Monday Morning Music Ministry

4-14-25

I have spent a good portion of my years commenting on social challenges and political problems. As a political cartoonist, columnist, speaker, and blogger (and, I suppose, curmudgeon) one of my well-worn hats has been Commentator. So I am going to comment on matters that have been impressed on me lately – different realizations, different responses, than I, and most of us, I think, have considered.

For all of America’s vaunted blessings, we have been cursed, too, with myriad maledictions. “American Exceptionalism” does not mean, as professional detractors claim, that we believe that a US birth certificate bestows special privilege; it means that the American experience has been unique in practice and promise.

… or used to be.

Despite American dominance in trade and military might and financial activity we all sense that these are roller-coaster rides at best and, currently, chimeras at worst. Are we living past the expiration-dates of such aspects of national life?

I think that throughout most of history, if we asked average citizens of this country or that land or some territory what they thought their greatest Problem was – for all peoples have had some complaints – the responses would be hostile enemies, or persistent illnesses, or cruel leaders. Welcome to life; the human condition; societal struggles. Ask sentient Americans, however, and the answers would be different.

Most people would go straight to a long list of problems, challenges, and American crises. They would choose the most onerous or threatening to their conditions. Their fears and face over-extension and essential concerns would be reflected by their choices. Different than history’s list of civilizations and their discontents, the average American would tick off things like low morals, drug addiction, failed marriages, crime in their actual neighborhoods, corruption, low literacy, the anarchy of gender dysphoria, and similar social malignancies.

In other words, today’s threats – America’s threats – are more of attitudes and morals than of physical intimidation and dangers. With few exceptions (the Roman Empire, for instance, after centuries of strength and a robust economy before it slid into decay) civilizations have not dissolved in the way that America has. There is an inertia of good fortune (squandered) and a matter of false security (strength; manipulation of conditions; and the bully’s attitude of global hegemony – a hallmark of empires when they approach collapse). The malignancy of imperial passions is one of the confirmations of the Law of Civilization and Decay, in the parlance of Brooks Adams. A pattern from which societies have not learned.

It strikes me that the current state of analysis of American problems is, as a discipline, weirdly schizophrenic. “Deep thinkers” and academics of the Left, long dominant in America and Europe, lately have been answered by intellectual technicians of the Right. The debates go on, and are robust.

But so does the dissolution of our society. We have social theories, but few social palliatives. We have some new answers, but many more new questions. To endemic challenges to the human condition, we tend to return to failed, even disastrous, modes despite the attempts of History to teach us.

Pollsters and analysts discover “new” things. They draw conclusions from wrongly posited questions. They address the superficial, even as the Emperor parades before them, scarcely clothed. Omar Khayyam wrote,

All the saints and sages who discuss’d

Of the two worlds so learnedly are thrust

Like foolish prophets forth; their words to scorn

Are scattered. Their mouths are stopp’d with dust.

I believe that our current age, and “pundits” especially, have missed the main points of the crises we endure – whether from ignorance, strategic distraction, or naivete. I used the word “moral” above, describing the nature of the threats we have allowed, and which will be the vehicle of our destruction. This is our fate. But a moral crisis only partly defines the origin of our situation.

We have a spiritual problem.

And only a spiritual response can overcome it.

Nobody can argue that America was not founded on spiritual principles; nor that the Founders and Framers – even “Deists” – did not revere Biblical injunctions and models by which to fashion a society and government; nor that laws were written (and obeyed) adhering to Christian precepts. We are a Christian nation, the Supreme Court once declared. God is acknowledged on public buildings, including Congress, and on our currency. Dozens of our presidents have invoked Christ and pleaded for His guidance.

… until recently. The sick and destructive elements of Everyday Life in America are man-made, and not mere absent-minded choices, but willful rejection of God’s commandments and Jesus’s teachings. After uncountable generations of spiritual laws and spiritual examples… we now think we can tell God that He made mistakes when He assigned sexes to His children? That love and marriage are trivial matters? That we no longer need to obey His commands?

Our destruction is sure unless we, as a nation, return to God, to Christian principles.

Politicians need to discover humility. Cultural icons need to acknowledge and respect God. Pundits and pollsters need to discard reliance on false premises (because statistics don’t lie, but statisticians do). The clergy needs to shed ephemeral political correctness and return to the Word of God. Parents, and children, need to ignore the seductions of what is “in,” and follow the Bible in their daily walks. Corporate leaders, the military, the educational-industrial complex, need to follow God and not whims.

Spiritual problems are at the core of the crises we face and will destroy us… unless America experiences a spiritual revival. And God will not send a revival: We must be the conscious, willful agents of such a change.

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Click: Satan’s Jewel Crown