Dear Americans,
We are in a new kind of struggle for survival. It’s one we can win easily, although this one is more dangerous than the bloody wars of our past – because the threat is harder for us to believe. Our previous wars cost over a million American lives. This struggle only requires that we trust what we see – and vote accordingly.
The staggering growth of anti-patriotism in America now includes a rejection of Independence Day. Hard to believe but true. July Fourth is one of two defining holidays that say who we are as a people. If we forget that, we lose our country.
Thanks to our education system, fringe thinking is now increasingly dominant. Phrases like “re-imagine America” and “fundamental transformation” now have action points like packing the Supreme Court and ending the Electoral College – either of which could push us over the edge.
The next two elections must pivot on a few simple questions:
Who understands you as a people? Who honors you? Who honors your civic heritage and your history? In other words, who loves you?
So if a candidate shows you anything less than true love of country and “America first” policies, run the other way!
We can’t survive another “America last” globalist president, but just as important, we must reject the politics of self-hate expressed by so many in Congress.
Having grown up cynical about loving my country, I know how it can twist a young mind into accepting this kind of “politics.”
Even patriotic older Americans can start to think it’s normal that so many cultural and political leaders have contempt for this country.
It is not normal.
And you’ll know that for sure when I tell you Thomas Jefferson’s famous home at Monticello has now become an Anti-Jefferson museum.
The “woke left” will stop at nothing. Their outrageous defamation of the man who gave us the Declaration of Independence will not stand – not if we elect true patriots of whatever race.
Patriots know that despite the real pain of our national past, Jefferson is worthy of love and respect – and so is America. When our children are not taught this, they are being abused, or worse, tempted to accept some kind of self-hating, dystopic future.
And yet, every year, we pass through two national observances that present a serious problem for the anti-America left.
We are blessed with the renewing power of Memorial Day and Independence Day, a double reminder that whatever our race, color or creed, we are truly brothers and sisters of liberty.
The world knows it, even if our school boards do not.
These two political holidays, only a month apart, bind us together with both the faith-centered principles of our founding Declaration and the blood sacrifice that guaranteed those principles for almost 250 years – a debt increased when any American dies to protect us or our freedom.
How can we repay such sacrifice?
We can start by throwing off our national self-doubt, rooted in our real flaws but fed relentlessly and exploited by the left’s unforgiving spirit.
All nations are flawed – just as all people are flawed. But together, we can stand against the non-stop critics and expose what they are selling – nothing but endless undermining guilt, historic or otherwise.
We must reclaim our right to teach American Pride in our schools. Loving our country is not unhealthy “nationalism.” It’s healthy patriotism.
We can also teach freedom to our children by facing down the America-haters and standing up for our Constitution, criticized as an irrelevant old document by leftists with darker motives. They “hate the system,” and seek to establish their own – whether we like it or not.
It’s time to reject them in every way possible from academia to the media, but starting at the ballot box. Their arguments are not the point. Their motives are.
If you listen to the left, you’d think there was nothing good about this country except their right to hate it – and change it.
Somehow their endless judgment of our historic sins makes them feel righteous. They are living a dangerous lie. Seeing sin in others doesn’t make you good. There is no moral authority in their angry condemnation of the rest of us. Only inner emptiness that needs constant filling with something else to judge. It won’t stop.
Of course, they claim they’re criticizing us to improve America. That’s another lie. What do you call a friend who does nothing but criticize you – certainly not “a friend.”
Their motive is to tear down. The method is to criticize. Their goal is a country you won’t recognize – and won’t recognize you.
The label of Critical Theory doesn’t cover the deeper, spiritual dimension. But we can see it for what it is – unending fault-finding. It is the poison fed our children in school, which crushes their sense of self and citizenship.
Yes, it is true we conquered an indigenous people to create our country. But since Americans are a fair people, let’s ask ourselves and our critics, what nation is innocent of that? Are the historic Indian Nations innocent of war? Is any nation in the world innocent of war? Truth be told, we are all guilty – and of much more than wars of conquest.
Yes, we Americans inherited our greatest sin from a slave-trading world well before our miraculous political birth, which we honor every Fourth of July – at least most of us do. This unique American moment split history wide open and cut a new path toward healing our great sin and others with two simple words, “created equal.”
Of course, that means we have a “Creator.” Here we see the heart of the struggle, the real source of the left’s antipathy – now evident as they desecrate our churches while too many party leaders on the left remain silent. They forget that it was Christians who led the abolition movement, and it was Christians who led the marches to end racial segregation.
In 1776 we Americans declared a source of truth – and rights – higher than any government (always made of flawed people). This was more than an American revolution. It was a global revolution. They called it the “grand experiment” – asking if a free but flawed people could keep from destroying their own freedom. We are facing that question now. Your vote must be the answer.
And yes, it’s true that it took almost a century after Jefferson’s world-changing Declaration to rid our country of slavery – costing the blood of hundreds of thousands of young men who rose to fight the South.
Do your teachers tell you about that struggle – and the full liberating sacrifice of those men? We not only lost their precious lives but also the millions of American sons and daughters of liberty who would have been their heirs – and would be producing children to this day.
Think about it. If someone in battle threw himself on a grenade to save your father before you were born, would you respect that sacrifice? Would you tell your children about it? Yes, and more. If you were honorable, you’d make sure they remembered his name – because you wouldn’t exist without him, and neither would they.
It’s time to teach that sense of honor in our classrooms.
Together we can stand in the glory of their historic sacrifice and shout down the thankless America-haters who deface our history and tear down our institutions in the name of something they can’t name. This is not “criticism.” This is not “politics.” It is tyranny in the making.
This anti-American spirit has taken over my party, which now seeks to deconstruct the country it hates, growing more furious and brazen with every judicial or political disappointment. It does not see the evil it has become.
It must be shocked awake by your vote.
I hope that Americans will spit out my poisonous party in the next two elections. But even that may not be enough – the poison runs deep into the bureaucracy.
We need a whole generation of political leaders who love America and would die for her historic principles.
Let future candidates compete for who best understands the good of America. Let them prove to voters who is more dangerous to the enemies of our liberty and who is a better friend to those in this world who love us and our American spirit.
Yes, millions of us have judged our country too harshly as I did, but we don’t tear down statues or burn down cities or threaten duly elected or appointed officials – or threaten to upend our core institutions, which have served us steadfastly.
And we won’t continue to support a party that tolerates such evil behavior and then pressures the rest of us to submit to this politics of self-hate – or face cruel punishment.
Well, I will not submit – and neither will most Americans.
I will not hate my country – or its history. I will not hate my forebears who lived that history. I will not dishonor the graves at Normandy because they are filled with men who lived in an era of racial segregation. I will not hate our Founding Fathers who lived in a world of slavery, or Americans who fought to create and protect our great country. And I will resist anyone who does.
I will stand on my faith in God. I will love my country. And I will love my neighbors, whatever our political differences. I will not hate them.
And I will not hate America.
Every year from the end of May to the beginning of July, we are reminded to turn away from political cynicism and self-doubt, so much a part of human nature. We are encouraged to remember our better selves. It is our patriot month, meant to inspire us all year long.
Memorial Day and Independence Day lead us to reflect deeply on our past as well as our common future. It’s a time to take pride in the exceptional nature of our government and the principles of liberty upon which it was founded.
It is also a time of humility, for who of us is worthy of the sacrifices made for us? In fact, who of us is worthy to proclaim liberty to this troubled world?
None of us.
And yet we must, and we can – starting by voting for people who believe in those principles, for which so many good Americans died. For their sake we at least can vote for leaders who love us.