Well, I am not quite that old, but in the view of some of the younger generation, I am older than Methuselah.  I say that in light of some of the comments I have overheard or encountered by the Gen Z-ers and Millennials over the past couple of years.  I was standing in the check-out line behind two twenty-something young ladies and could not help but overhear their conversation.  One was lamenting that some ‘old dude’ at work was hitting on her.  In her tirade, she said, “He is really old, he must be at least 35 or 40.”  I laughed out loud and they glared at me.  The person at the register said, “You almost got in trouble, but I agree, they don’t know what old is.”

I remember America in the 1950’s.  I was born in the late 1940’s and grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s so, I remember America as it used to be in my ‘Good Old Days.’  Let me paint a picture of my world which was on the brink of the assault of the Left on America, home and family, and basic morality and neighborliness.  I lived in the country, rural East Texas, but visited relatives who lived in some big cities and the world I saw then was not the Utopia the Democrats insist we can have or the crime and corruption of today. 

Imagine, if you can, a neighborhood that is largely comprised of low and middle-income families.  Imagine that neighborhood where there were two-parents in most homes, no homeless people on the streets, no drugs being sold on the street corners, and people could walk the streets at night unmolested and unafraid.  What?  You cannot imagine that world!  Well, that is the world I grew up in.  Of course, that may not have been your experience if you lived in Chicago or New York City, but in my world that was normal.

Imagine a public school where there was the Pledge of Allegiance, a Prayer, and a Bible verse read over the PA System.  Wait, you can’t?  Maybe you do not believe that should be allowed in public schools, but that was my world and I believe that I am a better man for it.  We may not have respected our elders as we should, but we did not dare demonstrate disrespect for not only would we encounter the ‘board of education’ at school but at home as well.  My parents commanded rather than demanded respect.  They did that through their lives.  We gave them our respect willingly.  Well, mostly willingly, many of us rebelled a little from time to time.

Open debate was welcome even if it was offensive, it was deemed a person’s right to hold and express their personal opinions.  I grew up at the beginning of what some have called a ‘cultural revolution’ and most assuredly the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960’s.  I was drafted in 1965 and served in the U.S. military serving a year in Vietnam in 1967.  I did not protest, burn my draft card and knew no one in my community who did.  We considered it our obligation and some of us considered it a privilege to serve our country as did our fathers and grandfathers before us.  That may not have been your world, but it was mine.

A paradigm shift to liberalism began in a noticeable way in the 1940’s or should I say, became a more serious agenda of the Left.  There was a very distinguishable loss of understanding of what could be called the ‘timeless constants of the fundamentals of life.’  Igor Stravinsky said in 1947, “We are living at a time when the status of man is undergoing profound upheavals.  Modern man is progressively losing his understanding of values in his sense of proportions.  This failure to understand essential realities is extremely serious.  It leads us infallibly to the violation of the fundamental laws of human equilibrium.”  That was not only insightful but powerfully prophetic and we have witnessed the culmination of that warming.

Although I do not fully ascribe to the philosophy embodied in the Serenity Prayer, it holds significant truth.  That prayer is, “God, grant me the grace to accept with serenity the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”  Another philosophy we need to mention may have first been issued by Augustine, but many believe it was coined by the German Lutheran theologian, Rupertus Meldenius.  It is a philosophy that I have sought to incorporate into my own life.  That declaration is, “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.”  We too often strain at gnats and swallow camels through our own personal biases and blindness.

In America, we have come to a philosophical position that many, especially those on the Left, embrace.  That attitude is, “Damn the Absolute!”  We moved from our moral moorings and our belief in absolutes to the abstract and insisted that there are no absolute truths.  We watched the rise of Western metaphysics and it crept into the churches as well as our educational system.

There are those who reject the notion of God, our Creation and Creator.  They follow the view of Friedrich Nietzsche who declared, “God is dead.” The quest to destroy all ‘absolutes’ has been an integral philosophy of the Left in their assault on what we were and what we can be.  Some of them ascribed to the philosophy, “If there were no God, one would have to be invented.”  They follow it up by saying, “That is what has happened.”  I reject that for I have encountered the Living God and know in my heart He is real. 

We do not need to invent God or even prove His existence it is everywhere apparent.  Most of the drive to prove there is no God only serves to further prove that He is.  What is needed is for everyone to awaken from our slumber and realize that where I world has evolved is not good.  Our streets are no longer safe, our children threatened on many fronts, and our freedom in the cross-hairs of totalitarianism and tyranny. 

You may not be old enough to remember America as I do but if we are to survive and thrive, we must return to our old landmarks.  No, we do not need to revive the terribleness of slavery, racism, or sexism but we need to return to the embracing of what our Founders embraced – GOD IS!  We need to recognize that everyone has inalienable rights that must be both acknowledged and protected.  We must restore freedom of Speech, Religion, and protect the sanctity of life. We must return to being, a nation of ‘limited government.’  We cannot allow the wrecking ball that is being swung against our republic to succeed. 

I ask that you join me in praying and working for America to be restored to being “One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”  Vote for America in November and against our destruction! 

God bless you and God bless America!