in America these days. All of this is the product of liberal progressive politics.

And to add insult to injury, the progressives blame our decline on the very system of beliefs, government, and the economic model that made America great, prosperous and free. They give evil for good. And they get away with it – virtually unopposed – and grow in power.

I was in a blue funk last year pondering how America got so lost when I decided to write a book about our current situation – Lost in Zombieland: The Rise of President Zero, and to write a blog about what we can do about our horrible predicament: the zombieland that progressive politics has made of America.

I’ve watched the United States of America go to hell in a hand basket since LBJ’s Great Society got under way. I love America. I love everything about it. Americans are the greatest people in the world. It hurts me deeply to see this nation brought to this pitiful state, and by its own citizens. The underlying problems in this country are crystal clear to most of us, but solving them is going to be painful and difficult.

Politicians don’t want to face the consequences of the problems they’ve created. They want to tax and spend even more. Their constituents don’t want any changes either. The hardest thing to change is the status quo. It always is. The “welfare queens” will not willingly give up their food stamps, subsidized housing, free health care, electronic benefits transfer and leisurely lifestyle. The people resisting reform are fighting tooth and nail to keep things the way they are: heading toward a European-style socialist state that is going to bring the country crashing down hard on all of us.

The United States is at war and doesn’t seem to realize it. There is a moral war between Judeo-Christian values and the secular humanist agenda, an ideological culture war between the progressive left and the conservative right, a hostile cold war between international socialism and American capitalism, and there is the war between Islam and all other religions and cultures. America is swimming in war and conflict. Instead of fighting our wars, we’ve gone shopping. And it’s costing us everything we hold dear.

I’m convinced, however, that we can throw off the ideological blinders and shackles of the progressive left, and restore what made America the greatest nation on earth: our founding principles of personal responsibility, limited Constitutional government and free enterprise. The USA is at the tipping point right now. I wrote Lost in Zombieland as a wake-up call and to help tip us back in the right direction. It is one tiny light in the darkness. Whither Goest Thou, America?

The inestimable Daniel Greenberg sees our predicament very clearly:

“The question to ask is not, where are we going, but who we are. It is not a question of mere policy, but of identity. We are America. The road is our road and our children and grandchildren will travel on it. It is up to us to open the way for them. It is up to us to drive toward our future.”

And here Mr. Greenberg hits the nail squarely on the head.

We are Americans. That is our identity. We are America. We don’t need to wait for the government to do anything. Government has done quite enough. As Clint Eastwood said, we own this country. And there is no opposition, no political force, and no enemy – foreign or domestic – that can stand in the way of determined Americans. In the last page of my book I quote the great Ronald Reagan. I hear his voice every time I read it.

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.

This statement has been proven true from the moment of the shot heard ‘round the world’ to the present day. Today we have a President and a major political party who regard America as the enemy. The progressive left controls the principal levers of power: government, religion, education, and the news media. It is time we put a stop to their destructive madness. We need the will and courage of free men and women to save us at this point.

I ask you to join with me, and countless other Americans, to take a stand for freedom and liberty. That means we all have to get off the couch and get to work. Join the Tea Party, which has political activities and projects going on all over the country. Canvass for votes, volunteer to be a poll watcher, donate to the Republican Party for this election, and educate the deluded masses of undecided voters. Get every vote you can for Romney. Be salt and light to the nation. We have two months to take our country back. And then the true work begins.

JT Hatter is the author ofLost in Zombieland: The Rise of President Zero, a political satire on the Obama administration. JT can be reached at [email protected] or his web site lostinzombieland.com.