The American Muse

You know that it is. You can see it all around you. Across the world, Western countries founded upon the principles of Enlightenment, Natural Law, and Judeo-Christian values are committing suicide.  They have stopped having children in sufficient numbers to replace their population or outright abort them in the millions.  They have left their borders undefended and are overrun with migrants who don’t or won’t hold their values. Since I am an American, I will focus on the United States where over 50 years of cultural Marxism in its most virulent forms–multiculturalism, identity politics, critical race theory, etc–has been successful in dividing us into aggrieved groups and pitting us against one another–Red-Blue, White-Black, Male-Female, Conservative-Liberal, Republican-Democrat, and on and on. There is no going back.  As Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.”

So if we can’t go back, how do we go forward. There is only one path, because it’s not about race, it’s about reason. We must completely re-invigorate the principles that were the foundation of our Western civilization under the rule of law. Not merely ruling by laws made by men, but the rule of law that is consistently applied to all regardless of person. Let me offer you just a few of the real “rights” we once agreed upon:

• You have a right to life and to defend it
• You have a right to liberty–freedom from oppressive government
• You have a right to property
• You have a right to freedom of religion
• You have a right to freedom of conscience
• You have a right to freely associate
• You have a right to freedom of speech

These are just a few.  You will notice that food, clothing, shelter, education, jobs or health care are not among them, because they are end products which people produce, not rights that we inherently possess. So many focus on the Constitution in the United States–I believe intentionally–but rarely mention the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution is the “how” for our form of government, but the Declaration is the “why”–which we have forgotten at our peril. Read the opening slowly and take in anew the essence of what it says in three short paragraphs:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed,

Many today scoff at the brilliant vision the founders penned because they purposely focus on the fallible men who wrote it, and not the stupendous vision of what they wrote. It was unique, even exceptional. The culmination of thousands of years of human history. And how do we now remember them? We tear down their effigies and rename the buildings and streets because they were mortal men. Expunging their visages, naively believing that their words will remain. I can only hope and pray that the sunlight of freedom has not yet set beyond the horizon of our modern understanding.