Observations©
By Don Coakley
Last week my column extolled the beauty of our Eagle Watch community and how that beauty brings solace to one’s mind and soul. I suppose we all wish life’s problems could be resolved so simply; by looking out over the fairway of a golf course into a distant mountain range. But we also know life’s challenges cannot be solved so easily. After all life is a proving time, as Moses told the Israelites, after their 40 year sojourn in their wilderness, “to humble thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.” Deut 8:2
Reality is quickly restored while reading the newspaper headlines or watching the local, national or world news on TV or on the web. One such headline in today’s Tribune read: “Fed chief: Recovery close to faltering.” With a faltering economy despair can easily set in, testing one’s faith to its limits. And despair is heightened when a job or home is lost.
Some even ask: how did America become so badly divided or what has caused America’s economy to falter? The answer, for me, is easy: America lost its way when it rejected the source of all liberty and freedom – Jefferson’s Creator and Supreme Judge of the world, and the Old Testaments “perfect laws of liberty,” as the apostle James referred to them in James 1:25. Since the New Testament had yet to be assembled it is obvious that James was referring to both the spiritual laws (Ten Commandments) and the temporal laws Jehovah gave to Moses on Mt. Sinai anciently, laws the Founders referred to often as they drafted the Constitution in 1787 and the Bill of Rights ratified in 1791. These are the same laws Jefferson was referring to when he drafted the Declaration of Independence in 1776 strongly implying America’s moral laws were based on “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
If one listens to today’s divisive rhetoric one often hears the phrase “class warfare.” The use of ‘class welfare’ as a political weapon began in the early 1900s with the phrase “Soak the Rich.” The progressives continue to use this very powerful but divisive slogan to solidify their political base, generally the poor. This political slogan plays to mankind’s ‘envy’ effectively. Another political tool successfully being used is political correctness as progressives attempt to destroy any who disagree with their efforts to ‘fundamentally change’ America’s capitalistic society, a society that has brought individual liberty and wealth to more people than any other form of government on earth.
‘Generational warfare’ is a new phrase now being used to divide the older generations from the younger generations. Political warfare at its worst! These divisive terms are being used to further divide an already badly divided America hoping it will falter into chaos.
Last week I asked what form of government my great grandchildren would be living under in 2084. Perhaps I should have asked what form of government we, the living today, will live under after November 2012. That form of government will depend on the American people and who they choose to lead them after 2012. If America falters, as Fed Chief Ben Bernanke is suggesting, and allows America’s constitutional form of government to be destroyed and replaced with the socialistic one-world-government now being advocated by progressives the American way of life, as Americans have known it for 235 years will vanish. And Americans may find themselves in the situation the Israelites found themselves in anciently before they cried unto the Lord to free them from a tyrannical Pharaoh – slaves of the Pharaoh.
And that situation may be best described in a book published by the conservative economist Friedrich A. Hayek in 1944 titled “The Road to Serfdom.” This is a book that every American concerned about their future and the future of their children – and grandchildren – should read. An abridged edition of the book was sent to me by the Heritage Foundation and can be obtained by Googling www.heritage.org.
Quoting Alexis de Tocqueville, Hayek wrote these sobering words: “Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” Sobering indeed!
Recently I wrote: “Learning requires not only effort, but desire. And without desiring to learn and making the effort to learn, one will wander in the wilderness of ignorance and often end up slaves to their own ignorance.”
Know that socialism enslaves.
To review previous Observation issues go to www.proclaimingliberty.us