Posted by
VBushmills on Saturday, April 11, 2009 12:46:39 PM
In all likelihood, yes...unless...
...the Tea Parties all fly in on the wings of a larger theme.
For the longest time now, we have been trying, through some rather long sermons, er, essays, re-establish the spiritual roots of Liberty and the Constitution, as the Founders saw it, and which, until around the Wilson era, most Americans were taught to see it...as a kind of secular religion...a transcendental secular religion. When you stand back a ways and look at it, as a giant landscape, set against the history of tyranny and serfdom through the ages, America does take on a religious aspect. It just does.
I use the word "transcendental" in this sense: when a person accepts the Christian faith (among others), what some sects call "getting saved" or "being born again" or "seeing the Light", it is as if that religion had just been born for the very first time, because, it indeed had in that individual. This is why such religions can procreate themselves one person at a time and persist through millenia, for each day there are being born this truth anew, with each convert. (This is also why, despite some texts that seem to the contrary, we find a deep "goodness" in Islam as well....for men do not accept and bequeath Evil as readily, or in the same spiritual way, as they do Good. One does not get "saved" for, or "see the light" of Evil. That comes from a different direction altogether.
The underlying, or if you will, spiritual underpinnings of the constitutional ideas, i.e, dignity of man, the free pursuit of life, liberty and property are no different. This is why generation after generation of foreigners have come here and, in time, discarded all the hateful baggage of the places they left.
But they had to be taught....in part by example, and in part in various types of classrooms.
Unlike the corner Baptist church, where the biggest trick was getting people to visit in the first place, it was always easy to get people to come to the American "church"...so easy, in fact, saved Americans we gave up on the sermon and the teaching the lessons as to this place is special, and why they were here, what they could do here they can't do anyplace else, and what new insights they should take home so they could pass the Good News of America and liberty onto their children and their childrens' children. Because we quit teaching gratitude all around, it has been easy for the Congress, just to name one institution, to displace the nobility and sacrifice of others to provide and protect these people's access to better jobs, homes and futures. Today, for millions, life is good, only no one knows why. No one is taught why. There is no thanksgiving....save to the re-distributors of wealth.
If we can restore this one thing...the spiritual connection of our liberties...our schools have long since abandoned it...intentionally I might add...then the Tea Parties and other events will all have legs and mean something bigger.
For you see, Marx also preached a kind of secular religion, only one of hatred, jealousy and envy for the achievements of any sort that did not arise from its own hallowed halls of the intellect. And today, he holds the upper hand.
VB