So, what would our Founding Fathers want us to do? Remember, they put their lives on the line to receive freedom from King George III. Did they seek power and money after beating the greatest military force in the world? No, they ultimately set up the U.S. Constitution to make a political statement that the power should be in the hands of the people. Let’s make 2024 the year of reason over madness and then, God willing, we can reaffirm the hope of those 55 men in Philadelphia in 1787 who gave us the wonderful gift of good government.
The gates of freedom cannot go unattended without suffering dire consequences. Plato said over 2000 years ago, that democracies pass into despotism. After 240 years of a successful Constitutional Republic, the question is whether our democracy is threatened by a fall into that despotism? Look around, the evidence is mounting. Is the weight of the political mess we are currently in about to crush us politically? Maybe! We must call upon reason and the behavior of righteous indignation to save our country from chaos. Good government must be held together by knowledge, constant attention to the rule of law and never surrendering to indifference.
We seem ensnared by those who have taken truth and reduced it to just another political opinion. Self-serving powerful people, malcontents as it were, are adopting conspiracy theories that discount truth and replace it with deception. Let’s not allow it.
Ex-President Donald Trump now sells himself as a victim of the Department of Justice and state prosecutors. To sustain his defenses, he garners millions and millions of dollars from others to defend himself from all of his legal troubles. None of this money that he receives is shared with any other Republican candidates. It seems to me Mr. Trump responds to his many legal problems by his overwhelming protests. “He doth protest too much!” He responds to every single accusation as a conspiracy requiring base and hostile reactions. We must examine this question: is every judge, is every prosecutor, is every witness against him, deserving of his rank hostility? He lacks any calm or considered response. We are witnessing a self-appointed potentate who has decided without a legal foundation that his accusations of fraud in the 2020 election were true, just because he said they were. Facts and evidence to substantiate his premise are nowhere to be found, but so what? Over 60% of his followers believe him no matter what he says.
Remember, a large percent of the voting public believed Donald Trump when he concocted a weird story suggesting Barack Obama was born in Africa, not in Hawaii. So, the pattern continues. Lie, exaggerate, and do it repeatedly with gusto. Then you assert retribution on those who may regret having fallen for the baloney and the sometimes-comical assertions.
As self-declared potentates, autocrats feel empowered to despise all detractors by any means at their disposal. Foul lines, umpires, referees, all judges, the FBI, and the Department of Justice are for others of us to abide in, but not for him. He feels he can intimidate all of the above, not by facts and evidence, but by delay, huff and puff, and continual attempts at burying all truths about him. And of course, these truths are provided by enemies, not just folks doing their duty in seeking justice. The rules of the dictator provide for all answers to be his. Lies, intimidation, conspiracy theories, are all the bullets required to load into your loud method of speaking out. Dictators have no fear of a just God, the judgment of history, or the loss of their reputation and good name. Power and money are the coin of the realm, nothing else.
So, what about us who honor pledges and oaths? What about those of us who respect the words of our Founding Fathers and that one of a kind document: the U.S. Constitution and our valued flag? Mr. Trump once suggested, all of those G.I.s in World War II that gave their lives for freedom were suckers. So who does he respect? Tax cheats, among others. It’s the millionaires and billionaires that earn respect by often demeaning the business environment that made them rich. So now what do they want? Fewer taxes, fewer regulations and politicians that beg them for financial support. Is this the truth about all the wealthy? Certainly not all, but many were given handsome tax breaks by the then President Donald Trump.
So, what would our Founding Fathers want us to do? Remember, they put their lives on the line to receive freedom from King George III. Did they seek power and money after beating the greatest military force in the world? No, they ultimately set up the U.S. Constitution to make a political statement that the power should be in the hands of the people. Let’s make 2024 the year of reason over madness and then, God willing, we can reaffirm the hope of those 55 men in Philadelphia in 1787 who gave us the wonderful gift of good government. Let’s continue to abide in their hopes that what they gave us would last more than 240 years.
Let all good men and women of vision and imagination, take up the mantle of freedom and protect it for their children and the children following. We can do it through love of country and our flag.
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