I don’t always agree with Pat Buchanan – while there may be things that make the head go up and down, much of it is more of a shoulder shrug and click onto the next thing. This piece about Oath Keepers, not so fast. What cornered my attention was this from near the end of his writing:
In their lifetimes, they have seen their Christian faith purged from schools their taxes paid for, and mocked in movies and on TV. They have seen their factories shuttered in the thousands and their jobs outsourced in the millions to Mexico and China. They have seen trillions of tax dollars go for Great Society programs, but have seen no Great Society, only rising crime, illegitimacy, drug use and dropout rates.
They watch on cable TV as illegal aliens walk into their country, are rewarded with free educations and health care, and take jobs at lower pay than American families can live on — then carry Mexican flags in American cities and demand U.S. citizenship.
They see Wall Street banks bailed out as they sweat their next paycheck, then read that bank profits are soaring, and the big bonuses for the brilliant bankers are back. Neither they nor their kids ever benefited from affirmative action, unlike Barack and Michelle Obama.
They see a government in Washington that cannot balance its books, win our wars or protect our borders. The government shovels out trillions to Fortune 500 corporations and banks to rescue the country from a crisis created by the government and Fortune 500 corporations and banks.
America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.
Pat is right. Much of what I was taught and have believed in seems like just so much Alice in Wonderland pixie dust – what was once believed to be good:
- telling the truth
- stay in school, get a degree
- working hard
- protect my family and that being a father and husband does not mean being a continual target of ridicule on tv
- be nice
- pay my taxes
- patriotism is an "always" attitude and not based on what party is in power
- having a high regard for our laws and measuring them against the Constitution
- having a moral code based on the Bible is a good thing
- freedom of speech should not be limited by someone’s notion of political correctness
- that our press reports the news instead of ideological slants
I could go on and on – that that’s the point – that I could. What is up is now down, what used to be right is either wrong or made sport of. There used to be societal norms – now, anything goes. Self-responsibility from an internal "governor" has been replaced by a society that tells us that "bad decisions should no longer have bad outcomes". Government used to be "in the background"; now its shadow overstretches above us all. A common sense of decency and morality has been supplanted by a sense of "anything goes – and how DARE you criticize me for my lifestyle or my choices" (even as I may have to pay, in some way, for someone else’s bad decisions.
And an ever increasing sense of entitlement from others in society: Society owes me something; YOU owe ME (even as I have done nothing wrong).
A storm is brewing – and make no mistake – there will be strong gales, lightning, and huge waves.
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