The Election of Trump and the Left's Fears

Anyone living in the United States over the past several generations can tell you that the American people have become increasingly divided in their political outlooks.  It would seem now that those divisions are so diametrically opposed as to be irreconcilable.  That, perhaps, is one dark path (or is that two dark paths which diverged from each other?) that we may very well continue to travel down.  There has always been a progressive/conservative divide in the nation, particularly since the turn of the 20^th century.  That divide, with the election of Donald Trump as the 45^th President of the United States, seems to be widening into an impassable chasm.  Even loving members of my own family are at nasty odds with each other over this outcome.  (As a disclaimer, I did not vote for either egregious candidate of Clinton or Trump.)

I noticed from the evening news that the Left has taken to the streets in protest in many cities last night decrying the election of Trump.  They have tried to subtly or not so subtly shame anyone that voted or supported the policies of Trump and the Right.  Some have vowed social unrest and civil disobedience even.  They are fearful what the future holds for them in our country.

I get it. 

I too was afraid and deeply troubled when President Obama was elected in 2008 and then inexplicably re-elected in 2012.  I had done enough research prior to his first election to know that Obama was not whom he portrayed himself to be.   Sadly, I was correct.  That said, despite my disdain for identity politics, I was at least hopeful that our first black president would be able to further improve already-healing race relations amongst our citizenry.  Instead, President Obama squandered this opportunity and only inflamed race relations.  He did everything to replace one “oppressed” group with another.  The good will instilled in him by all Americans with his election was wasted. 

Ironically Trump has now won on the backs of millions of white working-class families that had previously voted for Obama.  And yet, the intolerant among the Left such as Van Jones claim that Trump’s election was a “white-lash” against a black president.  If one voted for Obama and then subsequently voted for Trump, that would seem to me to negate the facetious charge of racism.  Indeed, higher numbers of Black and Hispanic Americans voted for Trump than had previously voted for Romney in 2012.  Could it possibly be that Americans voted for Trump over Clinton because of choices in policies?

President Obama ran roughshod over the Constitution and governed by executive order when he could not move his agenda forward by congressional legislation.  Further, when existing laws ran contrary to his agenda, such as the Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by Bill Clinton, he simply refused to enforce them as per his constitutionally sworn duty.  Indeed, he often championed the overturning of such laws by the courts when he could not get the peoples' representatives in congress to do his will.

Along the way, many of our constitutional rights were eroded, if not fully curtailed.  Business owners were challenged in court for practicing their religious principles, many to their financial ruin.  Our right to be secure in our persons and papers unless a warrant was issued was fully violated.  The tenth amendment guaranteeing States the power to do all that was not explicitly stated as duties of the federal government became a laughing stock.  Federal grants of funds were threatened to be withheld for education etc. if States did not comply with executive branch mandates to provide transgender bathrooms and privileges.  And the right to LIFE, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as stated in our founding document as a nation, was wholly undermined with the pernicious HHS mandate requiring even religiously affiliated schools, hospitals etc. to provide abortifacients to their employees via health insurance, even when it was against their freedom to exercise their religions as they had so chosen.  Even a half a billion dollars a year in tax-payer's dollars was given to fund the Planned Parenthood abortion clinics throughout the country.

Hillary Clinton would have simply continued President Obama’s failed and morally egregious policies and further restricted our constitutional rights.  She would have continued down the path of anemic economic policies and continued to put herself above the rule of law, all the while enriching her cronies and herself. 

The Left fears that all of these “gains” for their various constituency groups that they have garnered under Obama’s tenure will be rolled back or stripped away once again.  Where these gains conflict with constitutional rights intended for all Americans, I say that they absolutely should be eradicated. 

That is not to say that we should be hostile to our LGBTQ brothers and sisters and those that are fearful on the left.  Indeed this country was not founded on “tolerance” but rather on freedom and respect.  Freedom though is not in the doing of anything we want, but rather on the ability to choose to do what we ought.  We ought to be respectful of one another, even when we disagree.

To the Left, tolerance is a virtue.  It isn’t.  Further, their idea of tolerance only applies to those that agree with their notions.  Disagreement with their “enlightened” view will certainly NOT be tolerated by them.  Respect must be afforded to all Americans by each of us, Left and Right, and especially with those with whom we disagree on political and social issues. 

Nobody is going to come and lock up law abiding Muslim or Hispanic Americans.  Nobody is going to insist that gay people must live their lives back in the closet, which is ironic since many on the Left want religious people to only live their faith behind closed doors and not in the public square. 

We are a wonderful nation composed of myriads of people and their differing views.  We will never all agree with one another, nor should we.  We should continue to state, challenge, and live our views and convictions.  The debate of ideas is how we come to find that which is the best amongst us.  Denigrating and condescending towards those with whom we disagree will only invite more of the same in return.

I lived through eight years of what many Americans considered to be very destructive policies emplaced by President Obama.  All of my friends and family on the Left that are fearful of Trump’s presidency need to take heart.  You too will survive, and even though I have serious doubts about President-elect Trump in many regards, my hopes and fervent prayers are that the country will be better off four years from now.  I tried to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt at the beginning of his first term in office.  Perhaps we all should try to do the same with Mr. Trump.  In the meantime, let’s remember that we are ALL Americans and thus we are all in this experiment in representative Democracy together.

Intolerant Tolerance

America as a nation has always had a federal government that recognized the necessity of not having a state religion to dictate to our elected leaders how we should be governed.  Our founders specifically did not want such a quasi-theocracy or state sponsored faith such as England had with its Anglican Church.  It is for this very reason that religious liberties were declared sacrosanct and yet required to be specifically set apart from the administration of our government via the very first amendment to our United States Constitution. 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Many of our progressive friends will point to Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists in which he spoke of a “separation of church and state” in the misguided assumption that Jefferson meant that faith should be kept private and never intrude into the public square.  Of course they often fail to realize that if that was Jefferson’s meaning, then it would follow that the converse of his statement must also be true; the state should be held separate so as not intrude upon the religious rights of the individual.  That said, the latter part of the statement, not the former, is indeed true and is specifically codified in the first amendment.

However, Jefferson and our founding fathers certainly did not intend for any mention of God or Jesus to be something uttered only behind the doors of the village church.  Indeed, from the very beginning of this nation, congress has ever started its opening session with prayer led by a government paid chaplain.  Indeed many of our founders and some of our greatest presidents and governmental leaders have waxed eloquently on the floor of the house, to gathered crowds of citizens, or in the bully pulpit of the presidency to the American citizenry about the necessity of some legislation, movement, or historical event by invoking God’s name.  Such are done as appeals to the very best of what is within each of us.

Even Thomas Jefferson when contemplating the evil institution of slavery in our young nation, despite being a slave owner himself, made just such an invocation:

“God who gave us life gave us liberty.  And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift from God?  That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?  Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever.”

Jefferson was proved correct about such justice being served when eighty years after having written that statement, our nation was plunged into a horrific and bloody civil war that nearly destroyed a country that was supposedly conceived in liberty, in order to right that evil.

I have had some discussions where I have been told that I and others of faith simply want to erect a theocracy to govern the United States.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I simply want OUR nation to be governed as per the original intentions of the Constitution and it amendments.  (I wouldn’t object to the repeal of the 16^th amendment though.)  Further, I want to be able to live my life and my faith freely without the government infringing upon that most basic of human rights.  I want to be able to mention or perhaps even pray to God in school, in my office, or at a city council meeting without someone immediately calling the ACLU because they were offended. 

We all need to be respectful and polite towards one another, particularly when we are from differing cultures, faith communities, or perhaps a lack thereof.  We also need to realize that tolerance is something that must work in both directions for a peaceful society to emerge and it is not merely something of which the left has the rhetorical high ground and a monopoly thereof.  Indeed, it is my observation that is often times those espousing the mantra of “tolerance” whom are the least tolerant of those people that believe and live their lives according to a Christian faith.  

While we believers don’t want the government to impose our beliefs on those that choose not to believe, so too do we not want progressives to impose their secular beliefs upon us through governmental mandate, fiat, or legislation in the guise of a very intolerant form of tolerance.  Further, such is our right to publicly exercise our faith without infringement as espoused in the first amendment and by our Founding Fathers’ intents, words, and, deeds.  Indeed it is a right that transcends human law.  Our desire to worship Him freely is a right kindled within our hearts by our Creator, and as such it can never be extinguished.

The Pseudo-Virtue of Tolerance

In this new progressive age in which we are living we are constantly lectured to by our leftist brothers and sisters about the absolute need for showing tolerance within our American society today.  Indeed, the necessity of practicing tolerance is preached from all levels of government, schools, social organizations, charities, and even some churches.  If one were to watch television for any prolonged sitting, it is a good bet that one would see a public service announcement stressing the need that we all act with tolerance towards one another.  Indeed, “tolerance” has been elevated to a virtuous level, or so it would seem. 

Now I understand the often altruistic intentions of many of those good folks that are decrying the need for tolerance in our society today, but unfortunately rather than improving society through our more tolerant actions, we seem to be debasing it often times and excusing actions and behaviors that used to be considered harmful, wrong, or sinful as just being part of the norm of everyday life now.  This sort of tolerance has defined deviancy down to the lowest common denominator often times.

Archbishop Charles Chaput formerly of the Denver Catholic Archdiocese and now of the Philadelphia Archdiocese is a brilliantly moral Christian man.  He also has a few critics because he is not one to bend Christian Catholic orthodoxy or doctrine, even if he were canonically allowed to do so, simply in appeasement to our new age demands to show greater “tolerance”.  Indeed Archbishop Chaput recently made a comment regarding this “tolerance trend” and put the non-virtue of tolerance into its proper perspective.  He stated,

“We need to remember that tolerance is not a Christian virtue. Charity, justice, mercy, prudence, honesty -- these are Christian virtues. And obviously, in a diverse community, tolerance is an important working principle. But it's never an end itself. In fact, tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of serious evil.”

What makes something a virtue?  Well, a virtue is something that when exercised is always for the truth and the doing of good.  Tolerance will sometimes fail to live up to that definition of virtuous behavior, if the very nature of something that is being tolerated is immoral or evil. 

Indeed, as a nation America has tolerated some great evils in its past regarding slavery and many of the actions towards our native American brothers and sisters, as some examples.  One can make the claim that many German citizens tolerated the initial abuses, for whatever myriads of reasons, in the rise of the Nazi Party and their systematic killing of the Jews.  Tolerance is not a virtue when the behavior one is tolerating is abhorrent, sinful, or evil.

The unfortunate irony of this call to tolerance is that often times those sometimes well-meaning folks espousing this pseudo-virtue are often the same ones showing a decided lack of tolerance towards those that disagree with their ideals or political agenda.  Indeed, one need only read the newspaper or turn on the nightly news to see myriads of examples of this intolerance coming from those that preach tolerance.

Often times our progressive friends will show contempt or disdain (certainly not tolerance) towards us conservatives and libertarians if we dare offer a contrary viewpoint on the veracity of anthropogenic global warming, gays in the military (or any LGBT issue), abortion, Christianity, radical Islam, evolution, just war, or government-compulsory wealth redistribution.  When it comes to many of these issues, to the typical progressive, their viewpoint is the “righteous” or humanistically moral one in their eyes, and thus they have no tolerance for those that would have the temerity to offer a differing opinion on the given subject at hand.  They are the moral, enlightened, and tolerant ones, you see.

So what then is the point of progressives espousing the need for all to be tolerant, even though they do not always practice what they are preaching?  Is it possible that there is something more behind this call for tolerance than simply a misguided altruistic attempt to get everyone to simply get along?  I am certain that many very good people have no other agenda than simply that aforementioned goal.  Unfortunately, I am also fairly certain that a not insignificant percentage of those tolerance-espousers are also trying to promulgate a more “tolerant society” that is in lock step with their political or world views.  In other words, they have an agenda.

This societal peer-pressured type of tolerance is seemingly being used more often as a form of control and censorship by the left in order to normalize what used to be unacceptable behaviors or ideals that were antithetical to American life.  The battle cry of “tolerance” thus becomes just another Saul Alinsky type of tool used to cow the timid conservative or the introverted libertarian into accepting what our western culture used to define as wrong, immoral, and in some cases just plain evil. 

It is my belief that we should all indeed strive to get along and love one another as we love ourselves, because every last one of us is indeed a sinner.  That said, when tolerance becomes a code word for cowing those from speaking out against what they know to be wrong simply to get along, our society will only continue to further slouch towards Gomorrah.