Signs of Evil Rising

Since I became a lawyer, I have known that this is true: Nobody who casually tears another person’s character has integrity.

I discovered this with lawyers. What evil they did, they would accuse me of. To be in court with such a person was to be deluged with false accusations.

And these lawyers always were without integrity.

1. Evil rising.

I met few lawyers like that in my early years of law. They are common now.

But it’s not just lawyers. It’s everybody.

A friend of mine on Facebook posted a sign of a protestor. His sign said, "I was sent to Iraq to remove a dictator. I won’t tolerate one here." My friend thought that this was the greatest sign about Barack Obama ever.

I started a thread. I asked my friend: "How is a man elected by a strong majority of the popular and electoral vote, who is subject to the judicial process, who can only sign laws sent to him by Congress, who is subject to reelection, who governs in a country with a vigorous free press and a strong opposition party, who governs in a country where this man can protest and you can post his picture -- how is this man a ‘dictator’? Because he seems to be the opposite of a ‘dictator’."

My friend expressed pity at my ignorance.

Maybe he thinks I miss his point. Maybe the point isn’t that Barack Obama is an honest-to-God dictator. Maybe the point was the primal delight in calling the president something so vile. Maybe the very point was the ridiculousness of the claim. Maybe the delight of the sign is the idea: "I just called the president a ‘dictator’. If you don’t like it, you can’t stop me!"

This is typical. The epithets change. "Socialist". "[Democratically elected] tyrant." Now, "Dictator".

What I learned early as a lawyer still holds true. To tear a persons character without cause is the act of a person of low morals. Vicious and clearly-false attacks on the president are the water pulling back from the shoreline when a tsunami is on its way. They are the air-raid siren that tells you to go into a bomb shelter. In The Good Earth, Pearl Buck’s main character, a shrewd farmer, looked at the moisture on rocks and knew that a stormy season was coming.

The vicious vitriol of everyday Americans is the moisture under rocks that speaks of evil times coming.

2. Politics sinking.

And it’s not just people I know from Facebook. It’s national, state, and local politicians. It’s major news networks. Fox News even broadcasted photoshopped photos of two New York Times reporters that it was angry at. Both men are handsome. But they look like monsters in the photoshopped pictures.

We are a nation in moral decline.

3. We’re boned.

We’re boned.

I’m sure that I don’t have to explain that. I’m not a big fan of Richard Nixon, but he was right when he quoted Alexis de Tocqueville: "America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

There have been books lately about the rise and fall of nations. I’m sure they are smart. I haven’t read any of them.

I have my own ideas of why nations rise and fall. I believe that nations rise and fall according to God’s will.

4. God’s hand upon us.

I see in America’s path the hand of God. I see him raising up leaders, irreplaceable leaders, just when we needed them.

He gave us George Washington when we needed George Washington. Militarily, Washington was not brilliant. But he was good enough. And he understood that the battle for independence was a battle for the hearts and mind of the American people. He won that battle, and he won the Revolutionary War.

We have the form of government that we have, with a necessarily strong executive, directly because of Washington. When the writers of the Constitution were writing Article II, about the executive branch, they had in mind George Washington. They trusted him, so they empowered the executive. We have benefitted ever since.

When we needed Abraham Lincoln, God gave us Abraham Lincoln. Wars had never been as bloody as the Civil War. It was tempting to let the South go it’s own way. But Lincoln was firm, and, ultimately, the lowly of the North trusted "Father Abraham". Lincoln was strong, wise, and smart, and we might never have had a president with his capabilities, so suited to the needs of the time.

At the beginning of World War II, America thought that it was a European and Asian matter. Franklin D. Roosevelt knew better. He knew that if we did not fight Hitler in Europe in his generation, America would fight him on America’s territory in the next generation. So he maneuvered Japan into attacking us. He led America into war, and in war, and he did so brilliantly. FDR was God’s gift to America in his time.

4. God does not abide with nations forever.

But God does not abide with a nation forever, regardless of what that nation does. Israel and Judah show this. These were nations that he established in biblical times. He protected them. But when they abandoned him, he abandoned them (though he preserved a remnant of them through the generations).

How serious is it that truth is no longer the currency of politics? The Bible says that Satan is a "liar and the father of lies." When we lie for gain, including political gain, we show who’s true children we are.

5. Turn back.

I urge: let’s turn back.

We must not assume that God needs us, and that he will tolerate us regardless of what we do. If we think like that, we are like the Jews who said, "We have Abraham for a father." But John the Baptist said, "God can raise children of Abraham from these stones."

To think that God will bless America regardless of what America does is foolish. It’s time to humble ourselves before the Lord. Not before Ayn Rand. Not before Saul Alinsky. Not before Fox News. Before God.

And maybe he will have mercy upon us.