"God Help Us"? Revisiting the 4th of July

The government is defying the will of the people…Americans have experience with this

There are thousands of contemporary essays and commentaries, and probably millions of online discussion ‘comments’ (and more than a few sermons on Sunday), that survey the latest travesty of the radical Obama/Reid/Pelosi government, throw up their collective hands, and conclude with “God help us” or “God save us”.

We share the angst and the humility and the spirit that spawns these despairing pleas. We’d be among the first to affirm that a great deal of the present crisis is due to a decades-long American straying from its foundational Judeo-Christian faith and teachings. And we aren’t embarrassed or ashamed to say we pray and hope others pray every day in support of America and the cause of individual freedom and responsibility under God. But we don’t share the sense that all that is left to America is an appeal to some sort of supernatural divine intervention as the only means to stop this outrageous hijacking of America and her Constitution and her freedoms.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence had great faith in ‘divine Providence’, and they surely believed in the Christian rightness and righteousness of the cause of freedom. The sentiment around them was hardly unanimous in support of independence; large segments of the population did not want to rock the boat or ‘provoke’ King George. The signers didn’t really want war with the British; they wanted independence and freedom. But as they watched and observed and recognized where things were going, they finally had enough and drew their line in the sand. They knew it was risky; they knew their action would ‘provoke’ a response; but they ultimately made the judgment that the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were not for kings to grant or take away. They decided the goal of living in a nation founded on these rights was worth everything, and as a result, they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to establish it. For many of them, the pledge came due.

What they did NOT do was whine and moan and complain and say “woe is us, there is nothing we can do”. They did NOT assign invincibility to the illegitimate rule of kings; they did NOT accept the role of the king’s subjects. They did not say, ‘well, we’ve petitioned the king for a redress of grievances, and since he denied it, there is nothing else we can do.’ They said: enough is enough. There is a higher authority to whom we owe allegiance and obedience; there are rights that mere men cannot take away; and by God, we’re going to trust in the rightness of our cause and the divine Providence that is back of it, and we are going forward with this new nation.

Fast forward to today. Put aside ‘policy’ differences and party labels. The House of Representatives just passed a ‘climate change’ bill that did not even exist in completed written form at the time it was voted on. Not one Representative, Democrat or Republican, had read it; not one Representative could have read it. Some 300 pages of an eventual 1500 page draft bill were added at 3 am in the morning of the day of the vote. And the subject of the legislation was as far-reaching and radical as any piece of legislation ever voted upon in the United States of America.

The behavior of the US House of Representatives in acting upon this legislation is an affront to human decency. It is inexcusable, indefensible, dishonorable, disgraceful, and unconscionable. It is lawless. Every serious citizen of this country—young or old, male or female, conservative or liberal, employed or unemployed, and without regard to skin color or ethnicity--EVERY serious citizen knows this.

Nancy Pelosi has already signaled that she intends to do the same thing with a bill to nationalize the healthcare system of America—no debate, no posting of the bill on the internet for five days for citizens to look at, probably no Representative with a chance to read it before voting.

So what will serious American citizens do about this? Throw up their hands and give up? Whine and moan and complain, but ultimately just say Obama is invincible and “there’s nothing we can do”? Agree that we are subjects of the government? Say “well, we tried to send letters and faxes and emails to stop the climate change bill, but they went ahead and voted anyway, so we’ll just have to live with it”?

We wrote in an earlier essay:

if this climate change legislation passes the House this week, largely in its present form and under the present conditions of never having been read by those voting, we believe it will go beyond a farce and will be more than a disgrace. It will be an act of government that is itself an incitement to revolution.

Pravda would seek to have Americans believe that we really are in an Orwellian world where the people’s protest against their government is an act of treason or subversion. But we are not in an Orwellian world. There is truth in the world. And the truth is that the action of the House of Representatives in passing this bill in the way they did is an act of treason and subversion of the United States of America under the Constitution. The Representatives who voted for this abomination need to be removed from office.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence would have no trouble recognizing the intolerable despotism represented by the House’s action. And step by deliberate step, they would take whatever action was ultimately needed to put an end to it.

We think the spirit of the ‘signers’ lives in far greater numbers and in many more places in this nation than Pravda would have you believe. We think this spirit is not going to meekly fade away with “God help us”; we think it will resurrect itself on the strength of “God helps those who help themselves”.

For our part, we’ll start by asking each and every one of the 219 House members who voted for this mess to resign en masse, effective immediately. (Can’t say we didn’t ask). We’ll also work to see every one of them thrown out of office in 2010. We doubt that either of these alternatives will happen, so as we celebrate the upcoming 4th of July, our prayer will be for a rising of the spirit that will cause a pledging of lives, fortunes and sacred honor, to stop this hijacking of America, NOW.

Paul Gable

June 29, 2009