The Case For Americanism

#546

Still considered America's greatest movie, Citizen Kane, the work of Orson Welles. Welles later decided he wanted to do a movie on Christ, “The Life Of Christ. He wanted to put it in to “today's” idioms, the Pharisees, Sadducees, dressed in modern clothes...suits, sport coats, today's language, aphorisms, subjective behavior. He had the same idea as most gnostics that today's culture can only understand anything if in the vernacular, that the prophets and traditions of old do not have historical merit. From ancient natural law, until the present, the nature of man has not changed. David Rockefeller, in his 1978 biography said, “some men are born to rule but most are born to be ruled”.




I have traveled the world, God wanted me to see the world (8 round the world trips, passport stamped in 157 countries) The most unhappy people are those under the rule of tyrants...Communist authoritarian control, police state tyranny. People who have liberty, freedom to work and play, freedom to raise their children as they see fit, freedom to act responsible with whatever opportunity is provided, freedom to speak and dress within the parameters of decency...these are the happy people. Among the “ruled” those whose essence of personality has been squashed, you seldom see a smile.




I went up to the border of Angola, they would not let me in. The people had been subjected to a 27 year civil war. My guide, who had been there, told me he did not see one undamaged building, one smile, even from a child, in the entire country. I went up to the border of Lebanon, they would not let me in. Lebanon, the Switzerland of North Africa, where I am told, because of the conflict involved, the people are in a state of complete destitution. Human beings, without hope...vacant the grace of God...can resort to the behavior of the lower animals in the species.




Our fore-bearers who landed on the New England shores, puritans from the royalty of England, even those enslaved in Africa by their fellow man and sold in the most despicable commerce, the slave trade, all were happy in the freedom of America.




Those of us born in the poverty of America, taking advantage of what had been given to us, were happy just for opportunity. We are glad to take on the well worn mantra of individual responsibility. Until recently, we did not need government telling us what to do and how to do it. It has been the individuality, the unrestricted opportunity, which has made America great.




I remember, as if yesterday, the small country school which I attended for 12 years, I was in a graduating class of 13, the principle said one day to the seven boys in my class, “you can be anything you want to be, you are Americans”. And so it was. I look at the picture of the graduating class, each boy and girl prospered in his own way, undaunted, unlimited, uncontrolled by the state or federal governments.




The greatest migration known to man, the migration from Europe to America...Irish, Italians, Polls, Chinese, Philippinos etc. all seeking “land of the free and home of the brave”, and, in my lifetime, riding the waves from Cuba, risking rape and robbery from Mexico all with Patrick Henry's dictum still in mind, as he said in Saint Johns Church in Richmond, “give me liberty or give me death”.




You would never convince the thousands of young Americans who lie buried in military cemeteries around the world that modern America has turned into the cauldron of political mishmash that it has. The early pioneers would have used their muskets to defend their homes and families against foreign invasion...illegal migrants, illegal drugs, illegal pornography, illegal killing through abortion and euthanasia, illegal sexual acts...many of these things sanctioned by one political party and even some church.




Modern day America was a dream in the hearts of the founding fathers. It became an image in the eyes of the early victors of commerce and academia. It became despised by the ne'er do wells who confused success with bigotry.




There was a time we would laugh with Bob Hope, when at the age 80, he said, “I must keep working, I have a government to support”. We smiled when Kate Smith sang God Bless America. Our flags came out on holidays. When a decorated veteran entered the room, everyone stood. Our greatest heroes, the mothers and fathers who produced the doctors, lawyers, teachers, firemen, were always honored...it did not have to be a special day.




Americanism is a state of mind. When you open the Bible you read the mind of God. America was in God's mind from the beginning of the universe.