Somehow, since 1949, Americans let their leaders talk them into fights that were wrong for them to fight.
Three fights were right: Korea 1950-51, Iraq 2003-08, and Afghanistan 2001-02. But Americans let their leaders talk them into continuing those fights past the time they were right, and for reasons spurious. So we took seriously damaging fire.
Also since 1949, Americans allowed themselves to puff up with a sententious self-esteem that hid greedy interventions by a few of us — lawyers, bankers, professors — in the affairs of other nations.
Today in consequence The USA is adrift like a ship who lost her masts, rigging, and sails to ceaseless enemy fire, most of it received for being where we should not have been in the first place. Not making steerage way, our ship-of-state sustains winds and currents driving her helter-skelter. We, who say we are the greatest nation in the history of the world, do not control our destiny. The handful of posers who claim now to control our destiny control less of it than does the full compliment of our surviving crew, who do not control our destiny because our motive power is shot away.
What’s the surviving crew of such a ship to do — reduced in number, expertise, and capability as they are, masts, rigging, and sails lying on deck or overboard? There are choices:
- Summon self-confidence, assemble faculties and assets, assign work, jury rig masts, rigging, and sails to the best possible efficiency, launch long boats to row their ship to harbor, help the crew of a sister ship tow her to harbor . . . . anything to gain steerageway.
- Scuttle their ship so she cannot be boarded and taken as a prize of war, and meanwhile, take to the long boats to row ashore or await rescue, capture, or death . . . .
- Succumb to confusion, blame, self-pity, and torpor, then wait for rescue by friend, capture by foe, death by depletion, or the inevitable uncontrollable crash against a lee ship or shore.
Get into the wrong fight and you lose protection because God walks away. Church and State are symbiotic. Want to help the State? Rebuild the Church. Want to help the Church? Rebuild the State.
The State is the wood. The Church is the rope and canvas. They work together to the same purpose or nothing works at all. God walks towards them to protect those who do their duty by Church and State.
Principle I
Principle II
Principle III
By Artists M and F Graham
At Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, India
