12 May A New Time for Choosing
We’re getting down to brass tacks in America in May 2020. The coronavirus ‘pandemic’ and Obamagate are once in a lifetime events; they are seminal to America’s future.
The MSM, unwittingly, is turning these events into extraordinarily clarifying phenomena for purposes of re-learning American Exceptionalism.
The contrast is pretty stark; pretty soon nobody is going to be able to miss it.
The good news is—the clarifying that is going on may yet reprise Ronald Reagan’s formulation from his 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing”: the choice may not be so much about ‘left’ and ‘right’ as it is about ‘up’ or ‘down’.
American Exceptionalism is about ‘UP’… it is about honoring the unique, core American founding principle of individual freedom and responsibility under God vs. the ‘down’ of a dark, unexceptional culture (common to the rest of history) that results from the forces of secularism, globalism and leftism.
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As applied to the pandemic, “up” means the emergency suspension of freedoms—shelter-in-place, social distancing and masks—in the name of a public health crisis MUST have a short, well-defined time fuse, with the fallback default ALWAYS in favor of trusting free people to make wise decisions with accurate information.
Fear is a reality of human existence, and no amount of government safety protocols will change that fact.
But America’s heritage for purposes of confronting opponents of freedom is built on perhaps the most oft-repeated command of the God of the Bible: “Fear not”. Life is meant to be lived, with courage, optimism, purpose, joy, activity and challenges…and disappointment and despair, along with achievement and triumph. Life is not meant to be a sheltered-in-place experience.
Everybody understands that when the pandemic crisis first sprang on the nation, leaders faced a lot of extraordinary unknowns, and fear of those unknowns made them reach for extraordinary measures.
But everybody paying attention also knows by now: the fear was wildly overblown, the primary model predicting millions of deaths was grossly inaccurate and overstated, and medical experts’ opinions, after vastly more data is now in, are not even remotely unanimous or even at a ‘consensus’ level of agreement as to whether the safety measures were or are necessary, wise or efficacious.
There is not a shred of documented data or ‘science’ that at this stage supports continued lockdowns of healthy Americans. There are medical opinions to the effect that continued lockdowns are prudent, and there are other medical opinions to the effect that continued lockdowns are not only unnecessary but actually unwise as a means of protecting public health. But that’s not science; that’s differing opinions.
With such information in the hands of self-governing, free Americans, American Exceptionalism—the ‘up’ view—dictates only one right answer to what should be done immediately, and that is:
(1) open up the economy, full tilt, for everyone healthy who wants to work and live freely; and
(2) accompany all further government safety recommendations with data-based, ‘science’ disclosures as to their proven or unproven efficacy, and let Americans decide how much or how little of those safety recommendations they want to abide by…
…and move forward.
Employers will enforce whatever safety protocols they want to enforce in the interests of their customers and employees; nursing and other senior homes will do what they think is best for their patients/customers and staff. And they will all accept the consequences of their decisions and adjust them over time if necessary and appropriate to meet the needs of their customers and employees.
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As applied to Obamagate, the ‘up’ view of American Exceptionalism emphatically rejects the idea of a ruling class; it is grounded in the principle that government shall be ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’…under the rule of law.
American Exceptionalism further expects that—with a founding principle that ‘all men (and women) are created equal’; another founding principle of individual inalienable rights; and a government of the people, by the people and for the people—American citizens shall have justice administered in a blindfolded ideal way after observance of full due process rights.
And core due process rights for an American must set as the rule, not the exception, that there shall be no arrests or interrogation absent probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, with every accused individual afforded the presumption of innocence.
Obamagate is an abomination of American Exceptionalism. (We think the additional ‘unmasking’ and other disclosures that are apparently coming out soon will take the abomination characterization to a DefCon 12 level). From what is already known, the highest officials of the Obama administration (the January 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting attendees) clearly viewed themselves as a ruling class entitled to engineer, distort or ignore the rule of law to punish and potentially even jail political enemies…and overthrow an election.
Their treatment of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn—setting him up for an ambush interview, seeking to trip him up over his memory of a doing-his-job-as-incoming-National Security Advisor-conversation for which they already had the transcript, falsifying records of the interview, and squeezing Flynn to submit to a guilty plea over a manufactured ‘lie’ by threatening prosecution of his son—is so far beyond the pale, so far out of bounds in terms of American judicial standards, as to defy description.
American Exceptionalism REQUIRES accountability for Obamagate, and it does not make an exception for ‘the first black President’. The severity of the crime of directing a coup against the duly elected President of the United States can have no exceptions for accountability for any of the perpetrators.
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So if that’s the ‘up’ of American Exceptionalism, what is the ‘down’ view?
As applied to the pandemic, it’s staying at home until the local official—i.e., government—tells you that you can leave your home. It’s agreeing that government can tell you what you can and cannot shop for, and at what businesses the government decides are ‘essential’. It’s surrendering all notions of self-reliance in favor of an unelected designated ‘expert’ who knows better than you how to take care of yourself. It’s losing all your savings and other resources to stay fed, clothed and sheltered, and ultimately agreeing to become a government dependent and/or die of starvation rather than defy the local official and expert who know what’s best for you.
As applied to Obamagate, the ‘down’ position is to shrug the whole thing off; to accept that there is one set of laws for those in power and another set for those who are not, and to be okay living with the notion that ‘justice’ in such a system is a matter of paying your way into the good graces of those in power, irrespective of what is true or false, right or wrong.
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America’s hysterical, ‘hate Trump’ MSM ignores and obfuscates the true ‘up or down’ choice. The MSM relentlessly portrays the choice as: whatever President Trump wants = Bad; whatever is the opposite = Good. But Americans are seeing through this trivializing of what is at stake.
Americans are in fact facing a new time for choosing, perhaps even more consequential than the one described by Ronald Reagan.
Americans are waking up to the reality that when the stakes are accurately described and understood, there really isn’t a choice. There’s only UP.
Eric Georgatos blogs at americacanwetalk.org