American Revolution 2.0 - It’s All About Fear Now

As we watch lawyer Thomas Lauria of Wall Street’s White & Case squirm and backtrack and try to ‘no comment’ his way out of the controversy surrounding the government’s cramdown of Chrysler’s secured lenders (Lauria started a controversy when he said his bondholder clients had been threatened by the White House with reputational ruin if they did not go along with the White House), it’s so patently clear where much of ‘moderate’ and ‘moderate-liberal’ America now finds itself. They have awakened to the deceit, corruption and arrogance that is the Obama administration; they see the radical left-wing agenda; they are largely responsible for having voted it into office; and now they are in abject fear that there is nothing that can be done to stop it. They are like many Europeans who are enthralled by their own enlightened liberal views, look down on backwater conservative America—at least until a Hitler in Germany or a dictator in the Soviet Union threatens to ruin them, and then they come running to America to save them.

Lauria’s fear, White & Case’s fear, and the client’s fear (they denied and otherwise distanced themselves from the accusations of threats by the Obama administration) are symbols of the same cultural decay we commented on in connection with the swine flu hysteria (here).

When a society loses its collective confidence and affirmation that morals and moral principles (the foundation of all law) come from a higher source that cannot be messed with, they have nothing to fall back on when they are assaulted by lawlessness. They fear it and run from it and try to cut a deal with it. But they soon find out there is no deal with lawlessness that can be counted on; there is no safety and security with a tyrant.

What American society desperately needs is a restoration of faith in God instead of human government; faith in the truth and the guidance of ‘divine Providence’ that the founders so often invoked in the process that led to the writing of the US Constitution; and a few leaders ready to pledge ‘lives, fortunes and sacred honor’ to defend these ideals.

Imagine if Lauria, White & Case, and the client stood up and said, “yes the Obama administration did threaten us and that is outrageous; the Obama administration is circumventing the rule of law and that is outrageous; and we intend to fight this in court as long as it takes to get the Obama administration to back down, even if we all go broke doing it.” Lauria, White & Case and the client would someday find themselves in the history books as American heroes and heroes for all mankind, and their position would eventually prevail over Obama’s because it is based on the God-given idea of the rule of law.

There was once another government that snickered at someone who had been hauled before it based on a perversion of law and the rule of the mob. And that someone said, in essence, I’m not phased by your snickering; you have no power over me at all unless consistent with truth. Pilate snickered again with the dismissive snort: “what is truth?”—as if it were utterly irrelevant since he controlled the levers of power and the fate of Jesus. But Pilate turned out to be the fool. Jesus triumphed in his mission, which he said was ‘to bear witness unto the truth’.

Spare us the scoffs of those who would leap to ridicule a comparison of something so trivial as the cramdown of a bondholder to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. We’re not saying they are events of equal importance in human history. We are saying Jesus showed the remedy for all fear and lies: confidence and affirmation of the power of truth. We can have that confidence now, too. It is at the very foundation of the United States of America. It will be the foundation of the second American Revolution.

Paul Gable

Posted May 5, 2009