Time to Stand Up, Pick Your Side, and Speak Up

It is becoming fully apparent that the Democrats won’t rest until they have not only destroyed President Trump but have completely torn the Country apart as well.

We know why they have this need to destroy the President:  First, he won the election which they were “supposed to” win in 2016.  Now they are concerned that with his many promises kept, the booming economy, improved standing in the world, etc., that they will not be able to beat him in 2020, so they must destroy him one way or another before then.  And, of course, they just don’t like him – he is not like them, he is real, he says what he thinks, rather than play political games he’d rather just get things done.  His successes prove how ineffective the Democrats have been and how little they really care about the American people and their country.

So, the Democrats are willing to tear the country apart, destroy it perhaps beyond repair, just to regain their power and finish off the man whom they irrationally hate.

They are already well on their way to success.  The most obvious display of their irrationality is in their continuing obsession with the Mueller report.  They refuse to give up on their debunked Russia collusion story.  They defy well established law as they hold the Attorney General in contempt for following laws that prohibit the release of confidential grand jury testimony.   They would hold hearings after hearings after hearings for no legitimate purpose while the real business of the country, the business they were elected to attend to, goes unattended and ignored.

But there is more.  They have put the Constitution itself under attack.  They find several ways to silence those whose views do not agree with their own.  Conservative speakers are often excluded from a variety of events; those who support the President are shamed and attacked, both verbally and physically; those who serve the president are the subject of not only verbal and sometimes physical assault, but also of every possible legal assault as well.  Lawsuit upon lawsuit upon lawsuit is filed for any action with which the Democrats do not concur – no matter that it reflects the will of the people, thus slowing down action after action that would benefit this Country and its people.  Political correctness silences views and opinions that are not those which the Democrats approve – no matter that those opinions or observations may be necessary to have a full and objective discussion of an issue. 

Like little angry children who can’t accept compromise, the Democrats in essence keep yelling “It’s my way or the highway!”  They cannot accept the will of the people when it isn’t what they want.  This is not what our Constitution envisions; it is not the way our Democratic Republic works!

Democrats are trying to change the way our president is elected.  The loss of the electoral college would put far more power in the Democratic strongholds – large cities and liberal coastal states – leaving those in fly-over country with no real reason to even cast a vote. 

Their lack of understanding of the Constitution is startling at times.  Nancy Pelosi recently stated that Congress is the “superior branch” of government when she should know that all 3 branches are equal.  Democrats, in their goal to eliminate guns, compare them to cars which are licensed, ignoring the fact that while there is a Constitutional right to bear arms, there is no constitutional right to own or drive a car. 

Democrats have lost respect for the protections that our Constitution provides against unreasonable search and seizure.  They disregard such concepts as “innocent until proven guilty.”  Rather, if they approve a narrative that proclaims someone guilty, they will ignore any and all evidence to the contrary.  The Constitution strives to treat all citizens equally; the Democrats would divide us based on a variety of identity characteristics as they pick favorites and those whom they condemn in their continuing games of identity politics.

In the same vein, the Democrats have forgotten that the Constitution protects our right to hold our own beliefs and be free to exercise them.  We hear anti-Christian and anti-Semetic sentiments, as well as anti-white and anti-other disfavored identity groups daily from the mouths of Democrats who should know better.  And, they further seek to rewrite history, eliminating what they don’t like, eliminating unpleasant aspects that we may not be proud of but from which we learned and evolved.  That is, they would eliminate part of what in the end makes us great.  And, what they do not seek to eliminate, they would rewrite to serve their own ends.

I do not mean to imply that Constitutional rights cannot be limited; they can when there is a compelling need to do so, but such restrictions are as narrow as possible.  The Constitution is the core of our Country.  It gives us our representative form of Democracy which allows every citizen to have a voice and in so doing protects us from mob rule of a pure Democracy or State control by a Socialist or Communistic structure.  The Democrats seemingly do not want us to have that protection. 

The Democrats are not going to give up in this war that they are waging on the President, our Country, and our way of life.  No one can stand on the side any longer.

I am reminded of the words of Pastor Niemoller, regarding his failure to speak up in Nazi Germany.  Beginning with the Jews he lists several groups that were subsequently and incremental purged, group after group. After stating each group, he confesses he did not speak up because he was not one of them.  The statement ends with the words “Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

We are all in the shoes of Pastor Niemoller in the face of the Democrats.  Don’t let their double-speak and projections of their behavior onto that of their enemy fool you.  It is not Donald Trump or the Republicans who would destroy the Constitution and our Country; it is the Democrats who are doing so even as I write, and you read this.

A time comes when one must choose sides.  If not now, that time is fast approaching.  In choosing one must not be swayed by what is popular or pretty or immediately gratifying.  One must truly understand with whom they are choosing to stand and what their victory would mean, not just in the short term, but in the long view of the individual, our Constitution, our Country, and our way of life.

This is serious business.  And it demands a serious review of who we are and what our Nation stands for, and what will be lost if we do not stop the Democrats’ march to destroy it all.  The Democrats would prefer that no one take notice, that like blind sheep we ignore the wolf they have become in our midst.  Those who choose to do that, to simply sit back and assume all will be fine, must consider that when they have lost all that was, there will be no one left to speak for them.

Points of View Are Not Facts; We Need Both and We Need to Understand the Difference

Apparently during a meeting at the White House about funding for the wall last Wednesday, the following interchange took place:

Democrat and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen: “I reject your facts”

Nielsen to Pelosi: “These aren’t my facts.  These are the facts.”

If people are unwilling to acknowledge, let alone accept given facts, then how can we ever have a discussion, let alone resolve differences or solve important issues?

Unless we wish to discuss apples and oranges as if they were the same thing, we must be willing to accept facts – things that provably exist.  That is not to say that we must have the same opinions of those facts, but we must all begin discussions of issues with an acceptance of those things that simply are.  Then we can express differing opinions about those facts and their significance to the particular issue that we are discussing.  It is during that presentation of differing views that we have the opportunity to learn from those who seem to disagree with us.  It is that sort of discussion that allows differing sides to move forward to a compromise of or solution to their disagreement, a solution that might change for the better facts that exist in the future.

But, if we are unwilling to accept given and provable facts, if, instead of arguing about their significance, we choose to dispute the indisputable, we are unlikely to move forward.  If we dispute pure facts themselves, then the dispute is essentially some version of "I am right and you are wrong" and each side simply tries to convert the other side to their “facts”; when the conversion does not occur, the conversation ends.  There is no solution to such a dispute.

However, if we begin by accepting the provable and certain facts, then we can evaluate those facts from differing viewpoints and perspectives.  We can accept the relevant facts on an issue and also the fact that differing experiences often lead people to interpret facts differently.  That is the beginning of a rational discussion and hopefully a rational resolution to a problem. 

Here’s a quick example.  Let’s say I run a stop sign, and there is no dispute about the location of the stop sign or a nearby tree, that I ran through the stop, and (we are assuming I’m truthful here) that I assert I did not see the sign.  Those are facts.  What we might dispute is whether, given the location of the sign and the tree, I should have seen it, or, whether the city should have placed the stop sign in a more visible location.  Those are interpretations of the basic indisputable fact of the sign’s location.  But if we spend our time disputing where the stop sign was located or if there really was a tree located near it, etc., then we will never get to a resolution of issues such as whether I should pay for damage I caused by running the sign or whether the city should move the sign or trim the tree that may have blocked it.

So, when we discuss immigration, there are certain facts that, while we might not like them, are indisputable.  Things like the numbers of illegals in this country; the numbers crossing our border both legally and illegally, the numbers in custody; the numbers of children; that some are criminals; that some families are separated at the border; that border agents have rescued aliens and that some aliens have died in our custody; that sanctuary cities protect aliens from ICE; that there are a variety of reasons why migrants seek to enter America, both legally and illegally.  These and many other facts can be specifically supported with statistics and other evidence.  Similarly, the laws and their requirements can easily be read.  These are all facts.  If we are going to actually have a productive dialog about immigration, then we must accept the facts that exist – all the facts, whether they further our argument or not -  and discuss their significance to our country in light of varying views and interpretations of those facts.  We can try to understand those views that differ from ours and try to persuade those who hold them to perhaps see some of the facts from our perspective instead. 

But, if we are going to reject those actual facts that don’t support our position, if we are going to turn facts we don’t like into something refutable that belong to the other side of our issue, then any attempts at discussion must go nowhere.  Facts, indisputable evidence, is not something about which we can rationally disagree.  And so statements such as that made by Speaker Pelosi are simply a way of blocking any rational discussion of the immigration issue. 

We can have both facts and points of view on an issue.  Indeed, that is what our democracy relies upon – an acceptance and encouragement of diverse voices on an issue as we move forward to correct problems related to provable facts.  But, we can’t make up the facts.  We can’t choose which facts to accept.  The facts simply are.  It is the picking and choosing of facts to make up a narrative pleasing to one side or another and then an assertion that only that narrative is correct, that creates the impossible animosity that grips our country today.

It is easy to assert that our views are facts.  But, simply, they are not.  And, until people can accept that fact, until they can distinguish the two, there is little hope for resolution to issues and much likelihood of continuing hostility toward, instead of tolerance of, those holding differing views.