I’ve been trying to find the right message for my first post-election essay. Looking for the perfect words, the most moving theme, what people need to hear. I’ve been riding on a seismograph of emotion, up from crying on the phone with my mom to angry debating with a stranger in the dorm lounge, down to denial and shock, and finally finding a positive medium where I can find contentedness in my faith in America’s resilience. My father encouraged me with a reminder of my own strength and that of my political brethren. We have been hurt, there’s no doubt, but we’re not dead.
I know that my party is not done. While we’re going to have it rough for a few years, fighting to balance seemingly unchecked liberal control in all three branches of the government, we can do it. We should’ve known all along that we’d never go down without a fight; this election was just one round in a series of many matches to come. Let’s call it a warm-up. We are going to regroup after this loss, pick up our things, center ourselves, and move on. We will use this defeat as a wakeup call, alerting our members with a call of duty. We have a job to do now, and it’s time to get to work.
All we need is a strong leader to emerge. That has been our downfall over the past few years, no impressive orator, no head honcho, no Reagans or Buckleys or Lincolns. I don’t know who it will be or where the person will come from, but I’ll be looking. Maybe Palin, maybe someone we haven’t heard from yet, maybe someone we won’t expect. No matter who it is, the bottom line is that this person needs to make him or herself known soon. In the meantime, the rest of us need to man up, get together in our towns, and prepare our revolution.
If you’re a conservative reading this, you know exactly what I’m talking about and you’re with me. If you’re a liberal reading this, you think I’m crazy. But you’re not my audience right now, so that’s ok. This is a message to Sean Hannity’s “Conservative Underground.” We’re in it together, and we’re going to win. It has started already. Walking to my first class this morning, I had an unspoken bond with everyone I passed wearing black. We’d nod a somber nod to one another, and no one else seemed to see it. If secrecy and stealth missions are the future of the Republican Party, so be it. We’re good at stuff like that.
As scared as I am for the future of our country and of our party, I am hopeful, because I know how strong we are. We have stood against evil before and won, and those are the battles that trained us. Our courage has been fortified in the fires of war, our faith is founded in God’s will, and our characters have been tested, more tryingly in recent months than perhaps ever before, and have passed with flying colors. Our patriotism is not this easily snuffed, and we know that America is the greatest nation on earth, one well worth the battle ahead of us. We have fought for Her glory before. We will do it again, starting today.
Do not be discouraged. Instead, take this as a warning of things to come if we continue to do nothing. If we all still want prosperity and peace and reform, failure is not an option at this point. Dress your wounds and come with me.
While we’ve still got the right to bear them, I’m bellowing a call to arms. Republicans of America: It’s go time.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Well said, O clarion one...
At times like these, it is tempting to lash out at those who voted for Obama and everything he stands for (or doesn't stand for) and become embittered and noxious. (Not that you did)
Your post reminded me that it is not our fellow Americans that are the enemy but radical ideas that threaten to undermine and chip away at the glorious and sound foundations of our nation. We must fight against those who would allow--even promote--changing our founding documents or even "reinterpret" them beyond recognition. That is our battle,not the people who inhabit this grand land.
You brought a tear to my eye. Kelly, very well spoken. I, like you, have been trying to find the words myself and I can't seem to shake myself out of the fog of reality in order to fully embrace what just happened. Thank you, once again, for your clear headed thoughts and well articulated passion. Like we talked about, I'm ready to answer the call just as you are. In times like this, I find myself turning to Thomas Jefferson for unparalleled words of wisdom...
"When governments fear people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."--Thomas Jefferson
"If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, and give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; And the sixteen being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they do now, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; But be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains around the necks of our fellow sufferers; And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on 'til the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering...and the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression."--Thomas Jefferson
I was the only one I saw dressed in black today.
You are so inspiring
while i think your post (as most always) was eloquent and gracious; i really wish you wouldn't think of our nation as you against us (republicans vs. democrats). especially in a time like this, we really need to bond together as a nation. i think our new president, barak obama said it best last night when he quoted lincoln "we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."
I do want us to unite, but at this point we're so polar to one another it seems like an impossibility. It's not necessarily R vs. D but our IDEALS vs. yours. The bottom line is, one set of rules has to run the country, and we'll never stop fighting over which ones.
On a side note, I don't see Obama as a great uniter as many do. I think, because he voted with Democrats 97% of the time in the Senate, that he's pretty stuck on getting his party's way and leaving very little room for compromise. That's why I think this revolution of sorts is necessary.
Post a Comment