Coming Home

Healing is the buzzword today. We are being told that the nation is terribly divided and much in need of healing. Certainly the constituencies behind yesterday’s historic presidential election are many and varied, running the gamut from economic to moral and social issues. Each constituency had in Hillary Clinton’s camp a polar opposite constituency. So, the order of the day is to bring both sides together.

The question of the day is, “How?”

The nation is divided along lines that are, in many cases, simply irreconcilable. The Obama/Clinton camp has had a wild and heady eight-year ride on abortion, gay marriage, transgender social engineering, redefining freedom of speech and religion, just to name a few. Indeed, Christian bakers, florists and wedding photographers have had their lives and livelihoods destroyed because they refused to participate in gay weddings. Our daughters have had all restrictions on access to their bathrooms, locker rooms and showers in school lifted under the rubric of transgender rights, and have seen their own rights vitiated. The same for our women and girls in public restrooms.

Yes, it has been a heady time for the left. When in power, they have utilized the levers of power to advance their agenda. When blocked by legislatures, they have used executive orders. When blocked at the polls, they have used the courts.

Now the center of gravity and power has been shifted, and count on the left to now use shaming and the subtle threat of unrest to arm-twist us into capitulation.

Heads they win. Tails we lose.

This isn’t civility or the comity that begets a just and lasting peace. When freedoms specifically articulated in the Constitution are abrogated in favor of freedoms invented out of nothingness, neither the political system established by that constitution, nor the domestic peace and tranquility it was designed to promote have a chance of survival. In the give and take of politics, a black man was given an historic opportunity to lead, to put behind him, and the rest of the nation, the dark legacy of oppression. He did little more than substitute one oppression with another, all in the name of eradicating oppression, while gutting the First Amendment.

We will now be told that the only path to peace is to remain on the path to civil unrest. We will be called intolerant, and we should embrace the moniker as wholeheartedly and whimsically as many embraced being “Deplorables,” for “Tolerance” is a false virtue. The nation was not founded upon the principle of a larger demographic putting up with the presence of another. We were founded on the principles of freedom and respect.

But freedom is not license to do as one wishes, but rather it is having the ability to do what one ought to do.

These past eight years have seen all manner of rights trampled in the name of openness, tolerance, respect, inclusivity, etc. Justice demands that those rights be restored. That will mean that certain intrusions will not be tolerated:

Artisans may choose the venues in which they will participate, and in which they will not.

Women and girls will need the right to privacy restored.

The unborn will need the right to life protected.

People will need the right to actually live their faith in the public square, and not have the First Amendment watered down to the right of belief without the right to live those beliefs.

This means that the intolerance of the left will no longer be tolerated. They have for too long dictated rights and how the rest of us live our lives, all in contravention of constitutional provisions to the contrary.

If there is to be any peace going forward, these ill-gotten gains need to be walked back, and for the first time in a long time, the left will have to bend.