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It's a Moral Party Choice Pat Boone Well, the lines are becoming painfully clear, heading toward the next elections and beyond. It's not all between Democrats and Republicans; it's really settling in as a great divide between philosophies, between visions of what we want America to be. It's a growing divide about what citizens of this great republic think is best for us as a people. The choices being made are about what seems permissible, even desirable, for a free society and what's worth defending for our country now, and for future generations. And we need to realize, most soberly, that changes made now in legislation and in social acceptance will pretty much determine the world our children and grandchildren will inhabit from now on. Once Pandora's box is opened, the loosed imps will never be corralled and put back. We'll be stuck with the consequences, for better or worse, indefinitely if not permanently.
While the ink was still drying on the United States Constitution in 1787, Benjamin Franklin observed: "Only a moral and virtuous people are capable of freedom; the more corrupt and vicious a society becomes, the more it has need of masters." I've chewed on that for a long time now. And the more I turn that gem over and ponder its facets, the more I realize its profundity. It was also Franklin who remarked on the Constitution and its prospective fragility: The document had created "a republic, if you can keep it."
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What our founders realized was that our various unprecedented freedoms could be abused and manipulated by immoral and self-serving people, and that liberties could deteriorate into license. Unscrupulous people could use our very liberties against us to accomplish objectives that the framers never intended, and turn our free society into a perversion of its initial vision. And eventually an alarmed electorate might opt to give up some of the liberties, in order to defend their families and to preserve a decent way of life. Look, already we've collectively and voluntarily surrendered some of our privacy and convenience (the ACLU and its kind strenuously objecting) in the interest of homeland security, agreeing to searches at the airports and some monitoring of communications. Why? Because of the obvious: Terrorists with deadly intentions will use our very liberties to spring unforeseeable traps and kill as many of us as possible. These are sensible and necessary precautions, and in time of war we regretfully and temporarily (we hope) give up some of our freedom.
At least, that's what clear-thinking conservatives are willing to do. But not the lefties among us. The "defenders of civil rights" aren't willing to make any concessions to the reality of the deadly struggle we're in. They have the strange notion that we don't have to sacrifice anything, and that while sinister, well-funded, and diabolically determined forces plot to bring us down, our recently elected congress should focus on other things:
It seems to be boiling down to this: While the righties are trying desperately to conserve the very fabric and definition of "one nation under God" and to bear any burden to defend our republic the lefties are seizing the opportunity to change our national DNA, perverting the very liberties that allow them to do it. Am I exaggerating, painting too stark a picture? Consider the latest urgent bulletin from the ACLJ, the American Center for Law and Justice. This conservative opponent of the ultra-liberal ACLU wrote and managed to see Congress pass the "Protect Act," to keep children from being victimized by the multi-million dollar internet pornography industry, prohibiting anyone from distributing or soliciting any online images, photos, or messages that would be perceived as actual or obscene child pornography. Remember, child pornography is created by actually abusing children on film, but the U.S. Court of Appeals declared the Protect Act unconstitutional. The reasoning? Michael Williams of Miami, convicted of possessing and pandering child pornography depicting his own baby daughter, serving concurrent five-year prison terms on each charge, appealed his conviction claiming that the Protect Act is "overly broad" and in violation of his constitutional rights. And who argued his case, winning the decision in his favor? You guessed it the ACLU. And when a Nevada man was sentenced to up to 18 years for possessing more than 800 child-porn images, the district judge shrugged off the significance of the crime by saying: "It's my understanding that most men are sexually attracted to young women. When I say young women, I don't just mean women that . . . you should be attracted to. I mean women from the time they're one all the way up until they're 100." Astonishingly, he went on to say, "Having sex with a girl between 12 and 16 is prohibited [only] because we say it's prohibited . . . which flies in the face of our, I guess for lack of a better description, our normal impulses." You can visit www.aclj.org for more alarming information on this sordid trend in our legal system, and on the amicus brief they're preparing, on our behalf, to take to the Supreme Court. They need and deserve the support of all right-thinking Americans. Time and space don't allow me to expound on all this here, in this piece. But the examples of this fight for our very soul are everywhere all around us. And I'll do my best to keep pointing out battle fronts; it's truly a war for the survival of our national character, our very identity, our future.
What's that old saying? It's become new and pertinent again: "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country."
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