Duty Calls

“A healthy economy cannot be built on a sick culture.”

“…the living heart of the economy, confidence in the future, has been wounded if not killed.”

“The destiny of man is not measured by material computations… when great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we’re spirits, not animals, and there’s something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which whether we like it or not, spells duty. “

We’ve written before, in our "Case for Optimism" essay, that the unparalleled capacity of the internet for spreading truth is the foundation for hope for humanity, even as we weather what appears to be an unprecedented storm of political and economic upheaval. (Yes, we know the internet spreads a lot of things besides truth, but truth has a way of sticking, whereas the rest of it may stir things for awhile but ultimately signifies nothing).

The three quotes above were recently culled from the web; the first two from a posting on Powerline; the third is from Winston Churchill, as quoted by Ronald Reagan in his infamous "Time for Choosing" speech in 1964.

Duty is now calling us—all who love freedom, who feel something in their hearts when they read the Declaration of Independence, who have a sincere faith in God that aligns with their love for America.

That duty is to address the 100% accurate diagnosis embodied in the first two quotes: a sick culture that must be repaired or healed in order to find its way to confidence in the future.

The key to fulfilling that duty requires a society-wide re-learning and re-teaching of what Winston Churchill knew: we’re spirits, not animals.

Here’s the Brushfires’ 2009 expanded take on what this means today—

America’s founding was a profound step of human progress—another step in the long journey from the slavery and bondage of a near-animal state of existence, through the wilderness and into the promised land of liberty and abundance and justice. Only this journey is not defined by ethnic or religious groups, and it does not involve geography. It is a spiritual journey—a journey, really, of mind. It is about humankind awakening to a more spiritual sense of identity and reality—to the actual fact that we are children of God—and the freedom and dominion that go with it.

In the establishment of America, the foundation was laid for the greatest advances in human history. Americans were free under God—as no other people in history have been free. There were no more arbitrary human authorities called kings, and the tendency of human government to become tyrannical had been limited by the brilliant design of the Constitution. Judeo-Christian principles permeated the laws of America, and protected the nation from the encroachment of what St. Paul called the ‘carnal mind’—an essentially atheistic worldview that seeks to enslave man into the belief in human power and human personality, and aggressively seeks to drive the idea of God out of the thought and experience of the people.

Judeo-Christian morality also protected America—a morality that does not deny humanity’s struggle with sin and imperfection, but affirms that God has given to humanity timeless moral standards to aspire to as the only means of lifting us, individually and collectively, to the knowledge that we are, as Churchill said, ‘spirits, not animals’.

With the sense of the God-ordained establishment of America; a bloody but decisive, morally cleansing ordeal that ended the blight of slavery; and a collective grasp that we do in fact possess God-given standards of morality which, if obeyed, protect us, bless us, and lift us eventually to the full knowledge of what it means to be the child of God, the framework for a healthy culture was set, as was the basis for an individual and collective outlook of confidence in the future. Innovation, achievement, improvements in the standard of living—all followed on an unheard of scale, and for the first time in human history, the massive military might that commonly accompanies an economic powerhouse was employed only to defend and to liberate, but not to conquer.

Now, only a fool would claim that since the Civil War ended in 1865, there has been nothing but economic prosperity in America. Nor would anyone suggest that human generations since that time have been on one uninterrupted path of increasing moral purity. But the periods of economic decline and moral decline (which tend to go together) do not disprove God’s role in the establishment of America or deny the God-given rightness of Judeo-Christian moral principles; they only show our periodic decline in knowledge and appreciation of these facts.

The last 50 years have seen the steady decline of knowledge of and appreciation for America. The education system has failed to understand and teach of America’s uniqueness and spiritual dimension; moral standards have been diluted as they have been allowed to be appropriated into the realm of ‘secular authority’ (an oxymoron if there ever was one) for redefinition and reordering. This state of lazy and stupefied thinking has finally led to the apparent takeover of the American government by persons whose thinking and values are absolutely antithetical to the real America —to those who see human life as utterly without God’s redemptive, uplifting influence and purpose.

They are wrong, and they are not going to succeed. The only question is how long it will take for their defeat to be seen, and at what cost in human suffering. Churchill and Reagan were clear enough and strong enough to lead us through the most recent similar attacks on America—in the forms of Nazism, imperialism and communism—and the present context, where the attack is from within America, can seem even more difficult.

But here’s the good news: truth still exists, and it hasn’t changed. The ideals of the American founding were and still are God-given; and the corresponding moral standards haven’t changed either. There is divine authority in support of these ideals and standards. We just need to be willing to see it, say so, and insist on our individual and collective willingness to return to a sense of gratitude, humility and obedience to that which has been given us.

Here’s what seems like the hard part: the voices of the carnal mind—today manifest in our major media—are so hateful, so vitriolic, so vicious in their assault on anyone who speaks openly of God and faith in God and moral standards from God, and love for America in its connection to the ‘providence’ of God, that we see mostly timidity from our current crop of leaders. They wish this crisis would just go away so they can get back to the high-minded policy discussions of the self-important. They want desperately for the calendar to move along quickly in the ignorant belief that this is just one of those economic cycle things that will sort itself out eventually, and then we can get back to letting the good times roll.

That’s not where we are right now. In Texas they might call where we are right now a “Remember the Alamo!” moment. This nation was defrauded in the election of 2008 in a malicious assault by a calculating, godless cabal for which Obama is largely the empty suit front man, and George Soros was and is the leading puppeteer. We’re going to have to undo this fraud.

And so duty calls once more.

What actions will duty require us to take? We don’t know all of them yet. Tea parties are a good start; listening to Rush Limbaugh's CPAC speech is another important step (forget debating about personalities—listen to the message of Limbaugh; it is the spirit of America). Calling openly for Obama's resignation needs to happen with much greater national visibility and prominence. After that, we’ll just have to see how things unfold. But we’ll need to be minutemen, ready to act when the call comes.

The Bible tells us the walls of Jericho came down once the people knew they needed to come down, and knew a power greater than themselves would help them, if they just obeyed and trusted.

That’s where we are now.

Paul Gable

Posted March 12, 2009