As concerned as I am that America, the PLACE, is in danger, I am far more concerned that America, the IDEA, is on the verge of being devastated in ways the Founders could never have imagined.
My great-great grandfather fought with the 80th Ohio Volunteer Infantry at Chickamauga, Vicksburg and marched to the sea with Sherman. My wife’s great-great grandfather also fought on the Union side. Given the quasi-tyrannical nature of the current central government, we’re both sad that they fought in a struggle to secure Washington’s grip on the states in violation of the VOLUNTARY compact between those states to create that central government in the first instance, the Declaration of Independence.
Now that central government — and the power it has usurped from the states and the people — may be about to fall into the hands of a group of men and women who care even less for those principles than Mr. Lincoln did when he launched one of the deadliest wars in history.
I admit to having many problems with Mr. Lincoln. Forensic historians now view him to have been more motivated by his own internal demons and depression than by a desire to keep together by force a union some voluntary members of which chose to “...alter and to abolish..., and to institute (a) new Government...”
Inasmuch as history is always written by the victor, I recognize this will be totally foreign to those who have not spent time examining that history in detail. But I said all that to lay the basis for this, one of the few things on which a younger, pre-presidency Lincoln and I might agree:
“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic giant to step the ocean and crush us at one blow Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.
“At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Abraham Lincoln, 1837
America, the IDEA, may soon suffer a blow which will render it a small footnote in world history. Given that history IS written by the victors, it might not even be mentioned at all.
I tremble for our grandchildren.
Teach them the lessons their parents won't have time to and that they will not get in schools; especially: take them shooting, let them understand the intrinsic freedoms which are America at a visceral level and the responsibilities which come with them. Teach them to embrace those and America will never die.