Permutations of a Dream

Every great, historic nation has had, at its core, an idea or a principle with which its people identify. One might even call such a thing a nation's prime characteristic or theme. Ancient Israel had the Law of Moses; ancient Greece its philosophies and its love of beauty; ancient Rome had its army, its roads, and its very effective government; Great Britain, at its zenith, had its culture spread across the globe.

At the outset, our nation, the United States of America, had, at its core, the fundamental ideas of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These three lofty ideas formed the bedrock of our national identity. And for generations, we moved forward with a common understanding of these ideals.

Sadly, within the last two generations, we have traded in these high, majestic ideals for inferior substitutes. America today is characterized by ideas such as tolerance, equality, diversity, inclusion, multiculturalism, fairness, and so forth.

While each of these words represent worthy goals, they do not, by any standard, measure up to our nation's original, core precepts. Preached and oftimes mandated from well meaning but misguided leaders, America's newly adopted values and identity, sap our people of liberty. And liberty has historically been the fuel which has fired the engine of America's greatness.

As more and more of us conform to these new, inferior ideas, whether through peer pressure or outright brainwashing, we become weaker as a nation. We do not fly our flag with the same sense of pride as did our fathers and grandfathers. We labor under a false guilt for our national wealth and prosperity. Some Americans even believe that we are somehow responsible for the world's misery.

In their misguided efforts to reshape our culture, our teachers, politicians, and social engineers have denuded our nation of the ideas and ideals that once made America The New Colossus. Millions of immigrants from earlier centuries came to our shores not for tolerance, equality, diversity, inclusion, and fairness. Nor did they expect us to embrace their culture. They came to assimilate into our culture, to learn our language, to work hard, and to enter into the fullness of being an American. And we, as a nation, were strong because of it.

Today we are weak. We no longer value liberty. We have somehow come to expect a risk-free existence. We want to be cared for. We want lives of minimal risk, of guarantees. Toward those ends, we have slowly and methodically surrendered, bit by bit, our liberty. So gradual has this slide been, that we scarcely recognize it.

Our world is riddled with sin and its after-effects. With sin comes the potential for personal failure, catastrophe, poverty, premature death, and all sorts of other hazards. Our Creator granted us life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But he did not guarantee to us a happy, or even positive outcome, in this earthly life.

No government, no amount of education, no indoctrination or reprogramming of the mind, will ever make the world tolerant, equal, accepting of diversity, inclusive of all. Nor can any amount of government edicts ever make life fair. Such thinking is foolish utopianism, a pitiful, second-rate permutation of the original, American dream.