Wackos!

How wonderful would it be if we could put AOC and her “Squad” in a room with Jack Webb? A review of this 1965 Dragnet clip (click here) will remind you that the US has dealt with wackos forever. Of course, now that you have watched Jack Webb in action, you are probably marveling that Hollywood could ever have aired a show where the lead actor spoke with such common sense!

I have been writing this blog for over ten years. I started out of a sense of frustration over how far left our country was leaning. The leftward lean over the past decade is not without precedent. In the late 19th century, we had Samuel Gompers and William Jennings Bryan radically trying to  push us left. Even though FDR was an aristocrat, he began the now nearly century long tradition of limousine liberals in power. Another way of saying that is that we have been hammered for nearly a hundred years by wealthy liberals who have enough money to not worry about the devastating impact their own policies would have on themselves!

What we have witnessed over the past decade is new to the extent that academics,  people of color, and others with varying  cultural and religious backgrounds have been elected to office and are using the bully pulpit to sow seeds of discontent. I don’t doubt that Barack and Michelle Obama believe there continues to be racial injustice in the United States. And I don’t doubt that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Congresswoman Ilhan Omar believe everything they say. The problem is not Donald Trump. (Well, he may have problems but we are not here to discuss them in the context of this blog.) The problem lies with what is manifesting itself as a detestation of all things American. 

The red meat rhetoric of the Trump rallies doesn’t help anyone. “Send her back” makes no sense. Back to where? Michigan? The Bronx? These elected officials are Americans. What we should be discussing is how have we arrived at a place where these same elected officials do not like our country, and are dead-set on changing it forever. To this end, President Trump has every right to challenge them. Leave the personal attacks out of it. The 2020 election should be about the contrasting (and competing) visions for the future of the United States. Let there be no mistake. The stakes could not be any bigger.

As Jack Webb says in what is now a fifty year old video, “Don’t try to build a new country. Make the old one work. It has for over 400 years.” Folks, therein lies the difference. The progressive left sees nothing redeeming in our history. The United States is the greatest, most successful social and government experiment in human history. Warts and all, we have demonstrated for centuries that rising tides really do lift all boats. Free markets, entrepreneurs, and minimal government interference breed and compound success. Yet the left will not grant an iota of recognition to the facts staring it in the face. The new left sees absolutely nothing redeeming about our amazing history. Thus the insidious efforts to revise our history books and teach our children a US history built on guilt. Thus the destruction and removal of countless statues remembering and documenting our past. Thus poor ole Uncle Joe Biden groveling uncomfortably in this fiasco that is the nascent democrat primary campaign. The list goes on. 

I do hold the main stream media partially responsible for the drivel with which we are confronted on a daily basis. All we see, courtesy of the main stream media, is drivel! Shame on them. But more to the point, how did so many media become so liberal? Well, let’s not forget that our schools and universities have been dominated by the left for over 50 years. Absent strong influences outside of school, it does not require a major in rocket science to understand why so many academics graduate with strong progressive political views. 

It seems every four years we find ourselves at a crossroads; where the outcome of an election is paramount. 2020 will be no different. We are faced with the likely prospect that a democrat favoring socialism will be running against President Trump. Good Lord! How did we get here? Did you ever think in your lifetime you would be confronted with a choice for President between a socialist or an ass? Sorry, folks, but the ass gets my vote. I simply refuse to see 400 years of history washed down the drain as the progressive left destroys everything that has made this country great. You see, our history is not a zero sum game. You can’t wipe it out because parts of our evolution do not conform to today’s politically correct narrative. That is not the real world. 

There are so many things to not like about President Trump. But life is about compromise. I put my country and its future ahead of a temporal moment. President Trump is a blip on the American radar. The noble experiment must survive, and the risk of its destruction is far greater if people who eschew everything about our country are allowed to impose their will. 

As this election season unfolds, don’t allow yourself to be pulled into the quagmire and vitriol of personal attack. Keep your eyes on the prize; a United States with an amazing history, and one that can be sustained, if we continue to elect people who embrace freedom and capitalism. As Jack Webb would have said, “Just the facts!” 

More to follow