PrintAugust 22, 2008
Hope
Take heart. Hope. Think for a moment about why the good guys will win the war against dishonesty, brutality, and power-mongering. The big picture is often hard to see, particularly when the stench of evil in our lives is so pungent, but evil loses eventually. Consider some of the practical reasons why it will lose again.
The slavering lust for power produces cannibals and friendly fire. A few short months ago, Hillary and Obama were taking potshots at each other. The Prophet Obama is still being undermined by the Clinton Machine, which wants Hillary in the White House in 2012 (which means Obama must lose.)
What is true at the personal level is true at the interest level as well. Radical feminists kowtow to the “culture” of Islam, with its patriarchal savagery, and so lose all appeal to women who really oppose rape, pedophilia, wife-beating and other crimes against women – even when middle class American men are not committing those crimes. Hispanic identity advocates are alarming black identity advocates because, of all ethnic groups in America, Hispanics are the most likely to view blacks badly. The poor working class may hate the rich, but they hate high gas prices even more, and helping the poor with astronomical prices for fuel and food looks more and more elitist.
People who have core principles, on the other hand, reject interest politics and identity politics. If we could elect Michael Steele president today, we would. If we could elect Janice Rogers Brown, that would be even better. It does not matter to us if Bobby Jindal has roots in India or if Eric Cantor is Jewish or – I hope to most of us – if Mitt Romney is Mormon. We are bound not by private or collective advantages, credits, subsidies or perks. We are bound, instead, by the dream of a moral and honest polity.
Good Americans abound, even if they are scrupulously edited out of news reports and media coverage. The generation fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is better than the best earlier American generations. They are all volunteers. They fight a war mocked by Hollywood and indicted by the mindless rage of the Left. These men and women – sometimes little more than boys and girls – have endured the dull propaganda of public schools, the creepiness of academia, the emptiness of modern culture, the mendacious negativity of the mainstream press, the whole vast weight of Leftism. They have endured and they have triumphed. These good people can distinguish truth from lies; they know that the world has good and that it has evil; they have steeled themselves to be righteous. Civilizations often dread the rise of armies as a signal of the end. Not us: Our armies are uniquely and profoundly good and decent. The men and women who sacrifice for freedom – not even our freedom, but the freedom of the world – are a powerful hope in our world today.
The pomposity of the Left no longer swaggers unmocked. Ben Stein has a marvelous documentary showing how venal, dishonest, and mean militant atheism can be. Rush Limbaugh daily exposes the vacuum which is the Leftist mind and soul. Ann Coulter regularly skewers with her pen the unhealthy carcass of Leftism. The Emperor not only has no clothes, but the Emperor is as fat and slovenly as Michael Moore, and more Americans are seeing that every day.
People sense more and more that their lives are imprisoned by the mainstream media. One of the most powerful polls in this election cycle had nothing to do with the preference of voters and everything to do with the perception of media: Even a plurality of Obama supporters believe that the media is trying to elect him president. The real power of the mainstream press was always its image as a referee and the presumption that it treated parties and people the same. When even true believers of the Left no longer take the mainstream media seriously, then that power is gone.
Finally, as gadgetry remolds us into its own image, more of us are turning to God, the true mold of man. Cable stations with three hundred channels of childish chattering, dull and coarse comedy, and monotonous violence and viciousness have opened the door to the Hell of life without God. We were made for Him and more and more of us sense that our only real hope is God.
God – in case any Leftist is taking notes – has preserved four precious creations in this world: America, Israel, the Jewish people, and the Christian faith. Those who would vaporize our hope cannot do the same to God. Moreover, God has created a reality in which venality leads to self-destruction, pathological lying leads to the loss of meaning, and lust for power leads to infantile helplessness. We have reasons to hope today. Take that hope. The world is full of battles before us, but victory is assured.
Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie, and his recently published book, The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.
