“If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide” –Abraham Lincoln

One of the most powerful results of the radical sixties was the determination by American leftists to incrementally take over decision-making positions in American public and higher education, the mainstream media, and, as a result, the three branches of government. That particularly incendiary goal had been alive and well in America since the turn of the twentieth century, but it received a major shot in the arm with the supposed ‘age of enlightenment’ offered by the left-leaning sixties and the winding down of the war in Vietnam.

With the blessed exception of the Reagan years, that subversive movement has gained strength and power in direct proportion to the degree of ignorance (of America’s foundations and those concepts that our Founders held dear) and apathy of the American electorate.

With each succeeding generation, our public and higher education systems are turning out young people who have no familiarity with the magnificent vision of our Founders, who recognized God’s omnipotence and acknowledged His blessings, and who, painstakingly and through incredible personal sacrifice, laid out a blueprint for governance that defined individual liberty as the basis for the most prosperous and moral civilization in the history of mankind. Our indoctrinary education systems are turning out young people who have been taught what to think rather than how to think, blank slates where media propaganda finds fertile ground, and the ability to analyze and seek out alternative opinions and explanations has been buried under a mountain of soundbite ‘facts’ that inevitably paint America, and her noble history, with a black brush while providing easy answers to complex questions.

The American mainstream media now wield more power than any body of elected leaders, and its highest level decision-makers consistently make sure that the public sees and hears only those ‘news’ stories that further the leftist agenda. Stories that are virtually screaming for the public’s attention are left buried, while fluff pieces that focus our attention on celebrity and other forms of bread and circuses flood our airwaves and cover our television screens.

As a result of all of the above, in 2008 we elected a president who despises our Founders’ vision, a man whose childhood and young adulthood were spent immersed in a sea of leftist indoctrination. A man whose parents and grandparents, and whose major personal mentors, directed him toward a virulently anti-American, pro-Marxist mindset.

As a result, this president has spent four years attempting to make America pay for her capitalist/colonialist ‘sins’, by amassing a debt that we can never hope to repay, dramatically increasing our energy dependence and handing over many of our energy sources to our ideological enemies, systematically destroying our healthcare system and our access to what is left of it, de-stabilizing governments in the Middle East, emboldening our enemies, gutting our military and defense systems, punishing and demonizing those who succeed, and instilling in America’s national conscience a sense of guilt for our power and prosperity.

Billions of ‘stimulus’ dollars that were earmarked to spur the American economy have found their way into leftist causes, be they ‘green energy’ programs, global initiatives, or simply the pockets of political supporters.

Oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy production has been handcuffed, resulting in a huge, and potentially irreversible, increase in our dependence on foreign energy supply, not to mention hundreds of thousands of lost American jobs.

Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, and virtually every ideological enemy of America has been emboldened, and often supported, by this American administration. Barack Obama has offered more support, both moral and financial, to the leadership of Russia than he has offered to the citizenry of the country he leads.

Without the advice and consent of congress, this president effectively declared war on Egypt and Libya, deposing their leadership and leaving a leadership vacuum that has systematically found itself filled by radical, violent, anti-American Islamic forces that believe their destiny includes the annihilation of both Israel and the western world.

The most excellent, compassionate and innovative healthcare system in the history of mankind is being systematically dismantled and replaced by a government bureaucracy that will dictate who will receive medical care and how much of the ever-decreasing government treasury will be devoted to maintaining the health and lives of its citizens. The innate desire to serve humanity that has always sat at the core of the practice of American medicine will find itself smothered under a mountain of bureaucratic regulations and life and death decisions based on dwindling funding and the whims of small groups of un-elected, elitist government decision-makers and bureaucrats.

The funding of the American military is soon to be cut to a point at which all reliable military experts predict unavoidable impotence. Our new priorities have now declared American military might to be a secondary consideration, with social and entitlement priorities taking center stage. Our missile defense shield, which was decades and tens of billions of dollars in the making, has been virtually dismantled at a time when our enemies’ ability to pose a major, deadly threat is rapidly expanding. Our allies no longer believe that we can be trusted, and our enemies are gaining in power and adherents.

The incomparable work ethic, initiative and inventiveness that caused America to rise from an upstart colony to the most prosperous country in the history of mankind is being consistently suppressed by the punitive hand of government regulation and taxation. This president despises American exceptionalism, and, since his first day in office, has attempted to oppress those who strive to accomplish without government largesse, and demonize those who succeed. ‘The rich’ have become pariahs, and the masses want, even demand, what they have. The president has encouraged that kind of entitlement mentality, with the result being a major increase in the number of Americans who are now dependent on food stamps, disability payments, unemployment compensation, and all manner of government ‘handouts’. The workers and doers find themselves in chains while the majority of the citizenry has been programmed to see themselves as victims of an unjust social order.

Last night’s election results represent nothing less than a resounding betrayal of the divinely-inspired vision of our Founding Fathers, a betrayal of the sanctity of individual liberty for which ten generations of Americans have sacrificed. The American electorate has chosen dependence, weakness and mediocrity over independence, individual liberty, work ethic, and personal responsibility.

Nearly 1.5 million Americans have died in wars since we declared our independence 200+ years ago, and nearly every one of those lives was offered as a willing sacrifice in order to obtain or insure freedom for other human beings, be they fellow Americans or oppressed people somewhere else on the globe. The magnitude of that American sacrifice lends powerful meaning to the belief that a man shows no greater love than through his willingness to lay down his life for another. Keeping that powerful concept in mind, it somehow defies any rational concept of justice that, a mere sixty-five years after the Greatest Generation of Americans sacrificed so dearly to obtain freedom from the oppression and expansionism of Nazi Germany, we have decided that that kind of freedom is now not worth fighting for, even from the comfort of the ballot box.

I am sixty-five years old. I have been an observer of, and an active participant in, American politics for nearly forty years, having voted in every election, primary or general, since coming of age, having run for office, marched on Washington, circulated and presented petitions, picketed in front of the Capitol, delivered speeches in small community gatherings and on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, written speeches for others more powerful than I, campaigned door-to-door, and written countless political commentaries and letters to the editor. As of last night, my days of political involvement are over. As these eyes see it, the dimming light at the end of the tunnel has flickered out. If the Lord wills it, I suspect that I may have ten or fifteen years left to enjoy my life, and I intend to do just that. I see future involvement in anything political as not adding to that enjoyment, but detracting from it, as a terrible exercise in futility and frustration.

I have nothing but boundless respect for those, mostly younger, more energetic and idealistic than I, who see last night’s election results as a clarion call to re-group and re-define the battle lines. America has always deserved that kind of dauntless determination, and she deserves it no less today than she did yesterday, a week ago, or two centuries past. Those who still believe that good and honest men and women can someday, once again, attain the highest offices in the land, and that America’s moral compass can once again read true, represent not only the hope of our beloved republic, but the hope of human liberty and dignity across the globe. Without a free and prosperous America the world will gradually find itself bathed in a black cloud of violence, despair and decay.