A Fork in the Road

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

Excerpt from my upcoming book, "A Promise of American Liberty":

“We are playing politics while they wage war.”

I made the statement at a meeting of constitutional minds during a breakfast meeting.  The meeting took place just a couple weeks after the Democrat Party gained a majority in the House of Representatives, put Gavin Newsom into California’s governor’s mansion, and had all but secured a super-majority in both houses of the Golden State’s legislature.

After more than two centuries of liberty under the U.S. Constitution, and more than two centuries of forces opposed to the principles of the Constitution chipping away at its foundation, America has reached a crossroads. 

Political pundits say the two political parties are now at extreme opposite ends of the spectrum.  The Democrat Party has moved extremely left towards socialism, and the Republican Party has moved extremely right towards anarchy.  A variety of other ideologies have also begun their attempt to infiltrate the American System, and disable American Liberty.  Islam challenges our Christian Heritage, communism challenges our ideals of individualism and a free market, and humanism seeks to turn America into a featureless dystopian society dreamed of in the past only by science fiction writers.  And the reality is, all three groups are not only actively engaged in deconstructing the American System, they are using infiltration, bullying, and psychological warfare to achieve their aims.

While attempting to develop a strategy for the future, America has turned its back on its past.  As the crossroads approaches, we have fallen for the anti-American rhetoric that says this is only a political disagreement, or just another fork in the road.  We have been told there are only two choices.  Left, or Right.

In 2008 and 2012, with the election of Barack Obama, the Democrats came to believe America had finally turned leftward, and that the election of Hillary Clinton in 2016 was inevitable.

The Republican Party scrambled, telling the people they could run the big government that haunts our liberty in our modern political atmosphere, as if saying they could run a “big government in a conservative manner” was not an oxymoron.

Then, Donald J. Trump emerged.  He stunned the experts and pulled off an impossible victory in the 2016 Election.  He was inaugurated President of the United States on January 20, 2017.

The liberal left cronies called him a racist, and a fascist, and anything else they could come up with, not because any of it was true, but because they were sincerely frightened.  President Donald Trump represented something worse than Ronald Reagan, or any of the Bushes.  He was from outside the system.  Outside the establishment.  He could neither be bought or corrupted.  He had no interests other than making America Great Again.  They offered for him to drink from the trough that they all were feeding from, and he not only refused to drink from the trough, Donald J. Trump kicked the whole thing over.

“But,” a never-Trumper friend of mine said, “he’s not even a Republican.”

“Exactly,” I replied.  “That’s the beauty of it.”

Donald J. Trump did not run for President for money or power.  He could care less about prestige, or being a member of the club of elitists.  He recognized, as a businessman, the cancers growing in our system, and he chose to remove them.  He truly ran for President for no other reason than love of country.

He recognized that America is experiencing a myriad of constitutional crises, and he wanted to use his business experience to try and tackle the problem.  He was not really a Republican or a Democrat, but he ran on the Republican ticket because of the two parties, the GOP seemed to be closest to his positions and policies.  He was not really a conservative or a liberal, or even a constitutionalist.  Trump simply knew what he wanted to do based on his experience in the world as a businessman, as a negotiator, and as a worldwide player.

Trump did not represent the Right or the Left.  He has always existed outside the political system that some would call The Establishment.  He can’t be bought.  He can’t be threatened.

Is America liberal?  Conservative?  Or are we a mass of loud, assertive, contentious, politically combative fascists like the liberal left is trying to make patriots out to be, or like they have tried to label the 45th President of the United States?

Or, are we something else?

Could there be another path for America, along a well-worn and familiar road, one that we began travelling down during the latter part of the 18th Century?

Are we, as Ronald Reagan said in 1964, at a point in the journey where we must face a time for choosing?  Or, have we journeyed so far away from the Constitution that we must face the next inevitable spot along Tytler’s Cycle, and suffer through bondage before we can restore liberty through spiritual awakening and the courage needed to resurrect our forgotten Constitution?

How do we fight a political war?  Should we be gentlemanly, industrious, and patriotic while the purveyors of socialism use tactics and strategies of war?  Do we engage our political adversaries in a manner that reveals that we understand the seriousness of the battle?  Or do we appeal to the good nature of the American People?  Do we need a political resurgence of constitutionalism first, or a great awakening spurred on by a revival spawned by the preachers of God’s Word?

The reality is, the fork in the road does not matter if we are not a virtuous people and a godly society.  Left and Right does not matter if we are on the wrong side of what is right, and if we don’t understand that it’s not as much about right versus left as it is about right versus wrong.  The promise of American Liberty may only fulfilled if we are a moral people who understands that the author of our System of Liberty was not the men in Philadelphia during the Summer of 1787 as much as it was divine Providence.

We are in a culture war, first.  Culture drives politics, and sometimes, politics can drive the culture.  If we are not capable of following God’s biblical standard, how can we be trusted to follow the standard of the Constitution, or expect our representatives to do so?

We have become a society enslaved by ungodly principles.  We are blanketed daily with fiery darts dipped in the poison of socialism, corruption, moral relativity, pluralism, and a juvenile anger that promotes mob violence, political correctness, and identity politics.  While the enemy seeks to divide and conquer, the key to restoring the Constitution is unity through biblical and constitutional principles.

Either we are a virtuous society, or we are not.  If we are not a virtuous society, we are not capable of the U.S. Constitution.  Therefore, the answer to restoring our Constitutional Republic is obvious.

As the Declaration of Independence declared, “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

We must, as Ronald Reagan said, paint with bold colors so that the American people can clearly see the classical, elegant palette of conservatism, rather than the slapdash, trash art of progressivism, thereby pressing the electorate to respond to those images either with vigorous rejection or passionate acceptance…so help us God.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary