A Quinnipiac
University survey recently found 57 percent of Americans agreed the country
“has lost its identity,” 57 percent felt they were “falling further and further
behind economically,” and 76 percent believed “public officials don’t care much
what people like me think.”
Gallup reported in
March, meanwhile, that 71 percent of Americans were dissatisfied with the
“way things in the United States were going at this time,” the same number who
responded to the identical poll question a month earlier.
What’s up with all the angst?
“Many American voters, especially Republicans, are
dissatisfied with their own status and the status of the country, but by far
the most dissatisfied are Donald Trump’s supporters, who strongly feel that
they themselves and the country are under attack,” said Quinnipiac University
poll director Douglas Schwartz, in
a statement.
Well, that is the theme of Trump’s campaign, to make America
great again – and it’s one that’s resonating big time with voters across the country.
But thinking Mr. Trump, or Sen. Ted Cruz – or, God forbid,
the self-declared socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders – can solve what ails America
is flawed thinking. First off, Americans have been complaining about the
country for years. In July 2015, Fortune blasted forth the headline: “12 Signs
America is on the Decline.” In April 2014, Salon warned: “Global rankings
study: America in warp-speed decline.” In October 2013, the New Yorker offered:
“Measuring America’s Decline, in Three Charts.” In March 2012, the Atlantic
posed: “The Decline of the West: Why America Must Prepare for the End of
Dominance.” In 2011, it was the American Spectator, with the title, “Is America
in Decline?”
The demise of America, it seems, has been a long-running
go-to topic for the press, the pundits and the pollsters. So long, in fact, it
leads one to wonder: Do elections really bring change?
Not so much. Not in any long-lasting, meaningful way, at
least. Which brings up this second point: It’s not about the “R” versus “D.”
Looking at politicians to provide for the needs and concerns
of America seems a cycle of insanity – a red herring, even. But this story,
from Raphael Cruz, a Christian pastor who spent his growing and formative years
in Cuba, under the watchful eyes of an oppressive regime? This story is the
elephant in the room.
Jerry Newcombe wrote for the Christian
Post: “Rafael Cruz tells a story where the soldiers of Castro would teach
the children to not believe in God, but instead to believe in Fidel. Soldiers
would come into a kindergarten class and tell the children, ‘Okay now, close
your eyes and pray to God for some candy.’ The children would comply, but there
was no candy. Then they would say, ‘Close your eyes and pray for candy to Fidel
Castro.’ The children would close their eyes and pray accordingly, as the
soldiers quietly placed candy on the desks.”
What a horrific example of leading children astray, and
simultaneously, a tremendous warning of what is really rotting America: the
turn from God as leader and toward government as provider.
Inserting fresh faces into the government, whether Trump or
Cruz or Clinton or Candidate X, is a temporary fix, at best. America’s
government is only a microcosm of America at-large. And there will never be a
single politician, or even grouping of politicians, that actually make America
great. They can’t; the country’s greatness doesn’t flow that way.
America’s greatness comes from
this: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
America’s greatness is from the bold idea that rights stem
from God, not government – that it’s the individual with greatest worth, not
the collective. And until we win back a country where that sentiment is
intuitively felt and instinctively enacted upon, where “in God we trust” is the
lesson being taught the coming generations, not “on government we depend,” then
the changing faces of politicians will be just that – new look, new messaging, but
bringing the same dissatisfying results.
First appeared at Washington Times: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/19/cheryl-chumley-politicians-getting-back-to-in-god-/
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