Don't Stop
The entire playbook of the American left is designed to create enough doubt that you stop believing in America. Don't let even the raid at MAL get you down. We are winning...
I happened to catch a snippet of a 2020 Trump rally at the tail end of something I had DVR’d and finally got around to watching. Playing in the background was Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.”
That song and the image of the rally got me to thinking.
What has been on display over the past 24 hours is not America.
As a matter of fact, not much in the past six years is representative of America.
This is not the America of our long-gone forefathers, our grandparents – or for that matter, even our parents. This is some sort of a construct, a bad videogame version of reality.
From the entirely trumped up (no pun intended) Russia collusion “investigation” to last night’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, the Democrats – and their willing allies in the Republican Party (including the GOP Senate leadership), have created an alternate America that looks like America but functions like the old Soviet Union. They tell you the Norman Rockwell, sun shining over waves of golden grain, mom and apple pie was the myth, it never existed and if it did, slave owners built it.
But there is an America that exists outside the environment of the government and the law – and it is that America. It is a place where a handshake is both a symbol of friendship and a symbol of a bond. It is a place where a person’s honor and reputation are the most valuable possession a person could have. It is a place where the law applies fully, completely, and equally to all, regardless of socioeconomic status, position or birth.
I have written many times about my grandfather, Baker Thomas Goodwin, who was known to the family as “Big Daddy”. He was not an educated man by modern standards but that didn’t stop him from being wise, he was a voracious consumer of knowledge and a man who valued education greatly. He was a community leader and in demonstration of how much he valued education, he sat on local school boards for many, many years. Before the days of tax funded schools, he supplied materials, labor, and money to build local schools.
My grandfather taught me valuable lessons – the value of honesty, the art of being plain spoken, the importance of character, the investment made in trust and the worth of a handshake. A lifelong farmer, he was honest to a fault and believed that hard work was its own reward. He did not harbor laziness or sloth and expected much from those around him, and he usually got it. He was a proud man, a loyal Democrat from the days when Democrats were conservative, and he was a strong, resilient, and independent man until his last day.
It doesn’t exist inside the DC Beltway, in the power centers of well-heeled upper Northeast and the Left Coast, but it exists for me and many others who live in places where a person’s word is still their bond.
The America of my granddaddy still exists because people like him still exist. That America is internal to us, not a decoration we wear. We fly flags, honor military veterans, memorialize all of those who gave their last full measure, say the pledge, and pray for our country and countrymen, not because we want to look a certain way, but because we believe.
I’ve noted before that our Constitution has force and value because we treat it as if it does.
It is the same for our nation. It has value, honor and good because we believe it does.
The greatest enemy of a tyrant is belief. Belief that our nation is good, it does good and when it doesn’t, that is the exception rather than the rule…and when we go wrong, we fix it.
Our enemies have been sowing doubt about America for generations, but during our time, the doubt has intensified. That is what the 1619 Project was about, it is what CRT is about, it is what Queer Theory is about – the complete destruction of belief.
The only way America is defeated is when her people stop believing in her.
Don’t give up.
Don’t stop believing.
It is ironic that you'd mention how the Dems despise the myth of a "Norman Rockwell" America. I read that one room in the White House was always decorated with framed Rockwell paintings and that the Big Guy had all of them taken down and replaced with large photos of himself. It sounds both like the work of a 3rd World dictator and like the work of minions attempting to remind Joe Biden of what he looks like.
Let's all pray the Republic holds together for another five months.
My grandfather was a farmer, but he died when I was five. Wish I could have gotten to know him better.