America Returns to the Rumblings of the 1840s

I hear a great deal of concern expressed about our nation being in decline; as for me, I am optimistic, because the American people are good and always meet every challenge.
We are a very young nation; I remember sitting on the knee of my grandfather who was born 68 years after Washington died, and two years after Lincoln was shot. I believe that young nations, like young people, tend to temporarily wander from their upbringing for a time, but after a while come to see the merit of their parents’ (Founding Fathers’) instruction.
Before long they not only return to their roots, but also instruct their children to do likewise. I see this happening in America. To illustrate my point, our son-in-law, Keith, invited me to attend a Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington recently; the speakers there were stressing the value of the teachings of our Founding Fathers.
I expected to see predominately gray-hairs in attendance, but I was wrong. Sixty percent of the 10,000 there were age 22 and under, from college campuses around the nation. The organizers said that this conference could not have come together without the hard work of all these students.
America’s strength is built upon the self-reliance of her people. The role of government is limited, as outlined in our Constitution. The foundation of government is the people themselves. We have wandered from this. In our tendency to be trusting, we have lost sight of the dark side of human nature and the necessity of working to maintain a government of, for and by the people. Instead, we have allowed government to morph in great measure into a clique of professional politicians.
So why isn’t our national government serving us as it used to? Why increasingly has it forgotten that it is about public service, not self-service? It is simple; it is the base nature of man to be selfish and to enjoy power and prestige; further, the more of it he tastes, the more of it he wants.
In the past, there were two forces, which worked to assist our representatives from becoming drunk on this power.
One, our representatives were exactly that: Representatives. They lived ordinary lives among the rest of us, and went off to Congress for a limited number of years, carrying our wishes with them. Before they lost touch and became drunk on the dark side of power, which is present in every man, someone else replaced him.
The second was the virtually universally accepted religious foundation of our nation. George Washington said:
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”
And Founding Father and President John Adams explained it this way:
“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Just as storm clouds were gathering over our nation in the 1840s which lead to our Civil War in the 1860s, we again have storm clouds gathering over our nation, to the same ultimate issue: the preservation of the most successful nation ever to inhabit the earth.
What we enjoy came at a huge price in blood and suffering over more than two centuries, and our freedom will never cease to extract that toll. Just as prior generations have paid, we and our children must and will also pay.
Abraham Lincoln spoke well to the task Americans faced then and face now when he said:
“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Art Hall, publisher