Today we see the results of years and years of secularist attacks on religion. There has been a denial of eternal truths and the exclusion of religion and morality from public life. But here’s the rub. You can’t have the freedom to peaceably assemble for a redress of grievances. Not unless you have morality.
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Morality is what restrains us from destroying public and private property or looting and pillaging. The line from chaos to tyranny is shorter than we knew and admit. We must have a shared conviction there is such a thing as objective “truth.” Without this commonality, we fight for individual, tribal, and the utterly subjective “my truth.” The world devolves to your narrative versus my narrative.
There is only one way to declare a winner under the latter scenario: power. This is the source of the ever-increasing vitriolic rancor of our elections. We are not judging ideas objectively true or false. Results are not the measure through which we judge policy value. Everything has become the “oppressed” versus the “oppressor. ”
The truth shall set you free
The competitive marketplace of ideas where there is an honest debate by those who aspire to serve their fellow men faces destruction. America more closely resembles a poor player. At this point, we strut and fret our hour upon the stage and are heard no more. “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
For over two centuries, America has been the exception to the rule of history. America’s foundation rests on the truth that freedom and morality have inextricable links. It is the philosophical difference between the foundation and results of the American Revolution and the revolution in France. If we are to keep this republic, we must remain exceptional.
De Tocqueville told Americans we are great because we are good. If we ever ceased to be good we would cease to be great. Centuries before de Tocqueville, the source of that goodness put it plainly for all humanity. “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
