This election provides us with a choice as profound as it is clear: do we want America to remain America?
Do we wish to remain a nation that is governed by a constitution and adheres to a rule of law? Should we fight for and cling to the numerous, and rare, individual rights and liberties guaranteed to us; Do we continue to protect freedom of speech and freedom of religion and religious expression; do we really believe in the 2nd Amendment and the individual right to keep and bear arms; do we still believe that our life, liberty and property cannot be denied us without due process of law—while we are presumed innocent.
Should we citizens defer to government, or is government supposed to be responsive to us; do we preserve a limited federal government with specific, enumerated powers that governs only with our consent, or a socialist model of the kind we’ve seen fail throughout history in so many places; do we believe we know best how to run—and are better at running—our lives, as well as our families and our children’s lives than the government is, or do we cede those rights of self-determination to government bureaucrats, social engineers and the ever-encroaching tentacles of the “nanny” state.
Should we pay exorbitantly higher taxes to the federal government—a government that cannot even fully block robocalls—because if we do it will somehow be able to control the warming and cooling of the earth; do we allow abortion on demand, along with the violation of conscience entailed in using the tax dollars of we who are deeply opposed to the barbaric procedure, to pay for them; do we want a vigorous oil and gas industry—even as we continue to move toward renewable energy sources—so that we are not foolishly reliant on oil from hostile foreign governments.
Do we believe that massive new taxes, regulation and a restricted, managed form of capitalism are necessary to provide our best life and society, or do we wish for a vibrant free-market economy where we may pursue our dreams of small business ownership; do we want the public schools to educate our children, or to indoctrinate them.
Do we want the best, highest-quality health care in the world, or do we turn the critical provision of health care over to government agencies and bureaucrats who are often more concerned with limiting and rationing care than with whether we are healed and cured; do we want to live under a government—as we’ve graphically witnessed this year—that defunds the police and tacitly condones violence, looting and destruction of property, or do we desire a society that is based upon law and order and a democratic process through which to seek lasting social change.
Do we seek a society filled with free and robust speech, press, petition and peaceful assembly, or the kind of country in which Political Correctness and Groupthink get us shouted down and cowed by threats of one kind or another when we seek to express the truth and our beliefs in relation to it.
We repudiated and defeated communism in the last century. It’s precursor, Socialism, is also a dark and hopeless ideology. Today, desperate, freedom-seeking people all over the world continue to perilously strap themselves and their families onto “boats” consisting of broken boards and logs, buoyed by empty plastic milk jugs, risking their lives in the hope of reaching America. They are fleeing Socialism. Why would we even conceive of granting it a stronghold here?
Do we desire a country in which elites rule, or one in which any child, of any faith, background or upbringing may grow up to be president, or anything else they dream of, pray and work for?
Do we seek a society based upon “critical race theory” that has as its foundation the belief that every societal flaw stems from American sexism, racism or some other form of prejudice or “systemic bias”; or, one in which were are judged not “by the color of our skin but by the content of our character”?
Do we want an admittedly imperfect country that never stops seeking to improve itself, or one in which social and cultural change is impossible because the ruling elite—our “government”—has arrogantly assumed it “knows better” than we, the unenlightened, the rubes, deplorables, or “maggots” as Keith Olbermann said about Trump supporters.
We should pray and vote to have America remain America.
Royal Alexander is a Shreveport Attorney.