During this campaign cycle, we have heard Hilary Clinton quote the infamous misattributed quote from Alexis de Tocqueville. She has said as many Politicians before her have said: “America is great because America is good.” This is correct but incomplete. What is good? We need fewer Chants of “Lock her up” fewer emails colluding to steal our parties nomination. We need more conversations about what we as a country can agree on what is good, true and beautiful.
I thought the last four presidential elections were bad; this one is by far the worse. The problem I have come to realize is everybody. Both sides have turned the political discourse in this country into us vs. them. Tomorrow 50% of our nation will feel like they have lost. America loses when we demonize our opposition for the short-sighted goal of winning an election. Everyone loses when we win at our own expense. [Tweet “Everyone loses when we win at our own expense. “]
I have also come to the conclusion that both sides are right. They both see problems with our country and see that we are in need of reform. While both see different parts of the whole that are broken, if we can refrain from chucking bombs at each other long enough to listen to each other perhaps we can realize that the common ground we are losing with every vicious election is the founding principles of our country. If our republic is to survive, we must return to our first principles. The Brilliant Os Guinness says it this way:
…what the Jews understood by the hope of national renewal through a return to the ways of God and the Puritans understood by the hope of renewal through personal and corporate revival was paralleled politically in the ideas of the founders. George Mason, characteristically more conservative, spoke of “a frequent recurrence to fundamental first principles,” whereas Thomas Jefferson, who was more liberal, spoke of the need for “a revolution every twenty years.” Even Machiavelli agreed with this, though sadly not his modern disciples: republics must frequently return to their first principles. ‘“Things are preserved from destruction by bringing them back to their first principles,’ is a rule in Physics; the same holds good in politics.” …I am convinced that America faces no problem today that cannot be resolved through a return to America’s first principles. Yet the plain fact is that those who reject the founders’ understanding of sustainable freedom are hardly likely to take seriously their views of national and civic renewal, so the folly and madness continue unabated, at least for the moment. If there is no American renewal, American dominance can be followed only by American decline. America has reached the point where, apart from restoration, there is no other choice.
So today go vote. Tomorrow no matter who wins remember that our Republic will prevail not through policies on the left or the right but reformation through going backward together to go forward stronger. We have to get this right.
If justice is not to be denied and if, as Lincoln said in his noble second inaugural address, the judgments of heaven are “true and righteous altogether,” then America will face the fate of all overreaching empires: the United States will be indicted for its hubris and judged before the world by whether it has lived up to the standard of its own ideals.
Guinness, Os
