God Bless America!

I admit it. I am a flag-waving, America-loving, patriotic nerd. When I was a teenager, instead of posters of girls or cars, my walls were covered with a life-size replica of the Declaration of Independence, Gilbert Stuart’s portait of Washington, postcards from the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials and an autographed picture of Ronald Reagan.

I was fortunate to be born into a family who loved this country and I absorbed that from them. My maternal grandfather was a union man and he and Grandma were Democrats. My paternal grandfather had a small business and he was a Republican. It didn’t matter, though. They all loved this country.

In fact, I remember once when I was at church with my maternal grandmother. I was sitting by my cousins. The speaker mentioned that they didn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance every day anymore in schools. Grandma looked over at us demanded to know if that was true in our schools. When we told her it was, and that we did not say the Pledge every day, she swore. Right there in Sacrament Meeting. She was so indignant. I’ve rarely seen anyone so mad. But then, she lost a brother in WWII, so she knew a little bit about the price of freedom and the Pledge wasn’t just a collection of words for her.

I was also fortunate that when I was in school, especially high school, my teachers were men who fought in World War II. They believed in the fundamental goodness of this country and they had made sacrifices for this belief: storming the beaches at Normandy, fighting in foxholes, and liberating concentration camps. I may have been in the last generation of schoolchildren to be taught by unashamed patriots.

When I was fourteen, my family took a vacation to Washington D.C. At the time, the thought of being anywhere with my embarrassing parents and annoying younger siblings for two weeks felt like cruel and unusual punishment and I did not have the best attitude about this trip.

I remember being dragged to the National Archives. Could anything be more boring than going to stand in line to see a bunch of old papers?

I had little choice, though so I went. I remember standing in front of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. As I looked at them, I felt sudden rush of reverence and sanctity that I have felt only very rarely since them. Even as an immature teenager, I could feel that these were very special documents. I had a spiritual experience standing in that building, in line with all the other tourists. I knew then, in the deepest parts of my soul, that America was no accident. I knew that God’s hand had been involved in the founding and that He had inspired the Founders who wrote those documents. This conviction sank deep down inside of me and it is as fundamental to my beliefs as the fact that I believe in God.

This experience in my adolescence has been confirmed and strengthened hundreds of times since then. As I have learned and lived more, my appreciation for the miracle of America has deepened and grown, as has my conviction that God has always blessed this wonderful land.

One of my hobbies is reading history and I am especially fond of early American and World War II history. While I am not an expert, or even a terribly informed amateur, I have noticed how many junctions there have in our past where the wrong turn would have been disastrous to America. Somehow, at most of these junctions, at the last moment, we have always turned the right direction.

Often, and I find this incredibly compelling, nature seemed to give us the benefit of her help. For example, Washington had his back to the East river when he and his army were dug in on Brooklyn Heights in the very early days of the Revolution. British ships were not able to come get them because of opposing winds, but they were able to keep them from crossing the river and British troops were advancing quickly from Long Island. They were trapped, perfectly and completely.

And then the fog came in. A thick fog that obscured everything. Washington’s men were able to cross the river into Manhattan and then retreat to fight another day. Had that fog not come in, it would have been over.

And of course, there was the storm that came on Christmas night later in the war, the storm that masked Washington’s troops when he crossed the Delaware and surprised the Hessians at Trenton the next morning.

Or, consider D-Day when the Allied Forces were going to cross the English Channel and land at Normandy. The weather was foul and would not permit a crossing. Eisenhower was just about to call the invasion off when the weather changed just enough to let it happen.

In these cases, and in so many other similar examples, it was as if Nature—or, perhaps, Nature’s God, was fighting for the United States.

We have certainly seen dark days in this country, and frankly, we should not have survived them. The Revolution, the Civil War, the Depression, World War II, these were all serious problems that really should have finished the United States. But they didn’t. In fact, if anything we were stronger.

Today there is a lot of worry and anxiety about our country and it exists on both sides of the political aisles. Countries with crazy leaders who hate us are getting nuclear weapons and 9/11 showed us just how vulnerable we are. The world seems less and less stable and safe every day.

At home, we have heated debates about the nature of freedom and the balance between security and liberty, between freedom and responsibility, and between individual rights and collective well-being. We worry either about the impact of global warming on the planet or the fact that all the cures seem to subtract our freedoms. Whatever side you happen to be on in the debates, I think it is fair to say that most of us are worried. Certainly the economic distress of the past few months has been an equal-opportunity stressor.

A few months ago, I was driving to my parent’s house to attend a wedding. I was preoccupied with worry about the country that I love so much. This country has been incredibly good to me and my family. It has provided us with opportunity to work and to be rewarded for that work. I want those same opportunities for my children and grandchildren.

So, I was worrying deeply about the present and especially the future. As I drove along the interstate I remembered that I had been up at night worrying when I was a child. It was near the end of the Cold War, although we didn’t know that at the time. We just knew that it was a very tense time.

I remember having fire, earthquake, and nuclear attack drills at school. Our proximity to a key Air Force base led us to live with the knowledge that we would certainly one day be the victims of a nuclear attack.

I don’t think anyone back then ever imagined that we would escape the Cold War without a single missile being fired. I think that the odds were that at least one major city would be attacked, and that the rest of us would become post-Nuclear attack zombie mutants.

And yet, somehow, we emerged from that difficult time safely. Just as we did from all the other tribulations in the past.

When I realized that, I felt peace. God has always blessed America. He has had a purpose for this country. And if He did in the past then He surely does now. He has always led us through the difficulties and the challenges and I believe He will do the same now. This is the seat of His kingdom on the earth today and I cannot believe that He is finished with His church or the country that provides its base.

The Book of Mormon tells us that there are powerful promises here in this country and no one can take those away from us. If we are righteous, that is, if my family and I are righteous, then the Lord has to honor those promises. And if I share the gospel so my friends and neighbors also know about those promises, then so much the better.

We need to do all we can to advocate for the policies we think are best. We need to give our best consideration to the issues of the day and let our voices be heard. The Church is scrupulously non-partisan and politically neutral, but they encourage us to be active and vocal. I noted in the First Presidency’s letter that was sent out during the last election that they said that there are principles compatible with the Gospel in both political parties. We need to do all we can—the Lord didn’t magically lift Washington’s army to Trenton, after all, he had to march at night in a storm—and then we need to be righteous and trust in the Lord.

But our past gives us reason for optimism, for hope, not fear.

In 1888, Israel Baline was born in a small village in Siberia. In 1893, his family fled from a brutal pogrom and made their way to New York City. The family of ten started in the United States with literally nothing. They all had to work to support themselves. It was a classic immigrant story. They worked hard, learned English and eventually prospered in a country that didn’t give them an easy life, but gave them freedom and safety. Israel’s father died and so Israel went to work to support his family. He started out selling songs and eventually he rose through the ranks to become an incredibly successful and prosperous songwriter.

During another dark time in our history, he penned these lines:

“While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,
Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free,
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.

God Bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Thru the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America, My home sweet home.”

A few years into his new life here, Isaiah Baline changed his name to Irving Berlin. He knew a thing or two about storm clouds gathering in other lands, and having living through world wars and depressions, he knew about God guiding us through “the night with a light from above.”

Irving Berlin wrote with the feeling of an immigrant who fled his home to escape being persecuted and killed and with the feeling of someone who came to this country with nothing and climbed to the top of his profession. He knew what he was writing about.

God has blessed America. Many, many times. And surely, if we ask, He will continue to do so.

Recessions, Sprawl, Homeowners and the Left: Part 2

Well, our post yesterday elicited three comments within a 45 minute period! This is quite a record here at the RC and we are elated. It normally takes roughly three weeks to get that many comments!

Picking up on that same post, the RC today wants to discuss one of the key points in the article that was cited.

Some economists (such as the execrable Paul Krugman) feel that the recession was caused by greedy middle and lower class folks who wanted homes of their own. Imagine that. Wanting a home of your own. Tsk, tsk.

If the RC understands the argument correctly, they are not just talking about people who couldn’t afford homes and got them anyway. No, they are talking about the idea that most of us aspire to have a home of our own.

This, they say, is bad. It causes banks to lend us money and then we and the banks make bad choices, which led to the recession.

For now, the RC will overlook the point that the government forced banks to lend money to people with no jobs and no credit, which created the toxic loans. The banks did not do this on their own.

But let’s leave all that behind and accept their premise. For the sake of argument, let’s acknowledge that the economy would somehow be better off if fewer of us owned homes and more of us lived in cinderblock sardine tins in New York City.

If that were the case, then the RC is compelled to ask: what good is a strong economy, then? I mean, the reason the RC wants the economy to be strong is so he can have a job and make a decent living and provide a good life for his family. The RC is not really all that interested in a good economy merely for the sake of a good economy. In fact, the RC could really care less about the economy except to the extent that it effects the lives of real people, especially real people he knows.

The RC really doesn’t care, and he imagines most people agree, what GDP and trade and deficits and 2nd quarter growth numbers and price-earning ratios are if they don’t benefit real people and make their lives better.

So, if giving up a decent lifestyle will help the economy, then the RC sees no reason why a good economy is all that important or desirable. If it will only benefit a few rich folks (who often seem to be the ones who want to control the rest of us) then count him out!

An economy is not a museum piece or an independent work of art to be stared at and admired by a few educated elites. The economy is not an end in and of itself. The economy is means to an end and that end is this: to provide individuals and families with better lives. And for many of us that includes a house of one's own.

Recessions, Sprawl, Homeowners and the Left: Part 1

(Editor's Note: This piece has been changed slightly since being first posted)

According to this very interesting article, some Leftish thinkers are blaming the recession on individual homeowners. You ought to read the article, but the gist of it is that the desire to own a home, and the fact that it is part of the American Dream, led banks to make bad decisions, which led to all the excesses that caused the Great Recession. And, beyond that, individual home ownership is bad because it makes living in high-density urban areas seem unappealing. Which means people leave cities as soon as they can and move to suburbs. And that is bad.

You see, they believe that if we all just lived in tightly-crammed apartments in cities, then we could all ride the bus or walk to work and there would be less pollution. Our Energy Secretary also thinks it would be great because lots of people in a small apartment would keep it warmer which would save money on heating bills. Since Secretary Chu is much smarter than the RC, the RC must assume he also has a plan to keep things cooler in the summer in the middle of all that concrete, asphalt, and body heat.

These folks would really like there to be less sprawl. Sprawl is a word progressives use often. It means: "homes and neighborhoods outside of decaying cities where families can live in a reasonable degree of privacy, autonomy and security."

So, if these folks get their way, this is the future: more of us crammed more tightly into urban areas. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?

The RC has a few thoughts about this liberal utopia because it seems to him that this one issue neatly captures a whole lot of the progressive agenda

First of all, it seems to the RC that there is something about people having freedom and choices that drives progressive/liberal/leftists of all persuasions crazy. The first President Bush paraphrased H. L. Mencken's quote that a puritan is someone who can't sleep at night worrying that somehow someone somewhere is having a good time.

It’s like that with progressives. The fact that someone somewhere is going to choose to do something they don’t like, something of which they don't approve is like an itch in the middle of their back they can’t reach. It keeps them awake at night and it incites them to madness.

To be sure, they don’t say that it’s a matter of not liking choices people make. And possibly they don’t even realize that themselves. Rather, they find specific operational objections to cite, for example, they say they don’t want you to drive a car to work because of global warming; they say they don’t want you and your doctor to choose your healthcare because it’s wasteful and inefficient; they say they don’t want you to eat out at McDonald's because it will make you fat which is unhealthy. The list goes on and on but underneath these specific reasons, there seems to be a consistent philosophy: "We, the enlightened, the educated, the intelligent--we will choose for you."

If you scratch beneath the surface deeply enough you realize that many on the Left just have a fundamental mistrust of people and doesn’t like the choices that they make. Thus, there is an elemental desire to control, compel and regulate every aspect of life.

More later.