Laugh, Cry or Step Up and Fight?

As the radical leftists’ ice-bucket-in-the-face wakeup call continues apace throughout America, the online, light-speed sharing of news and information is having its amplifier effect, graphically bringing to light the extent to which we as Americans have allowed our country and its representative Republic to degrade and diminish. There is nearly unlimited potential for good that can come out of this unprecedented wake up phenomenon, but only if we get past the initial reactions of laughing and then crying about the state of the nation, and move on to an unflinching determination to step up and fight for the restoration of America.

With apologies to our readers who are also regular readers of Powerline, and with full credit to the Powerline guys for the posting that brought this to our attention, we feel impelled to add commentary to the story of United States Congressman Hank Johnson, Democrat, Atlanta, Georgia. As you can learn from the link to Powerline, Representative Johnson was recently questioning U.S. Navy Admiral Robert Willard about plans to move 8,000 Marines to the island of Guam, a U.S. possession that is the farthest western outpost of the United States. Watch the video, and face the question: laugh, cry or step up and fight?

Johnson voices his concern that moving so many Marines and their families to this small island (with a current population of 125,000) might cause the island ‘to tip over and capsize’. You read that right, and it wasn’t an April Fool's joke or any other kind of joke. A US Congressman is concerned about Guam tipping over and capsizing, and is questioning a US Navy Admiral as to whether he'd thought about this. And if that weren’t enough, an inquiry to Johnson’s office reveals that the Congressman has other concerns, including:

-Future missions to the moon will cause Earth's satellite to "go all crazy and spin out of orbit"

-Drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge will mean "heavy drilling equipment will cause the poles to shift and Kansas City will end up as the new North Pole"

-Excessive use of the office microwave will cause "the oxygen in the oven to interact with the atmosphere, making it overheat and burn away."

OK. Let’s take on the question posed by this essay. It’s easy enough to laugh at Johnson—though God bless Admiral Willard, who was able to keep from snorting and falling off his chair. And it’s easy enough to move to the next step of crying. Johnson is apparently a product of the American education system. Plus the people of Atlanta elected this man to the office he holds; and by so doing, they made this man eligible to cast a vote on the government takeover of healthcare that affects 300 million Americans (and he voted “yes”). And while we’re laughing and crying, we’ll have to fend off accusations of racism, because Johnson is black; and we’ll have also have to deal with the soft-minded Christians, who will tell us we mustn’t be judgmental and must instead be compassionate about the man’s limitations; after all, he’s probably a nice guy and he no doubt means well.

Sorry, but this is where Americans must resolve to step up and fight for their country. We are better than this, and we deserve better than this. Johnson can be a nice guy at home in Atlanta. He has no business casting votes on anything that affects anyone besides himself. He should be encouraged by everyone—regardless of skin color, gender, religion, income level, or any other characteristic—to resign his office immediately. His stupidity has nothing whatsoever to do with his skin color or gender, but the humoring of this kind of incompetence fuels racism among the ignorant. And while Christian compassion and love is due every one of God’s children, it does not require that our nation commit suicide by acceptance of the idea that this man should have a vote on national legislation.

Johnson is not the first nutcase to serve in Congress; he won’t be the last; and ultimately the American people are responsible for who they choose to represent them. But the nationwide wakeup call we are all receiving requires us to stop looking the other way; stop wishing this sort of thing wouldn’t happen; stop believing that there is even a trace of racism involved in pointing out this idiocy; and start demanding better of ourselves and our elected representatives. The race, gender, religion and other surface level characteristics of Johnson’s successor in office do not matter, but his or her ideas do matter. How well he or she is grounded in the America of the founding does matter; how well he or she grasps truth and common sense also matters.

It’s time to step up and fight to save America. No excuse for staying on the sidelines.

Paul Gable

April 1, 2010