McLean County Times

The autumn presidential election season is fast approaching. In addition to the office of president, in November, we are voting for congressional representatives and, in some states, senators. Locally, we vote for our leadership in Springfield and members of our County Board. While looking at the candidates before deciding who we will support is essential, it also pays to look at where the dominant political parties have taken us during the nearly four years since Joe Biden assumed the presidency. As voters move toward the ballot box, it's time to start taking a closer look at what the progressive Left has done to us.

This country is engaged in a vast cultural war, and the future of our nation is at risk of complete societal wreck and ruin. Many people claim they are no longer proud to be Americans. We see political fanaticism nearly everywhere we look. There is increasing irreligiosity among Americans, with the number of "religious nones" rising to an all-time high and our churches emptying. The government has begun to attack the traditional way of life, which has provided us with so much good in the past. There is government overreach everywhere we look. The present administration is assaulting our moral beliefs and traditional institutions, and our judicial system is being weaponized against those who oppose such changes. True believers – dissenters of the new secular gods – are being taken to task. We are on the brink of something big, which might not be good.

We are at a crossroads.

Saying that we are at a crossroads seems like a rather outrageous claim, but the matter of the fact is that it's true. We are much worse off today than under the Trump administration four years ago. Of that, there can be no question. Things began to go bad just after Joe Biden became president, and both chambers of Congress came under the control of Democrats. The Left has increasingly turned against the Right. Conservatives have turned against progressives. Democrats are at the throats of the Republicans and vice versa. We can't go on much longer like we are, or we might not have any country in the future.

Since the last election, we seem to have no southern border. The existing border wall has virtually disappeared because of Joe Biden's lack of concern for national integrity. He has used every conceivable means to allow immigrants to illegally enter our country – likely with the intent of swaying future elections to retain a hold on political power. Our major cities are now poverty-stricken and overrun with crime. Illegal drugs coming in over the southern border are killing Americans at a rate that has reached an all-time high. Human trafficking has become the dominant form of slavery. Our citizens are suffering from joblessness, homelessness, poverty, and historically high interest rates. Illinois as a state is no exception.

Suicide rates are at a national all-time high. Inflation has gone wild. A middle-income family can barely afford a home and pay for insurance and real estate taxes anymore, let alone put food on the table and clothes on their kids' backs. There's a war against marriage and family. Birth rates have plunged, and abortions have increased. Our veterans are sleeping in the streets, and billions of dollars are being spent in every conceivable way on undocumented aliens. One must wonder where our values have gone. One must imagine that perhaps we are at the end of the Great American Experiment.

And yet there is more…

We are no longer a self-supporting, energy-supplying nation. Our environmental policies, which require us to spend exorbitant amounts of money, have reduced the global temperature rise by a fraction of a degree, with no evidence that this makes any significant difference. Everywhere we turn, we see subsidized electric vehicles, windmills, and solar farms, the creation of which produce vast environmental pollution and a loss of valuable agricultural land. In the meantime, our government disregards the massive global pollution caused by countries with emerging economies.

Our children are being castrated and sterilized and lured into homosexual liaisons – sacrificed on the altar of transgenderism for the sake of inclusion. Women are being pushed out of sports because they are now being forced to compete against biological males who “identify” as women.

Parents attending school board meetings are characterized as terrorists for speaking up about socialist indoctrination and the failures of the school system. Law enforcement has been politicized, even rigged, and the judicial system has used rigged courts to persecute political opponents, as in the case of former president Trump. Laws have been placed on the books that criminalize people for doing nothing more than standing outside an abortion clinic praying or sharing their beliefs. There have also been violent and radical arrests of peaceful protestors. Some people have even received prison sentences of as much as five years under the FACE Act.

We are genuinely engaged in a culture war. Wokeism, political correctness, inclusion, diversity, equity, cancel culture, gender ideology, and critical race theory have become society’s bywords. No-cash bail, Defunding the Police, uncontrolled shoplifting, failure to prosecute and such movements have caused a decline in public safety. All of this is destructive of the social order founded on traditional beliefs and values.

At the international level, our economic competitors and political enemies have worked hard to devalue the dollar and drive up the price of oil. Indeed, we are suffering now from a new Cold War, and our government does nothing about it. The current administration continues to impose upon other nations in every conceivable fashion the values associated with abortion and the LGBTQ movement.

In the balance.

The Biden administration and the Democrat Party, which have brought on all these changes, have been placed in the balance and found wanting. Both are responsible for the litany of terrible things happening to this nation and its people. This includes growing homelessness, runaway taxes and fees, election interference, blatant power grabs, out-of-control crime, massive illegal immigration, sky-high interest rates, runaway housing prices, disenfranchised women, and massively failing schools, to name just a few of the things that characterized the present political and economic moment. If the Democrats didn’t have the abortion issue to run on, they’d have nothing to run on at all.

It's common knowledge that few civilizations last for more than 400 years from the point of their birth. We have seen this in many empires worldwide over the centuries. Consider the Assyrian, Abyssinian, Ottoman, Roman, and Greek empires and Chinese dynasties as prime examples. These cultures have experienced aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, despotism, and tyranny before failing. Is our day coming? Will America be the next to fail? While this nation’s 250th anniversary is coming soon, let’s not forget that the Jamestown colony was established on May 14, 1607 – just over 400 years ago!

A new dawn.

We must replace the current government with one more amenable to our wants and needs to protect and defend our way of life and nation. We need to return to a system that is consistent with the values of our Founding Fathers and not those who seek to destroy our country, its culture, and its people. We must also do many other things: Put America first. We must place criminals in jail where they belong. We must end illegal immigration. We must uphold the Constitution. We must limit government power. We must ensure that our students and our children have appropriate educations. We must get the government off our backs and establish energy independence. We must cut government spending and taxes. We must reduce inflation. We must reduce the influence of Big Tech and Big Pharma. We must reign in those who seek to muzzle us through social media. These are the things that most Republicans can agree upon and things you can expect with a new dawn.

By replacing the current Democrat administration from the top down with conservative Republicans, we can make a difference for the future of our children, our families, our faith, our freedom, and the society of our nation. Consider seriously how you are going to vote in November. Reflect on your values. Talk with friends, family, and neighbors and let them know what a vast difference voting for conservatives can make. There is no question that if voters do not contribute to the solution of the current problems brought on by the Democrats, they are part of it.

The future of our nation is at significant risk, and we must do something about it with the coming election. Looking forward as a political prognosticator, I see a faint glimmer of light on the horizon. Is it the last gleaming light – the sunset of a once great nation – or the light of a new day filled with hope and promise of a new administration?