The Website home of Karl Bullock

July 5, 2011

Why has the United States become the great power that it is? And, why is it seemingly so hard to get an American-style constitutional government to "work" anywhere else? Why did it work so well here, and why is it seeming to falter now? As I wrote a couple of days ago in anticipation of Independence Day, there are some things we've forgotten. It's time to focus more clearly on those things.

When the Founders contemplated the government they would establish (and remember, they'd tried half-heartedly once and failed with the Articles of Confederation), they began to call upon all their resources to bring all of history to bear upon the issue. In the end, they tapped several sources of political and economic thought and wove those sources into a heretofore unique idea - a government of "We the people", later to be expressed in a short speech by our 16th President at Gettysburg as "of, by and for the People". Of these sources, all can be traced back to a single simple statement expressed in our Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" [emphasis mine].

Ours is the only nation on earth that bases its right to exist solely on Providence - the Creator - God Almighty. This is the single most important secret to our success. Our Founders, almost to a man, acknowledged that without God, our nation could not subsist. Where God is not at the center, no nation can last. This is seen in all of history from Genesis to present day. You can politic, strategize, focus-group, think-tank, and Ivy-League all you want, but without our acknowledgment of and dependence upon God, our nation will fail, and that failure will be of monumental proportions. Until the settlement of the Americas, and the establishment of The United States, there was always somewhere else to go. Unless you have a spaceport in your back year, this is it - there's no where else to go. Reagan made that clear in many of his speeches. We are the last, best hope - a hope placed here by and dependent upon God - and we are losing it!

"OK, so what's your point"? My point is simply this:

Our focus needs to be focused on our dependency, and that's not the economy, Wall Street, the military, the "government", or any other human endeavor. If we don't focus on what pleases the God that sustains us, that sustenance will cease - It's just that simple. So, to keep from vanishing "...from the face of the earth", as Lincoln hoped we would not do, we need to redouble our efforts (or begin, whichever applies in your case) to ask in every area of life "What would please God", then do that. There's a place for strategic policy, and a place for compromise, and yes, maybe even a small place for politics, though I'm more and more inclined to believe politics is of the devil. Either way, we should be focused on the main thing. Pull a Nike - "Just do it".

Think I'm preaching? Don't believe me? Then you're a lousy student of history. Do your homework - I dare you.

It's July 5th - a good day to really start celebrating Providence who got us here, and the reason why The United States still works, even with all the colossal screwups we've all been a party to. This can be fixed, people. This is the only way.