Just when you thing everything's going to the devil in a handbasket, something comes along to encourage you that you're on the right track.
For the last 5 years, it's been a daily onslaught of attacks on our Consitiution and the freedoms for which so many died to protect. And I mean daily!
We have fought the good fight to maintain our freedoms and our sanity, and last November was quite a blow. But as Gilbert & Sullivan said, "Faint heart never won fair lady", and over these past tumultuous years, conservatives have displayed their hearts are strong.
Paula Bolyard writes a piece at PJ Lifestyle, and she has decided to "consider many of the positive signs around us that all is not yet lost". She writes....
After a week of
depressing headlines, signs of life on the American horizon
by
Paula Bolyard
--
May 20, 2013 - 2:00 pm
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back
again
Moonshot, Woodstock,
Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, Terror on the airline
Ayatollah’s in Iran,
Russians in Afghanistan
Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide
Foreign debts, homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie
Goetz
Hypodermics on the shore, China’s under
martial law
Rock and Roll, cola wars, I can’t take it anymore
Benghazi, Boston bombings, the Gosnell trial, the Cleveland kidnappings, the
IRS targeting conservatives, DOJ snooping on the AP, war games with Iran and
North Korea, civil war in Syria…
Last week my ability to mentally process world events felt like a cell phone
when the data is throttled — it was almost too much to wrap my mind around.
Some days I fantasize about life as a low-information voter, not caring about
anything more important than what some Kardashian is up to. Barring sudden brain
malfunction, I’m not likely to experience that kind of apathy any time soon,
and the fact that you’re reading PJ Media tells me that you’re likely in the
same boat.
Instead of spending the weekend wallowing in all the terrible things
happening in the country and around the world, I decided to instead consider
many of the positive signs around us that all is not yet lost.
And so I bring you:
5 Signs That We Haven’t Lost America Yet:
1. We Are Raising Constitutionally Literate Kids
I don’t ever remember reading the Constitution growing up — or even anyone
talking about it. I imagine we must have perused it at some point during a
“social studies” class, but we certainly never studied it in any detail. Thanks
in large part to the Tea Party, now the Constitution, Declaration of
Independence, and Federalist Papers are again household names. Millions of
Americans are raising their kids with a deep understanding of our founding
documents and a respect for them that will certainly translate into public
policy eventually.
And we are just now beginning to see the maturation of the first wave of an
explosion in homeschooling that began in the early 1990s.
Studies show that
homeschool graduates are far more likely than their public school peers to
vote, work for or contribute to a campaign, attend a protest, and contact a
public official about a policy issue. They also
tend
to adopt heir parents’ beliefs, which tend to be very conservative
politically.
Is it possible that a young conservative resurgence is bubbling right below
the surface? I think it’s very possible!
2. Conservatives Reproduce More Than Liberals
The states that vote for Republican presidential candidates have the
highest
fertility rates.
Utah families have 2.7
children each compared to 1.7 in
Vermont.
Homeschoolers have
3.5
children per family (thank you, Duggar family, for raising our team average!).
One economist who looked at the numbers thinks that even the increase in the
Hispanics, who tend to have more babies and vote Democrat,
cannot
make up for the deficits of the lethargic left. This is a numbers game, and
their obsession with abortion, birth control, and one-child families as a part
of their holistic carbon-footprint-reduction plan will eventually catch up with
them.
3. The Media Is Increasingly Democratic
Besides your parents, do you know anyone who relies solely on the mainstream
media for their news anymore? Recently, the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
announced a
switch
from 7-day to 3-day home delivery service in an attempt to cut costs. In
recent years the paper has degraded into little more than partisan hackery
(with above-average sports coverage), and it has obviously hurt their bottom
line.
The way Americans consume news has changed and the
Plain Dealer
hasn’t kept up. Gone are the days when the experts at the editorial board could
tell everyone in their circulation area whom to vote for. It’s hard to believe
that there was a time when voters relied on newspaper editorial boards to
choose their candidates. How absurd! Today, instead of a handful of media
elites controlling the flow of news, “We the People” can drive the stories and
help to create the narratives. The American people pushed the Gosnell story out
in spite of the MSM.
Benghazi
is still in the news despite the best efforts of the MSM to cover it up. Social
media, blogs, cable news, talk radio,
Plain Dealer – we don’t need you
anymore. The gatekeepers are gone.
4. The Church Grows with Persecution
This one is for the Christians. Since the very first days of Christianity,
the church has grown through persecution. Severe persecution by Nero in the
Roman Empire only made the church more determined and
helped to spread the growth of Christianity. In modern times, the underground
church in
China has exploded
under Communist persecution, and it is rumored that the church is growing even
in the brutal totalitarian regime in
N. Korea.
Though I don’t foresee Communist atrocities in the
U.S. anytime soon, I think a time
of testing is coming to the American church. We saw the first ripples with the
infringement on religious liberty in Obamacare, forcing religious organizations
and Christian businesses to provide contraceptives and abortion pills in
violation of their religious beliefs. Now we hear that the IRS has been
targeting conservative groups and individuals, including Billy Graham,
Samaritan’s Purse, and pro-life groups, some being asked to disclose the
contents of their prayers, as if the government ought to know that. Churches
and individual Christians who continue to defend traditional marriage now find
themselves outside of the mainstream of popular opinion and will likely face
consequences if they don’t enthusiastically embrace a lifestyle their faith
teaches is sinful.
Although this all sounds rather dreadful, there is good that can come from
it. In recent decades, the American church has been awash in excess,
entertainment, and theological emptiness. Pews have often been filled with
parishioners seeking a feel-good experience or a mildly entertaining worship
event. At a time when Christianity increasingly confronts hostility in our
culture, we will see the wheat separated from the chaff. Those who are in it
for their “Best Life Now” will beat a path for the exits, and the church, as
always, will grow with persecution — not with market-tested church-growth
numbers, but in faithfulness and obedience to Christ.
For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults,
hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
(2 Corinthians 12:10, ESV)
5. The Libertarian vs. Conservative Debate
In case you haven’t noticed, there is a bit of a civil war going on in the
Republican Party right now. Back in the days of “McCain for President,” the
divisions in the party were between the RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) and
the conservatives. The RINOs, who run as conservatives during the primary and go
on to govern as big-government statists once they’re elected, never seemed to
fully understand the principles of conservatism, limited government, or free
markets, except to the extent that those buzz words could help them win
re-election if sprinkled on their speeches.
With the ascension of the Tea Party, liberty is back in style and it’s not
kooky to be a libertarian anymore (though if you leave a 10-mile long comment
about auditing the Fed on my Facebook page, I’m still not going to take the
bait). Even card-carrying social conservatives (me included) are not ashamed to
say, “I have some libertarian leanings.” Saying the “L” word doesn’t get you
shunned from most social circles or even church circles these days (although if
you’re pushing legalizing weed at my Baptist church, there’s going to be a
problem).
More and more, the low-information RINO legislators are finding themselves
irrelevant in these substantive debates about the size and scope of government.
While Ted Cruz and Mike Lee are quoting Tocqueville and the Federalist Papers,
John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and others of the old Republican guard are busy
tinkering under the hood of our behemoth federal government as it spirals out
of control.
Very soon the debate in the Republican Party will no longer be “How big can
we get away with making the government?” Instead, it will be “How small can we
get away with making it?” The RINOs have neither the experience nor the
intellectual heft to answer this question, as they only know the formula for growing
government.
Of course, the big-government Republicans still control the party. They will
fight and try to kill (figuratively, of course) conservatives and libertarians
who will wrest from them the power they’ve taken a generation to accumulate.
But their days are numbered.
So take courage, my friends. We haven’t lost our country yet. There is much
to be hopeful about, despite the bleak headlines.
