Article VI Blog

Peggy Noonan pens an insightful piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning at the end of a week when our government has crammed enormous amounts of nonsense down our throats against our will:

The biggest political change in my lifetime is that Americans no longer assume that their children will have it better than they did. This is a huge break with the past, with assumptions and traditions that shaped us.

The country I was born into was a country that had existed steadily, for almost two centuries, as a nation in which everyone thought—wherever they were from, whatever their circumstances—that their children would have better lives than they did. That was what kept people pulling their boots on in the morning after the first weary pause: My kids will have it better. They’ll be richer or more educated, they’ll have a better job or a better house, they’ll take a step up in terms of rank, class or status. America always claimed to be, and meant to be, a nation that made little of class. But America is human. “The richest family in town,” they said, admiringly. Read Booth Tarkington on turn-of-the-last-century Indiana. It’s all about trying to rise.

[...]

When the adults of a great nation feel long-term pessimism, it only makes matters worse when those in authority take actions that reveal their detachment from the concerns—even from the essential nature—of their fellow citizens. And it makes those citizens feel powerless.

Inner pessimism and powerlessness: That is a dangerous combination.

Th whole piece is fascinating, you should read the whole thing.  It set me wondering if the huge increase in people staying with their parents well past the age where my generation did is not evidence of same.  Frankly, I don’t blame the kids, but I have always wondered why the parents make it so easy on them.  But this piece I think explains it – parents no longer think they are releasing their kids into something good.  The parents no longer have faith that if they let the kids go, the failure will be small and the success big.  Hence the kids stay in the basement and play video games well into their 20′s and even their 30′s.

But here is the real insight that I had while reading this – government has never been the source of hope in this nation – the lack of it has.  More specifically the freedom of religion that we have enjoyed has provided hope unlike any other place on earth or time in history.  There is nothing I know of that can provide hope in people save a sense that there is an Almighty in control.  Part of the great American civic religion is that while we disagree on the specifics of the Almighty, we know there is one and that He has our destiny well in hand.

And yet, we live in an age when our courts tell us that religion causes harm.  We live in an age where expressions of that hope when rooted in the Almighty are forbidden from public view.  And worst of all, those of us that share a sense of a benevolent and hope-inducing Almighty turn on each other in our civil debates because in the pessimism and powerlessness that we feel, we feel that we must fight someone – and in doing so we only make the situation worse.

Moreover, in the pessimism and powerlessness we feel, religious people turn to government for hope rather than realizing that we hold the solution in our own hands.  Rather than build a soup kitchen, we lobby for more food stamps.   Rather than build a shelter, we lobby for “affordable housing” laws.  Rather than spread the hope that our faith should give us, we wallow in our hopelessness.

But I am not yet ready to abandon my hope, for I cling tightly to the Almighty as I understand Him – and I hope you do to.  The road back to a hope filled nation is not straight, short nor simple.  It involves reforming both government and religion.  I know it starts by uniting in our hopefulness despite our differences in understanding that hope’s source.  I know that someday we will have to resolve those differences, but today is not that day.  Today we fight together for a nation where we can resolve those differences rather than have them resolved for us.

What say you?  Comment moderation is off for the weekend.

Thanks to Hugh Hewitt for his link and comments on the same article.

Posted in Political Strategy, Understanding Religion | 3 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

Recently Posted:

• Matters of Taste And Thought
• Betting On Weird
• What To And What Not To Worry About
• Examing The Question From Yet Another Angle – Analyzing Florida
• Mitt Romney on Religious Liberty