Thoughts on a Sunny Afternoon

It's hump day and the sun is shining on Anchorage proper. It was 61 degrees at my building as I left, although the thermometer at home reads a few degrees cooler. The mountains - just a couple of miles away - are shrouded in low, dark grey clouds. But any time I need sunglasses for the afternoon drive, I'm a happy camper.

The local news is still obsessed with the Joe Miller victory ... but I need a breather. Politics is not my preferred medium, for all that I seem to harp on that subject. It's just that I see so much that looks/smells/IS wrong, and I want so much for it to be set aright.

Others may disagree, but that's okay. It takes all kinds to make America strong, and decent folk can disagree without coming to blows or worse. Those who want to dismantle all that has made us strong, to dismember and erase our history ... our values ... our core principles and beliefs ... can take a hike. There are plenty of nanny-state governments all 'round the world, and they're welcome to visit any of them ... and stay there.

My wife has a sign in her office which reads: "You can disagree with me - or you can be right." It's amusing, but more in line with office politics than national values. Just the same, America has traditionally stood for the good in the working family, its belief in hard work, God and country. This country IS exceptional - regardless of what the blowhards on the East Coast think - and there's a reason for that.

Our Founding Fathers believed that we could achieve greatness, given the chance to be free ... to strive for something better ... to improve ourselves and our situations through hard work, courage, and faith in God and ourselves.

While not all of them were Christians, and even those who were had sincere differences, they all recognized that without faith in a divine, omnipotent power, we would have a much-diminished future. They talked about "divine Providence" and even wrote that they recognized, at the end of the extremely trying debate over the language of the Constitution, that the document which was produced was better than any of them expected. James Madison said, "It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it [the Constitution] a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution."

John Adams wrote, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." [emphasis added]

Glenn Beck has called for the nation to return to God. While he's not everyone's flavor, I believe he's right, at least on this point. Please note that neither he nor I specify which God, or what shape that "return" should take.

Those of a certain age will remember that Billy Graham used to have a syndicated newspaper column. He answered readers' questions; one was, "Why are there so many denominations?" He replied it's because there are so many different kinds of people. Exactly.

The point is, it won't hurt this nation if a majority of its people decide to be better, moral, essentially good. It just might help, and I wouldn't mind seeing a degree of small-town civility introduced in larger, more urban settings. Just saying.

I know that politics never sleep, and I'm sure the coming election will intrude on our attention ere long. Just the same, it's nice to talk about something else, isn't it?