We live in times that challenge us – even to read a column. Weariness with politicians, the way they spend our money, imagine themselves in charge, project arrogance – is grating, frustrating, exhausting. Never is that more so than in January, when cold winds blow, sun is low, and inspiration hibernates. But do not lose hope. We have countless reasons to restoke the fire.
For openers, the future is not written, personally or nationally. While much seems beyond our control, conservative principles – the basic beliefs and practices that got us here – have inertia. They have staying power, are persuasive, and are resistant to senseless change.
This does not mean that our national dialogue cannot get off track, terms temporarily redefined by those who arrogantly imagine that they can, for a day, play God. This does not mean political discourse is within boundaries, civil, or even sensible. In every generation, arrogance creates fools.
Looking around – we seem to have an abundance of those ready to redefine everything from history and citizenship to biology and physics, acceptable disruption to public corruption. But certain laws govern the universe – including logic, experience, conscience, life, death, and the very different feels of oppression and freedom.
Encouragingly, these laws are timeless, like the natural rights enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and the Magna Carta. Moreover, like it or not, God is in charge – which means some things are unchangeable, science and math, procreation and expiration, truth and untruth, what makes light a mystery and darkness its absence. These never vary.
To make this encouragement more obvious and practical, today’s Marxist, atheistic, and neo-utopian fools can say oppression is not oppression, or “slavery is freedom” – it changes nothing. Humans in every era know oppression when they see it.
Likewise, fools can say boys are girls, men can become pregnant, genders are interchangeable, pretend there are no genetic biomarkers, or that reproduction is monosexual – all lies. We are not amoeba, and never will be.
They can argue a human baby in the womb, at any stage up to birth, is not alive, that the child’s heartbeat is somehow different after breathing, or child is not a child – but somewhere inside, they know.
They can argue that teaching children overt racism – to treat each other differently based on skin color – is not racism, but they know, as King did, that is false. The gifts God gives to each of us, opportunities allowed from birth, are based on our humanness, not on our race.
So, the first cause for optimism is that truth is powerful stuff, timeless and unbending. Even when fools aim to bend it, they cannot break it. Trying to twist, pervert, or submerge it is as useless – to borrow from physics – as trying to keep a bubble down. It rises. Laws of God do not change because we distort the word we use to describe life.
Second, the power to make optimism real in our lives is ours. We cannot control what others do, including the blessings and challenges presented to us daily, but we can always control how we perceive them, respond to them, and choose to resolve them. That power is entirely ours.
Third, Adam Smith famously imagined an “invisible hand.” He suggested the sum of society’s personal, moral, and economic decisions, millions and millions of them, shape society. If God’s laws are unchangeable, we shape society by balancing self-interest and conscience. We do that.
Put differently, if those of us who care and know how America became such as powerful force for good can teach younger Americans both history and how to hear their conscience, how to see their own long-term interest, we can shape the future.
Interestingly, for those who think this is not what Smith imagined, it was. Before the “Wealth of Nations,” he wrote “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” and delivered his famous “Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms.” He prodded society to intergenerational action.
Thus, he wrote: “The administration of the great system of the universe … the care of the universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the business of God and not of man,” but “to man is allotted a much humbler department … suitable to the weakness of his powers …the care of his own happiness, of that of his family, his friends, his country…” This is the nub. If we model and teach this, we reorient everything to a brighter future.
Finally, as we watch leaders fumbling, dissembling, and showcasing arrogance, we should remember their tenure is limited, missteps seen by everyone, foibles obvious – and like the rise and fall of January’s winds, they too will go. Our job is to know – America’s strengths. And then to live as if we believe them to be enduring. Those before us have, those after will, if we do.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
