USA 2020 Elections: Thread

[grarpamp]

It doesn't help that the usual Socialism, Political Bullshit, Corrupt
Fraudulent Politicians have always been a depressing mess wherever
whenever and however tried time and again.



Has America Lost Its Faith?
Authored by Pat Buchanan

Here we are on the day of joy set aside for celebrating the birth of
Christ who came down to earth 2,000 years ago to show mankind the way
to eternal salvation.

Yet, the present mood of America at Christmas 2021 seems better
captured by Jimmy Carter in his “malaise speech” in July of 1979,
several days before he cashiered half of his Cabinet.

    “The threat” to America, said Carter, “is a crisis of confidence.
It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of
our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about
the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for
our nation.”

Carter’s speech, reflecting the mood of the nation, was initially well
received. But when his dirge became contrasted with the optimism about
America of Ronald Reagan, Carter was sent packing. He lost 44 states.

The malaise speech came to mind while perusing the latest polls about
how Americans feel about the institutions and the individuals who are
directing the course of the world’s greatest democratic republic.

Of President Joe Biden’s performance, the Economist, Politico and
Rasmussen are all posting approval ratings, not yet a year into
Biden’s term, that have sunk to 43 and 42%.

While nearly half of Americans approved of the job the Supreme Court
was doing last July, Gallup finds that that figure has now plunged to
an all-time low for the high court of 40%.

How many Americans approve of the job Congress is doing?

One in seven Americans, 14%. Two out of every three Americans, 63%,
disapprove of Congress’s performance, a 49-point gap.

Is America on the “right track” under the new administration?

According to the Economist and Politico polls, 63% of the nation
answers, “No.” In the Economist poll, only one in four Americans, 26%,
said their country was on the right track.

These polls raise some fundamental follow-on questions:

How long can a democracy endure if it continues to generate such
sweeping rejection from the people in whose name it purports to act?

How long before the American people, who consistently show a lack of
confidence in the popular branch of government and in the course in
which it is steering the nation, begin to lose confidence in the
democratic system itself?

If democracy is continuously perceived as failing, can it survive?

Clearly, among the reasons for our present division and national
malaise is that we have lost the great animating cause earlier
generations had: the Cold War.

Americans have found no substitute cause to replace the Cold War and
no substitute adversary like the late Soviet Empire.

George H.W. Bush’s “New World Order” excited only the elites. George
W. Bush’s crusade for democracy did not survive the Afghan and Iraq
forever wars he launched in its name.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s “rules-based order” will suffer
the same fate.

And even as we are losing faith in the democratic institutions and
individuals who run them, Americans seem, too, to be losing faith in
the faith of their fathers as well.

Woodrow Wilson, in his campaign for president, declared:

    “America was born a Christian nation. America was born to
exemplify that devotion to the tenets of righteousness which are
derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.”

Harry Truman wrote to Pope Pius XII in 1947, “This is a Christian
nation.” He did not mean we had an official religion or established
church. He meant what he said to a conference of attorneys general in
1950:

    “The fundamental basis of this nation’s law was given to Moses on
the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the
teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and
St. Paul. … If we don’t have the proper fundamental moral background,
we will finally wind up with a totalitarian government which does not
believe in rights for anybody except the State.”

What Truman was saying was consistent with what Thomas Jefferson was
saying when he wrote:

    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men.”

On April 6, 2009, Barack Obama, speaking in Turkey, declared that the
United States no longer regarded itself as a Christian nation:
“Although we have a very large Christian population, we do not
consider ourselves a Christian nation.”

But Obama’s assertion also raises a follow-up question:

    If we were a Christian nation under Wilson and Truman, when
exactly did America cease to be a Christian nation?

    And is there a causal connection, a correlation between the loss
of faith in Christianity among our people and the loss of faith in
democracy?

    And is the loss of faith in both reversible — or inexorable?

Merry Christmas!