For those of you who have not seen the 2011 World War I movie “War Horse”, there is a scene near the end of the movie where the frightened horse, Joey, gets wrapped in painful barbed wire in “no-man’s land.” The wire is ultimately cut by men from both sides under a white flag of truce, with worries that the snap-back in cutting the wire could cause more damage to the horse than the original tangling. This is where America is today – a beautiful and courageous country, on the ground, wrapped in painful ideological barbed wire, unable to move, and certain not to survive if not freed.
In last week’s column, Messaging No God, Miss Constitution recommended three steps all Americans who care about the fate of the country can take to figure out what is true and what should be done.
Step 1: personal prayer for the gift of wisdom and courage and for forgiveness for any neglect of duty to our nation.
Step 2: reliance on the empirical for determining what is factually true; confidence in one’s common sense; faith in one’s judgment. The empirical – what one authentically hears, sees, smells, tastes, touches – can help negate facts that are manufactured or manipulated.
Step 3: critical thinking skills that beget significant questioning of all that is portrayed as factually true, ideologically correct, and or emotionally binding.
These steps, in order or simultaneously taken, amount to the careful barbed wire cutting that occurred in “War Horse.” Take a clear-eyed look at what is actually happening. Ask difficult questions and demand precise honest answers. Become familiar with what constitutes our governing system, Rule of Law, and actual history. Make sure your children and grandchildren learn it. (You might want to start with Miss Constitution’s Apples of Gold – Voices From the Past that Speak to Us Now).
Our governing system is based on objective truths, and the notion of the development of the person in his or her journey towards virtue. The system is founded on a belief in God and in unalienable rights that emanate from God. Assuming corruption in humankind, our system splits the atom of power between local/state governments and the federal government. The federal system then splits authority between three co-equal branches– executive, legislative, and judicial. There is to be a balance in these three power centers. The three federal branches are not to overwhelm local/state power. People are to be left free choice within the Rule of Law – this is personal Liberty, a cherished American value.
What happened to this Founding model?
It was abandoned around the turn of the 20th century for a system based on the subjective, the notion of the perfectibility of humankind, and the federal government’s unlimited power in creating a political utopia. The new model, called Progressivism, was espoused best 100 years ago by American Herbert Croly, the first editor of The New Republic:
“Democracy must stand or fall on a platform of possible human perfectibility. [T]he American state will in effect be making itself responsible for a morally and socially desirable distribution of wealth.”
Human perfectibility? Humanity first, not God? The state as the sole arbiter of the distribution of wealth? This is all unthinkable to the Founders, and decimates the principles underlying our Constitutional Republic. Progressivism (a form of Marxism) has marched, with the aid of masterful propaganda techniques, virtually non-stop from Teddy Roosevelt through Woodrow Wilson and on to today. Progressive thinking has infected both major political parties and otherwise well-meaning people. It represents that tangle of barbed wire so thoroughly entwined in the American mind that to resist its painful barbs is taught by many educational institutions as useless.
Progressivism is not just a part of some American minds, it forms the basis of the push toward globalism, of the relinquishment of national sovereignty, of international bodies dictating domestic criminal punishments, of gigantic re-distributions of national wealth under the guise of climate change or pandemics unleashed by global actors. It is the basis of the minimization of our national trust in God disguised as “separation of church and state.” There is no separation in our system between the individual and his or her duty to God and Moral Law.
In day to day terms, the Progressive state tells you what car to drive; taxes your property until you are forced to relinquish it; stifles open scientific inquiry; promotes alienation from your children; pronounces Christianity a terror threat; denigrates merit; and tries to sell you the idea that the pain you feel from your barbed-wire prison is what you deserve.
The empirical truth, however, is what you can see, hear, taste, smell and touch. This is the objective reality of a spy balloon allowed to cross over our military installations unimpeded; this is the objective reality of disregarding vetting requirements for all who enter the United States; this is the objective reality of government-promoted violent crime and drug trafficking; this is the objective reality of murdered beached whales; and this is the objective reality of collapsed governing institutions, including a politically-neutral judiciary – a judiciary once the cornerstone of our Rule of Law.
Why is critical thinking so important?
Critical thinking is about asking hard public policy questions of those who seek or are in power. No one dared ask Teddy Roosevelt why he broke faith with the Filipino people and began slaughtering those he had promised to free from Spain. This questioning is especially hard to do when societal situations are dire or when the country is attacked. Asking hard questions can divide families and lose friendships. It is a trained skill that used to be at the heart of American higher education. Its absence leaves persons and populations open to manipulative re-wiring of the brain, especially in the young.
Is it too late for America to recover? Can her wounds heal sufficiently? Are there courageous persons ready to enter no-man’s land and free her from the barbed wire constraints she imposed upon herself?
Well, of course, it is possible. We have been programmed in these 100+ years to deny what we know to be true. We have allowed ideologues to sell us their version of “fair”; we have allowed atheists to turn us away from God; we have allowed the incompetent to rise above the worthy; we have allowed the subjective to overwhelm the objective; we have allowed Progressivism to replace our Constitutional Republic and Rule of Law.
In “War Horse”, Joey the horse was saved by goodness and he was ultimately reunited with the boy who raised him. May goodness save us now, and may we be reunited with the Republic so many patriots gave their lives for. Joey survived the barbed wire in the worst of war zones. America can survive, as well, should we desire to do so.
