And I do believe in both the principle of "salt and light" AND I am a grateful follower of the One who told us to be that in the lives of others. But before we can effect change, we have to be clear in our definitions of the status quo.tyree wrote:The nation may very well not, but there is no way I'm going to passively allow constitutional governance fade into history. We have to actively participate in whatever legal and peaceful means are made available to us in winning hearts and minds for freedom. Victory favors the bold and we owe it to those men and women who sacrificed so much for us to give it our very best, no matter the outcome.The Annoyed Man wrote: That is why I do not think that the nation will ever return to constitutional governance. The lure of power is simply too strong, and the culture no longer produces men and women of sufficient character to withstand its allure, including among republicans as well.
There will always be statists and marxists like Holder who view our authority delegated to them as merely a means to impose their will upon others. But there will also always be a remnant who understand real hope. Divine purpose, careful study, and hard determination go a long way towards rebuilding our culture and the hearts of our children.
Salt and Light.
We no longer have a government, we have an administrative state. They are two different things. A government is organic and responsible to The People. The administrative state expects The People to be responsive to it. Government asks "what must we do to best serve the interests of The People, and does the Constitution permit what we propose?" The administrative state asks "what must The People do to serve the interests of the state, and how can we bend the Constitution to those ends?"
The men who threw the Crown's tea into Boston Harbor would have never understood as legitimate the rationale behind Obamacare.
In the era of the administrative state, is the ballot box enough to force a return to Constitutional government? I certainly hope so, but I am prepared if it is not. You mention divine purpose and careful study. I absolutely agree with you. Those things are necessary. But in a culture this heavily sexualized and hedonistic, and with a purposefully dumbed-down education system which produces people who are historically and civically illiterate, can WE reverse the downward spiral of society which is both the cause and the result of an administrative state? I do not thing WE can.
I do think God can. As a Christian, I have to turn to Biblical scripture; and scripture tells me that God is in control, and we are not. The Bible is replete with stories of faithful remnants, but it is not replete with stories of faithful remnants who lived to see Him restore righteousness. People in the Church are often fond of quoting 2 Chronicles 7:14.....
....but they forget that this was not a prophesy for a future United States of America. It was a statement by God to Solomon, for Solomon, concerning Israel, during Solomon's reign. What happened as soon as Solomon died? Israel forgot everything and descended into division and chaos. There may be a lesson in it for us, but it is not a prophesy for us. WE — the people of the United States — are not God's Chosen People.......and yet, so long as we benefitted from the blessings of liberty, it certainly seemed like we were. This nation has been singularly blessed.......and historically, it has been a blessing to other nations/peoples.if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
We were blessed because we understood and hewed to the principles of Liberty. So long as we had government which understood and protected those liberty principles, we continued to have blessings and to bless others. That government is dead, replaced by the administrative state. We elect people, and what do they do? They become administrators. Even the ones who we thought would be better than that. Anybody want the evidence? It's right there in front of our noses.
When was the last time that Congress passed a law—any law—in which Congress decided the details of how the law would be administered? Decades ago, maybe? What happens today is that Congress passes a law mandating "X" and then leaves it to the bureaucracy which will manage "X" to determine the actual regulations of how it will be enforced. In other words, Congress, waving its collective royal scepter, says (for example) "we need to reduce carbon emissions by 50% over the next 10 years". They call it something like "the Carbon Reduction and Pollution Act" and pat themselves on the back about having "sent a message" to the polluters. The CRAP Act goes to the President's desk—who has promised all the eco-terrorist groups who raised money for his election that he would take down the coal industry—who gleefully signs it and turns it over to the EPA (which is filled with people HE appointed) to determine what the objectives are and also how they will be enforced. Then the EPA, engorged by its new mandate, requests and gets funding for an EPA SWAT team so that it can raid dairy farms for CRAP Act violations.
THAT is how Congress works. It passes a "law", willy-nilly, and then it completely abdicates responsibility for that law's actual regulations and enforcement. Worse yet, it is a law that will personally affect members of Congress, they then exempt themselves from that law (Obamacare). THAT is not governance. THAT is administration. Pass a law, turn it over to the administrators to decide exactly what the law contains. Pass it, to find out what's in it.
Republicans and democrats are both guilty.
So, can The People turn this around? Yes........maybe, but not likely, and certainly not in my remaining years. God is in control of all of it, and that is what I take my comfort in. But The People are too stupid, ignorant, entitled, and indolent to change. That too is a product of the administrative state. You have an uphill battle, my friend. You can't have a return to true governance without a complete reeducation of the population, in a system where the administrative state controls the education system and has a vested interest in promoting administration over government, and which said system controls the "education" of the vast majority of students. I hesitate to call them "students", since most are merely time-servers and don't study anything because they have the intellectual curiosity of a gnat. So we do not produce people who are worthy of or even understand the blessings of liberty. These cattle love the administrative state, and they want more of it.
