We have addressed what our nation’s Founders considered the three biggest threats to the Republic, which have now taken us over:
1. Judicial tyranny
2. The people learning that they could vote for the resources of the
treasury themselves
3. Losing the religion and morality necessary for a people to govern
themselves
We cannot just blame others for this when “we the people” are the sovereign; if it happened, we allowed it. When darkness increases, Christians must take a share of the blame for not being the light they are called to be. Evil only prevails because the good allows it. If we are going to recover from this devastating apostasy, “we the people” must do it. The encouraging thing is that “we the people” can do it.
We know that no government of man in this age will be perfect. Even the best can have major flaws. Yet, it could be argued that the American Republic has been the best and most effective form of government the world has ever seen. It provided the greatest liberty and the greatest prosperity. When we alone possessed nuclear weapons and could have dictated policy to the world, we did not. Instead we used our strength and prosperity to rebuild the nations devastated by the most deadly and destructive war in history, and we even helped to rebuild the nations of our enemies.
For all of our problems and failures, there has never been a nation as noble and good as America in many basic ways. We must not forget this. Even though much that is honorable has been lost in recent times, we must always be thankful for and honor the remarkable fathers and mothers that built this nation as well as they did. Still, we also must address the failures and press on to become all that we are called to be: a nation where there is true LIBERTY and justice for all.
We are still the most powerful nation on earth economically and militarily. Even so, we are tottering on the edge of a critical mass of internal rage that could be more devastating than all our previous conflicts combined. Yet, this madness can be confronted and won over in a way that the ultimate evils of the human heart are overcome. By this we can rise to even greater heights in the future.
We are told in I Corinthians 11:31 that if we judge ourselves rightly we won’t have to be judged. The Lord said that we could fall on The Rock and be broken, or it would fall on us and crush us into powder. So the easy way out is to judge ourselves and correct our problems. Unfortunately, addressing issues before they reach crisis level is rarely politically expedient in democratic forms of government. Waiting until the point of crisis usually puts us in a far more dangerous, and costly, position. How can this be changed?
A national hypocrisy allowed for the diabolical sins of slavery and discrimination, and we tried to justify them with some of the wickedest beliefs ever written into law. These were encoded by Supreme Court decisions like Dred Scott, which claimed that black people were not people at all, but rather property. Hypocrisy leads to this kind of demented thinking. To be free of this darkness we must confront all remaining traces of our national sin and hypocrisy, confess it, correct its unjust consequences, and restore the people hurt by it.
This is not to negate the great progress against discrimination and injustice already made by our country, but we must resolve that the job is not done as long as any prejudice is left in our land. Even small amounts that are disregarded grow into huge problems. The Constitution provided for all such issues to be addressed and overcome in a brilliant way. Yet, disregard for the Constitution left us without that option until it is restored as the Supreme Law of the Land. So what is the constitutional way such issues are to be addressed?
All authority not specifically given to the federal government in the Constitution was reserved for the states and the people. An argument against this is that it was improbable that the Southern states would have abolished slavery on their own. A better argument would be that if the federal government had not immediately deviated from the Constitution, slavery could never have happened in America in the first place. States that did not hold to the basic reason given for seeking independence—that “all men are created equal”—could not have been a part of the United States.
Slavery was allowed and sustained because a decision was made to allow it based on political expediency rather than what was right. To a large degree, the evil that continues to grow in our land does so because our leaders still make decisions based on what is politically expedient.
There is a difference between a politician and a leader, and our country was designed to be led by leaders. Our Republic will not work if run by a political class that makes decisions based on what is politically expedient rather than what is right, as a true leader would.