3 reasons for hope

I got two dozen likes the other day when I reposted this meme on Facebook with the caption, “Maybe I’ll just roll this out every day until it stops.”

Facebook Memories says I first passed it along about seven or eight years ago, and social media has gotten only angrier and nastier. If I’m to believe my eyes and ears, it’s the fascists against the communists all over again.

I haven’t voted for a major party candidate in more than 30 years, and I think our republic’s ills may go back as far as 1913, when Woodrow Wilson, our worst president, was in charge of the government. Seeing how things have collapsed since then, much of the acrimony and frustration is no wonder.

The main thing that has kept me mostly sane is the knowledge that, in the end, the machinations of government do not affect us nearly as much as we are led to believe. No decree or fiat can keep us from loving one another or pursuing the fruits of the spirit in all we do.

Three recent public statements give me hope. The first is Erika Kirk’s astonishing act of forgiving her husband’s assassin. I can’t think of a more Christ-like thing to do.

The second is the campaign on the GiveSendGo fundraising platform in support of the widow and son of the disturbed man who killed four people and burned down a church in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Again, an act of forgiveness that probably perplexed a lot of people but is right in line with what Christ might do..

The third will irritate some of you, and before you respond go back to the top of the page and look at those adorable puppies. It was something President Trump said to the United Nations last week, after he boasted that he had succeeded in ending seven or eight wars during his first few months in office. Yes, we have to take such claims with the proverbial grain of salt, or perhaps several sacks of salt. But look what he said next:

“Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize… but for me, the real prize will be the sons and daughters who live to grow up with their mothers and fathers because millions of people are no longer being killed in endless and un-glorious wars. What I care about is not winning prizes, it’s saving lives.”

My two highest priorities are peace and liberty, which is why I haven’t voted for a major-party presidential candidate in three decades. Those saber-rattling pretenders have done little but slash away at individual rights and freedom. I have waited a very long time for a commander in chief of the world’s largest military to say his goal is to end the senseless killing. I hope he means it; given the constant vicious counterattacks by the denizens of the war-loving “deep state,” I believe they think he means it.

I’m going to close by repeating what I said up above, and I will veer away from this fray after this, except perhaps to re-post the trunk full of puppies again and again and again:

No decree or fiat can keep us from loving one another or pursuing the fruits of the spirit in all we do. That’s going to be my personal aim.

Enough with the fighting

The F-word was in the front-page headline again Thursday, as an elected official pledged to fight. It wasn’t even something anyone would fight about — she wanted to fight over having more manufacturing jobs in Wisconsin. Talk about shadow boxing.

I for one am weary of politicians who promise to fight. Most humans want the same thing — a measure of safety and comfort, food and shelter, privacy and freedom, a helping hand to and from neighbors when it’s needed, and to raise their kids in the ways they should go.

Politicians like to pretend we need to fight about it and that it all would be much easier if we’d just vote them into office or vote to keep them there. But government is a blunt-force instrument that gets in the way most of the time. If it’s not seizing the fruits of people’s labor to fight for wasteful, inefficient programs that do the work we could do better on our own, then it’s sending our children overseas to die in someone else’s fight.

I lost a good friend earlier this year who never voted and lived a good life. His philosophy was more or less that it’s not wise to vote for politicians because it only encourages them, and there are few things in life more dangerous than an encouraged politician.

My own epiphany came when I was framing a newspaper column on the theme that our well-being does not depend on our choosing the right ruler. I suddenly realized that oh yes, it does: My well-being depends on my recognizing that I am the boss of me and that I’d better rule my own business as best as I can.

There’s a pivotal moment in the movie Serenity — which concludes the mighty TV saga Firefly — when hero Malcolm Reynolds squares off against a nameless government operative.

“I have to hope you understand, you can’t beat us,” the operative says.

“I got no need to beat you, I just want to go my way,” Reynolds replies.

There’s no need to fight. This world is big enough for all of us to go our way. Let’s just try to be good neighbors.

Declaration Day

This is the day when folks in the good old U.S. of A. stage parades, grill and consume all kinds of meat, go to festivals, and scare dogs by setting off fireworks of all shapes and sizes.

The occasion is the 249th anniversary of the release of a little document called the Declaration Of Independence, which changed life as we knew it — and by “we,” I mean the people who were alive in 1776. I am apparently considered old now, but I’m not that old.

That little document made a number of statements that shifted people’s perspectives in significant ways. For one thing, it asserted that human rights were not a human invention — that things like the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were God-given and self-evident, not something granted by a king, a congress or a constitution.

It even suggested that if those manmade institutions fail to protect those God-given rights, the people have a right to dissolve those institutions and form a new government that will.

Holy moley, what a concept.

So saying, the signers of the Declaration broke off ties from the tyrannical British government and established 13 new nations that organized a loose confederation called the United States of America.

Great Britain, as all centralized governments are, was not inclined to give up power willingly, and so it waged war against this upstart confederation, but the spirit of liberty was more powerful than the spirit of tyranny, and the new states won the war.

After a few years some members of the loose confederation grew nostalgic for the tyrannical central government, and they persuaded their colleagues to form a new central government and bind their partners under a constitution. Leaders who were leery of the idea lobbied to amend this new arrangement to clarify that the reorganized government still could not infringe on those God-given rights, and they included a couple of clauses that any powers not specifically designated to this “federal” government were retained by the people and their respective states.

I could go on from there and discuss how the more central government grew and metastasized into something the signers of the Declaration might not recognize — or maybe they would recognize it and say something to the effect of, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

But July 4 is the day we celebrate the fact that wise people once endorsed the idea that we are created equal, endowed by the Creator with rights that must not be alienated, including the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — not to mention the rights to assemble, to say and publish what we please, to worship in the manner that we choose, to own weapons, and all of the other rights that God has given us, and woe to anyone who would dare to re-establish tyranny across this beautiful land.

I’m proud to live in the country where those concepts were first declared and, if you listen very hard, sometimes are still practiced here and there.