There are lessons to be learned from the reactions of his opponents to the campaign and election of Donald Trump. Those same opponents seem deaf to them… and blind. As history often provides, the lessons will be made clearer, oddly enough, as the lens of time becomes thicker, longer and, in fact, cooler. Are these lessons so earth-shattering? Well, yes, probably.
Some nation is going to lead all nations, like it or not. Since its founding, in a sense, the United States has been that nation. Why? Much derives from the sacrifices of George Washington, a quite spiritual man. Unlike all the kings of history, Washington finished his second term as president and went back to his farm. He could have been president for life; he could have dictated who the next president would be. Instead, he surrendered a power the extent of which he may not have realized. In many ways he was the key man, launching our ship of state with faith in the inherent goodness of the people of America… and little else.
That “goodness” was primarily Judeo-Christian, filtered through all of Europe and the British Isles. Whether steady attendees at churches or not, most “Americans” were Christian – an inconvenient truth. When Franklin answered that the Constitutional Convention had delivered a “…republic, if you can keep it(.)” he expressed his recognition of the need for a morally straight citizenry in order for a representative democracy to function and survive.
Only morally raised children would grow up to live in honesty. Only a moral people would demand and sustain a legal structure of honest jurisprudence, honest, enforceable contracts, written and verbal, and honest money, trusted by every seller and buyer. Only an honest people would allow, even encourage, the least among us to excel, grow and succeed. Our many flaws grew from wrong beliefs and our regret is justified. But, our basic honesty and the strength of our institutions enabled us to change flawed beliefs.
Which is not to say that changing all beliefs is a good thing – our forbears were right about most of it.
Those of us old farts who have worried about the upset changes of the 1960’s, are being proven right, too. That was a decade that saw socialism become a “solution” through the “Great Society,” and indulgence of every youthful abandon begin the erosion of moral institutions, education as a moral institution, and every sort of drug and sexual thrill gain “rights.”
These changes are bearing their fruits… and nuts.
Daily we are challenged over every institution’s role as modern politicians – liberal ones, anyway, and fearful non-liberals – bow to every new idea about how individuals are not responsible for building their own lives and economics. Unfortunately, in a whirlpool of new “rights,” the lives of those citizens who don’t agree with or don’t care about the new licentiousness, the power of government has been turned against the majority of those who give it power in the first place. What are the new beliefs?
A growing minority believe that every form of sexual expression is as valid as all the others. These same believe that resistance to the disappearance of procreative sacredness is the equivalent of Hitler’s incomprehensible pathologies. This same group decries all rules of personal behavior not invented by them, and they are quick to hate while castigating haters. What sort of leaders will they be? With no social norming at work, will nations, in their view, become irrelevant, too?
The ungoverned seem quick to demand that “government” destroy the lives and rights of the traditionalist majority, and there are sufficient psychologists and lawyers to twist their ideas into effective arguments against… whatever. Screams for diversity – whatever that is – turn into screams of rage when diversity of beliefs is placed before them. Technology cannot mask that divide, nor, apparently, can elections. Majority rule is hateful until the disenchanted are in a majority position, however briefly. Since it will be brief, court rulings are sought to make their beliefs permanent policy.
Drugs are becoming mainstream, which might have some positive value if they calmed the hateful. They don’t, evidently. Drugs are a subject for belief and not necessarily truth, or reality. Besides, there are tax revenues to be realized, the purest calcimine that ever touched a brush. Soon we’ll be crime-free. Let’s hope the lights come on and the water flows on that day.