The administration is staring at numbers that are daunting: 62 percent of the public believes that the nation is headed in the wrong direction and the President’s disapproval rating is currently higher than his approval rating. Even worse, 17 percent of those who disapprove of the President are Democrats. But here is the two-fold bottom line in politics: Both the Washington Post and Politico report that the Democrats are so demoralized by Obama’s failures that it is hurting party fundraising, and there is a palpable lack of enthusiasm about the mid-term elections. Only 40 percent of those who voted for President Obama, contrasted with 71 percent of GOP voters, express “high interest” in the mid-term elections.
Overwhelming pessimism about America’s future and pervasive anxiety about whether the nation’s dismal economic prospects can be reversed are reverberating around the Internet and spilling out into the media. Partly, liberals’ discontent soured expectations relating to Barack Obama’s “hope and change” agenda. And it is much more than just the liberals; Americans in general have lost hope, and a majority of them reject the kind of change that Obama is foisting off onto the people against their will. The promise of the “first Black President” made many Americans, as well as foreigners, feel good about America’s future, where racial and socio-economic differences would at last become irrelevant as the nation moved beyond its past biases and prejudices. Now, those hopes have crashed against the President’s un-American reality.
Little did his fans know that the President would immediately begin to divide the nation along racial, patriotic, and national sovereignty lines. Little did his fans know that the President who rose to prominence through his rhetorical magic would become dependent upon his teleprompter, turn wooden in his emotional responses, and be incompetent in general, especially in handling crises. Little did his fans know that experts would join forces to declare a national fiscal crisis in the wake of failed stimulus efforts, millions losing their jobs and seeing their homes going on the auction block, this despite the hundreds of billions poured into TARP and the stimulus program. Then there is that trillion dollar disastrous health care “reform” bill enacted in the face of overwhelming public opposition. [According to Powerline, the latest Rasmussen poll indicates that 60 percent of likely voters want ObamaCare repealed.] Almost everyone has seen both the value of their home and their retirement accounts plummet. As ordinary middle class citizens see the American dream shrinking along with their assets, they are fearful that their children will have drastically different prospects than they had when they started out.
As Americans see their own financial resources dwindle, they watch in dismay as entitlements expand, driving government spending spiraling out of control. But their worries go deeper than just a debt-to-GDP crisis and out-of-control government expansion. The American public sees their nation turning into a place they don’t recognize; they see policies enacted to “distribute the wealth” and personnel appointed whose radical values and ideologies are rejected by mainstream America. Few voters in the last election bought into that kind of transformation. Few Americans expected their President to bow to foreign dictators — either literally or figuratively.
Recently Dr. Charles Stanley has written and spoken soberly, factually, and powerfully about the threats to our nation. In an article, “The Nation’s Lighthouse,” he wrote:
Our country is like a large ship fighting through stormy waters in foggy weather. Spiritually and morally, we’ve lost our sense of direction. Sexual sins, greed, pride, indulgence, slothfulness, ungratefulness, and irreverence characterize our nation. Prayer and Bible reading are no longer allowed in schools, and it’s become legal to kill unborn babies. We are on our way to becoming a pagan nation where ungodly ideas and morals are not only accepted but celebrated. Our country is on a collision course with disaster.
Dr. Stanley followed the article with a sermon that is going viral on the Internet, “Turning the Tide.” He begins by describing the tides that are sweeping onto our shores and destroying our nation — the fiscal crisis and the increasing hostility toward Christianity. Dr. Stanley sees a strategy being implemented that removes Jesus Christ from all aspects of American culture. The ways that this administration is accommodating the Islamic extremists is chilling. The decline of marriage and the breakdown of the family are destroying the fundamental building blocks of communities and the nation.
All of these trends are a wake-up call signaling that our nation has veered off-track, departing from the principles and values that made her noble and great. The corrosive interaction of these negative forces is a powerful threat to our freedom, our liberties, our way of life, and all that we hold dear. Democracy as a form of government depends on the moral character of its people. When we cease to be a moral people, the freedoms that are afforded by democracy will not long survive, nor will democracy itself.
President Obama promised to “transform” our nation, but true transformation is a work of God. Throughout our nation’s history, religious awakenings have marked turning points where desperate, despairing people with no other hope turned to God in repentance and saw both their own lives and their families transformed by a merciful loving God.
Wise people acknowledge that we are currently at a place of such wretchedness. Wise people also know that without the compass of truth and faith, there is nothing to protect us or our nation from disintegration. The late Russell Kirk called our national cultural decay a “bent time” and made a persuasive case for reestablishing the “permanent things” as the foundation for people’s lives and interactions with others. Faithful Americans will pray and live out their faith by establishing the “permanent things” not only in their private lives but also in the public arena.