As my three beautiful daughters grew up, I had ample opportunity to express my opinion on the young men that they considered candidates for becoming my son-in-laws. Of course, none of the candidates were worthy of my angels; nor did any of them meet my criteria of “Mr. Right”. Early on though, I discovered one uncomfortable fact. Like Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof, I came to the realization that one doesn’t simply choose his own son-in-laws, they are chosen for him. Oh I advised, I cajoled, I complained… I threw tantrums; but in the end a choice was always made… and I was never the one who made it. Oddly enough, and despite my worst fears, the choices my daughters made turned out mostly to be good ones; and when they made a bad choice, their world did not end. The doom that I prophesied went mostly unfulfilled, because in the end I discovered I had given my daughters something more precious than advice. My little girls were now strong young women with the ability to face life as I had taught them, to overcome mistakes, and to thrive.

As our nation looks to choose our next leader, warnings of the Apocalypse abound on both sides of the political aisle, and even within the many factions of the Republican party as well. Donald Trump joins the long list of characters likened to Adolf Hitler, his hypnotic rhetoric apparently so hateful and sinister that he ought not be allowed even to speak; his silver-tongued oratory apparently so wickedly compelling that for the good of the citizens his witchcraft needs to be silenced. Those who compare our candidates, left or right, to Hitler, should read up a little on Hitler. And those who warn of apocalyptic doom should we elect the wrong president, need to return to their Bibles to see what a real apocalypse looks like. There are talk show hosts on the right, and progressive non-profits on the left who make their living by making us all believe that we are on the cusp of oblivion. Every election cycle we hear it. We heard it with Bush, we heard it with Obama. But even as bad as the current administration has been; and we’ve certainly incurred some damage; we are still America with a fairly good chance of electing someone totally different, relegating the Obama administration to “the wrong side of history”, and moving on. We have elected and survived a wide range of Presidents: Wilson, Hoover, the Roosevelts, Coolidge, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, the Bushes, Obama… It may be that America is not the fragile house of cards that we imagine it to be, one that can be toppled by whatever Hitler du jour we are presently designating. We conservatives perpetually espouse American exceptionalism, and the miracle of our Constitution and form of government. If it is a miracle, it is not a miracle of fragile freedom, many revolutions have brought temporary liberty, ours was something better. If our Constitution is miraculous, it is miraculous because of its durability; and we are exceptional as a nation because we are not easily subdued.

If we are indeed at the mercy of our leaders, then eventually we will fall. If we are like Sisyphus, condemned to roll the rock of freedom up the mountain only to see it roll back down, I fear we will not find his perpetual strength to guard and restore our liberty. Oh, I do believe that each generation must tend to the lamp of liberty, as Ronald Reagan warned,

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in their bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

But we have begun to assume that passing on freedom means electing the right leader, and then depending on them to shepherd our liberty. Revolutions are seldom won by majorities, neither are they maintained by them. Our greatness as a nation has never been dependent on elections, or we would have fallen years ago. Our greatness as a nation is embodied in the ideas at its core, and the willingness of a remnant to pass on those ideas to the next generation. Yes, the lamp of liberty must be tended, but it is tended in the hearts and minds of our young people, not just the voting booth; and if we fulfill our duty, that lamp will still light even the darkest times, and fly in the face of the worst leaders. We like to think of the world in terms of heroes and villains. We blame World War II and the holocaust on the demonic Adolf Hitler, without considering the role of the german people, or the people of the rest of the world that made a Hitler possible. We suffer from the notion that a single man can destroy us, or that a single man can save us, when a bad leader can’t destroy a good nation any more than a good leader can save a bad one.

IMHO: The republican party has for many years been looking for Mr. Right, and their choices have often been as disappointing as my daughters’. Like the scornful father, with each new candidate our disapproval has become the more vociferous, “John? Are you kidding, he’s a RINO!” “Mitt? Oh please, he’s so establishment!” “Ted? What do you see in him, nobody likes him! He’s from Canada!” “Marco? I heard some bad stuff about him!” “Donald? He’s full of himself, so controlling!”
Again, like the father I once was, we take increasing offense at the fact that our choice is rejected, “What’s the matter with Rand, he seems like such a nice boy!” “Have you noticed John, he’s so polite!” “Ben is so smart, and a doctor!” “What about Mike? He’s a good Christian.”. Our devotion to our own ideal choice heightens our disappointment with the eventual candidate and we throw a tantrum full of doom, gloom, and allusions to the Apocalypse. We cut off our nose to spite our face, and we risk continuing the streak of progressive rule to 12 or possibly 16 years, thus helping to fulfill our own false prophecy.
Paradoxically, when we set our standards impossibly high, people tend to ignore us and make choices based on no standards at all. The anger and vitriol that we are seeing on each side of this election should tell us that we have made the election of a president more important than our brotherhood as a nation, our constitutional principles, and the Union itself. We treat each other as though we were villains, devils, morons, and degenerates because we disagree on the direction our government should take. Even in the narrowest of differences within a party we have resorted to name-calling, crude insults, accusations, and assertions of evil motives… and I’m not talking about the candidates. Maybe this has become a little too important to us; maybe we’ve made it into all that there is, and forgotten the weightier, more difficult parts of tending the lamp of liberty. Yes, vote. Make your best choice from the candidates available. But then be at peace, rest, tend to your flame. We are still America,  we’ll be ok.

” ‘What’d the devil give you for your soul, Tommy?’
‘Well, he taught me to play this here guitar real good.’
‘Oh son! For that you sold your everlasting soul?’
‘Well, I wasn’t usin’ it ‘ “

Oh Brother Where Art Thou

 

Thus the Coen brothers movie reconstructs the legendary account of American Delta blues artist Tommy Johnson meeting the devil at a crossroads and trading his soul for mastery of the guitar. The ethereal soul, shrouded in eternity, often seems of little value in the here and now; and we are apt to sell it, often in small pieces, for something we can use like fame, power, money, or physical needs and desires.

In raising my children there were ample opportunities to teach life lessons about the value of honesty. From the times when cashiers would give too much change, to the offers of cheating on the sales tax for the purchase of a used car; my response to their puzzlement over the scruples I inherited from the example of my own father would often be to assure them that if and when I succumbed to selling my soul, it would be for a far more substantial sum. We, the citizens of this once great nation, find ourselves at that same crossroads where Tommy sold his soul; and in our hand already is the pen with which we might sign away our destiny. As Esau traded his birthright for a bowl of lentils, we are in the process of giving up the essence of our Republic and its high calling for that which is base and of passing value. The enduring building blocks of freedom, goodness, liberty, and self-rule, we are now ready to trade for violence, dishonesty, anger and bondage. On the altar of party spirit we make ready to sacrifice the soul of America. Generations to come may look back on the decision we have made and ask with bewilderment even as we have puzzled over the decisions of other peoples, “For that you sold your everlasting soul?” Well, we weren’t using it anyway.

Somewhere between the impeachment of Richard Nixon and the exoneration of Bill Clinton a decision was made by a sufficient majority of voters that character really doesn’t matter when it comes to presidential politics. The greater portion of this majority has historically been composed of Saul Alinsky progressives whose “ends justifies the means” approach to politics has ever espoused the concept of might makes right, and as such, the moral purity or honesty of their candidates was far less of a concern to them than party purity and agenda.  It is therefore unsurprising that the left seems more than willing on this go round to bend forward for a tired old candidate who would more appropriately be led off to prison than the oval office. Republicans, though,have since Nixon been a little more circumspect with the candidates they put forward. Allowances have been made for presidential hopefuls who seemed a little less than brilliant, lacking in charisma, or even electability; but at the slightest hint of impropriety the candidate was quickly abandoned in the GOP. It is to be anticipated that in a party greatly composed of religious and traditional values voters, that adherence to the “high road” would be a deciding factor for potential candidates. In a nation that seems to have lost its way though, the “high road” has looked more and more like a dead end in the last couple of elections. So it would seem that this time around, republican voters have decided that if they are going to be dragged through the mud anyway, they might as well nominate someone more comfortable wallowing in it. Even evangelicals, faced with a choice of conservative christians, a pastor, the son of a pastor, a Catholic, a Seventh Day Adventist, or other perfectly viable candidates have instead opted for the morally deficient narcissist who most closely resembles the Antichrist. Forgive my hyperbole, but it seems that the angel on the electorate’s right shoulder has grown tired of defeat and is opting to don progressive garb to beat the devil at his own game. It may seem to be a better alternative to abandon the nature of our better angels than to perpetually lose elections to the greater of two evils, but in so doing we create a land where there are no angels… and there is only one place where there are no angels.

IMHO: Last night on the streets of Chicago we saw a caricature of what our nation will look like without its soul. Rule by coercion and violence. An end to free speech for those we disagree with, and quickly following, an end to freedom of all sorts. Power seized through force, not discourse. Anger. Hatred. War… Welcome to our American Hell. Passion in the political forum is nothing new, and to be expected for such consequential matters; but organizing to silence an opposing view… I thought we were better than that.
I am no Trump fan, as perhaps you have discerned. From his oft repeated reference to the Presidential term of office as a “reign” to his insistence that people will do what he tells them if he’s elected, it seems clear that he doesn’t grasp the Constitutional notion of public servant any better than Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. Worse still, it seems that “We the People” are losing our appetite for liberty, and like so much of the rest of the world we cry out for a King, or a CEO who will relieve us of our burden of self-governance and keep us entertained with bread and circuses. If elected, Trump may surprise many of us and turn out to be a good President, stranger things have happened, but we have no evidence to expect that from what he’s said or done. Instead we have a candidate as adept at ignoring reality on the right- arguably the right- as Bernie Sanders is on the left. Like Obama before him, he assiduously avoids details, speaking in vague terms that allow the voter to project their own ideas onto his empty rhetoric. As Trump has said, he loves the poorly educated, and it is to those who have a poor education in civics, or to those who have set aside their education, that he appeals. His ability to garner the support of such as Chris Christie and Ben Carson suggests that he will continue to employ his admitted practice of influence peddling to deal his way through the presidency. That all being said, the chaos of what happened in Chicago last night outrages even those of us who are not Trump supporters, and while the organizers revel in the glow of having deprived Trump his rally, they have ironically only helped his campaign by reminding us that there are worse things than Trump.
The Donald’s most appreciated trait seems to be the fact that he speaks his mind, which I guess in this era of political correctness is refreshing to voters. Let’s face it though, if our neighbor spoke to us in that fashion we would not find it refreshing! There is such a thing as honesty with courtesy, candor with class. We risk the error that was made with Barack Obama, and again potentially with Hillary Clinton. It was indeed time to elect a black man to our highest office, but that particular black man was a mistake. It may well be time we had a woman for President, but not that woman. And so it may certainly be that we should look to a man who speaks his mind to lead our country, only let that mind reflect things worth speaking. It may be time we elected a citizen politician to the high office of President, but it remains a high calling, and it calls for a man of high character and principle. Truth be told, we have found a bully we suppose to be bigger than the bully who’s been bullying us, and somehow we imagine that this will free us from bullies.
Increasingly it appears that our choice in November will be between a rock and a hard place. In a free society people get the leaders they deserve. And that’s what I’m afraid of.