There Is Truth, Goodness, Righteousness And Justice
By Jim E. Reames (03/13/03)
While on the way to meet my son for lunch a couple of weeks back, I saw two young men exit a vehicle. Half way across the street, one of them took one final puff of his cigarette before angrily tossing it to the pavement as he jaywalked towards the entrance of a gun shop.
The thing I noticed most was this man’s total disregard for laws against littering and respect for property and the expression of hatred that taxed his young face. His stare was typical of many who are now young adults, improperly educated, unable to secure rewarding employment and angry with life in these United States because we are ever-increasingly becoming a nation of haves and have-nots.
On my mind, as I drove, was an article I read some time back published by Hillsdale College in Michigan. As the reader, I had been challenged to envision myself as the governor of two remote islands. On one island, the citizens were good and decent. They cherished family values and hard work and aspired to self-esteem and to excellence. They honored contracts, property, the law, and especially one another. The other island had a different sort. On it there were people who sought personal gratification and sloth and, at worst, treachery, deceit and violence. They did not cherish or nurture family values. They did not respect hard work and they did not honor property, contracts, the law, one another or themselves.
The writer of this article (Dr. Robert W. Blackstock) asked his readers to look into the future and ask themselves, “Which of the two islands would know the greater freedom? The greater prosperity? And conversely, to maintain good order—which of the two would require the greater number of laws, policemen, prisons, and the more obnoxious manner of enforcement?”
In my mind’s eye, as I watched the young man and his friend practically kick open the door of the gun shop, not looking to see if someone might be approaching the door from the opposite side, I saw America today, both past and present. I asked myself: What can we do in order to hang onto the values that have made America so attractive to so many thoughout the world?
We Americans must understand what is at stake in the struggle for freedom. We must learn to appreciate the foundational ideas upon which our freedom and bounty rest. Further, we must declare to our leaders in Washington, D. C. and to the citizens of other countries, to local leaders, and yes, to our newspaper publishers and editors, and to local news reporters, and to teachers and college presidents, to our ministers, and to our children and to Hollywood itself---with unshakable conviction and confidence---that there is truth, goodness, and righteousness and justice. To the depths of my soul, I believe this is what President George W. Bush is attempting to convey via his leadership.
Personally, I agree with Dr. Blackstone, “All values are not equal, and all social orders are not benign.” Social order, prosperity, justice, fairness and honesty begin with the embracement of the family values that have fostered themselves from the enclaves of Western Civilization, all of which have been under extreme attack since the 1960s, primarily from the liberal news media. The attack has been from Hollywood and from a few who have successfully eye-clawed their way to the leadership of nations that aspire to more and more centralization of power, and to more and more, social programs. These are the present leaders of the United Nations, men who now want to dictate what they consider the best interest of humanity. Their idealism’s have become the driving force of the few who steer the Democratic Party in American politics.
I find it disheartening to see the graffiti, and the broken lives, and the broken families, and the aftermath of false ideas that were sold the American people by the academic elite of the 1960s. It is even more disheartening to see so many people of our society who have become generations-dependent upon government-sponsored social programs in order to exist. Because those who are in debt are not free. Ever since the Great Deal that helped end the economic depression of the 1930s, followed by endless social-interest programs ever since, America has tried the very programs to which America’s Democratic Party, the United Nations, and most of socialist Europe so deeply aspire. But are we better for it? Look around. Are people kinder, more gentle, more trusting, today, than before this great social experimentation?
America used to be a nation of married couples. Today, there are record numbers of single parents, all because we have listened to the lie that was presented by liberalism, their idealism’s like broken glass upon the ground of fundamental Christian value. Now, the world is so taken in by the lies it wants to turn a deaf ear upon the injustices that prevail in Iraq, for fear of war. However, this lie can not stand. It will not stand.
As the Hollywood character Forrest Gump said, “I am not an intelligent man, but I know what love is.” I, likewise, am not an overly intelligent man. Truly, I am not! But I believe the time has come for us Americans to reassess our own role concerning the United Nations. We do not need the United Nations to be American. In addition, we do not need global leadership by the United Nations of its idealism’s to embrace global socialism.
What we need is to reassess our role of financially subsidizing the French via the monthly paychecks made to NATO forces abroad. At home, the role of our electronic news media needs to be reassessed, too. We need to take a cold, sober, look at our family values. The ever-threatening socialist agenda of the United Nations is not good for the future of the United States. It has failed the test of time. Huge government-sponsored programs (like those in France), child-care centers, and man-written laws…even socialized medicine…will never take the place of good parents.
However, parents can never become good until they aspire to good ideas. And good ideas are time tested. In addition, good friends can not remain such for very long when betrayal shadows friendship, even when it is over two hundred years old. If this present crisis in Iraq has done anything, it has exposed the truth of who are and are not our friends. As President George W. Bush proclaimed concerning this war against terrorism, “…you are either with us. Or you are against us.”
So long as we Americans stay on the high road (if we hold true to principal) then truth, righteousness, and justice will follow.
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