To save America, the people themselves must lead

[In an email I received this morning a reader’s comment on my last WND article, To Joseph Farah: I respectfully disagree, epitomized what I have heard from others.  Herewith the comment, with my reply.]

THE COMMENT

I thoroughly agree with you, but where is our uniting leader? Think of what the media did to Ron Paul during the last month of the campaign. They blacked him out totally and they can because the half dozen owners of the major media united. How do we overcome this? We have pulpits all across the country that we cannot use.  The Catholic Church will not help us. De you see a leader? Perhaps the time is not right yet.  We have not suffered enough yet.

MY REPLY

How will we ever see where we’re going if we close our eyes to where we are?  How will we ever find the remedy for our illness when the craving we feel is a symptom of the disease, urging us to consume what can only hasten our demise? In political terms we have become like a lazy prediabetic, gorging on sweets and pasta while avoiding exercise. Of course it doesn’t help when the doctor’s group that pretends to offer treatment is owned by an investment group that gleans huge profits from cross fertilizing investments in pharmaceuticals, sweet and starchy junk food, and clothing stores that cater to plus-sized people.

Are there any more blind and deluded than those who choose to overlook what they already see?  We see media outlets that consistently target conservatives.  We see that a handful of wealthy elitists control the media. But we refuse clearly and consistently to identify what we see as the work of an elitist faction bent on making sure conservatives never realize their own political strength.

We claim to care about America’s liberty, as understood by its founders (who saw it as a species of right, not arrogant licentiousness). Yet we blithely identify with conservative leaders who speak, as do their supposed left-wing opponents, in terms that willfully abuse the language of rights to promote undisciplined and self-destructive “freedoms”.

In this respect it’s worth revisiting an article I wrote in the aftermath of the GOP primary in Florida in 2012. After discussing the real nature of the GOP, and the candidates (New Gingrich and Mitt Romney) whom the elitist faction media were touting as the “front runners” for the GOP nomination after that vote, I wrote:

The conclusion is irresistible that the GOP… being nothing more than a partisan wing of the elitist faction… shares the view espoused by Obama and by Gingrich’s oracle Alvin Toffler, that both the nation and its Constitution are obsolete.

So if the “choice of evils” is again the best the twin-party sham can do in 2012, genuine conservatives have no choice but to reject both the choice and the partisan process being stage managed to produce it. As I suggested in a previous column, people who claim that it is their goal to preserve the Constitution would do well to look to the Constitution for a way to turn the flank of the elitist assault now threatening to overthrow it.

The Constitution makes no mention of parties, but it does implement a scheme of representation elections are meant to serve. Where true representation takes place, it is the people themselves who lead, choosing from amongst themselves those who exemplify, and can therefore represent, their character, their faith and the convictions that govern the right conduct of their lives.

Clearly, implementing the scheme of representation today will require intelligence, innovative thinking and hard work; it will require both intellectual and moral courage; it will above all require a willingness bravely to take the initiative, instead of timidly waiting for those who fancy themselves your “betters” to take it for (or away from) you.

Have years of partisan dependency done for our citizenship what years of welfare state dependency has done for the lives of all too many individuals and families now enthralled and impoverished by the elite-imposed reality of socialism? Must we, like fledgling birds, wait for our elite masters to bring new leaders into our otherwise helpless reach?

Or can we reject the false notion that elections are about choosing new “fuehrers” (that’s right, fuehrer is the German word for leader) and remember that they are supposed to be about people of good conscience who take the lead in order to find and select from amongst themselves those fit to be their representatives? Americans are the only folks I can think of who have consistently proven that they possess the exceptional combination of moral spirit and practical virtue required for this task. Are there any left among us?

I am uneasy with the yearning that searches for some “uniting leader”. It is as if the United States is no longer founded on what Madison called the “scheme of representation” but on what, in his infamous preview of Nazism, Mein Kampf, Adolph Hitler called the “leader-principle”.  Representation is about people, already united in their will for the good of their country, lifting up representatives who will truly and faithfully implement the good will they have in common.  Hitler’s “leader principle” is about a “uniting leader”, promoting himself to dictatorship, and establishing a hierarchy of dictators like himself to enforce a totalitarian transformation of society that suppresses individual right, individual conscience and the liberty for all that is derived from them.

Though the founders of the United States did not intend its government to be for Christians only, they were themselves informed, inspired and guided by the Christian vision of self-government.  Christians do not search for their leader “out there” in the tawdry realms of human power and ambition.  The one we follow lives within us. He is not some self-imposing dictator, but an invited guest.  He comes to us in the guise of a servant, to wash us clean within; the way, with deep humility, he washed clean the feet of his disciples.

In him we are not, by forceful imposition of LAW, relieved of responsibility for choice. Instead, his voice speaks in reasonable terms, by parables calling upon us to deliberate our minds and with our spirits taste and see the goodness of the Lord.  With love he calls us then to choose, for love of God in him, the path of justice, right and peace. So willingly we  consent to be governed not so much by the force of law, as by the mind and heart and will for goodness, that he, also being the Spirit of God within us, inspires us to make our own.

Informed by the example of this Christian calling, instead of looking “out there” for some great American “savior”, it is the American way for us to look within ourselves for the righteousness, good will and courage to uphold the God-revering principles of the Declaration of Independence.  From those principles we derive the republican, federalist, constitutional vision of liberty and justice for all, that we share.  It was, should be and should remain, the uniting vision, conserved through every generation as the spirit, heart and soul of a united people, in these United States: a people of many peoples meant to propagate the better hopes of God-created, God-endowed humanity, among ourselves and to all nations.