Einstein said that if he had an hour to solve a problem, he would take him fifty minutes to define it and five minutes to solve it.  Given the nature of the ideological, social, cultural, and political problems related to the presenting issues of the 2020 November election and the thuggish, imbecilic, and harmful breech of the scantily fortified line of defense of the Capitol building, it might take more than five minutes to solve them.  The opening fifty-five minutes will be plenty of time to sketch a promising outline to define the underlying elements of the two presenting problems.

Let us begin by defining the meaning of the word, problem.  All humans sense the gap between the ideal way they could be and the actual way they are.  I see the gap between the ideal healthy me and the out-of-shape me. Subsequently, I am also aware of the contradictory and inconsistent ways that I go about half-heartedly trying to close the gap.   Everything about us strives for effective unity, wholeness and completeness.  The gap and whatever prevents us from experiencing the unity of thought and action constitutes a problem.  

Our critical common sense, that is, our good sense that is intuitively in touch with wholeness, oneness, truth, beauty, proportionality and many other felt realities at first works negatively by telling us that something is wrong, amiss, out of place, out of tune, base, ugly, distorted, divisive, lacking and many other adjectives when we see ourselves and others in action against the ideals of the ways that we could be.  Our creative common sense works positively when our intelligence and reason fired up by our intuitive feelings kick-in to listen to the inner sounds of the self and the verbal echoes of all the past selves, mother, father, ancestors, Confucius, Christ, Gandhi, the Bible, the Constitution, the Koran, et al.  Then intelligence and reason, like the minds of composers and artists, go to work to express in words what we have heard and seen.  Powered by our personal newly minted meanings of who we are, of what we are and for whom and for what we are, the potential “I” becomes the active “I” that closes the gap between the ideal and the real. No government bureaucratic, no teacher, no diversity trainer, no truth commission, no supreme court, and no social media tech company determines the meanings of words for a person.  I in dialogue with myself and in dialogue with other I’s in the mental marketplace of free speech and free ideas determine the meaning of words.  The atheistic-materialist attitude of the members of the dictatorship of the elites would deny all the above.  For them there Is no critical good sense in which we all share.  They pull the strings, and their followers do the dance.   

For the past fifty years a creeping dictatorship of the social sciences accelerated by the explosion of technology has spawned a network of dictators spread by contagion not by a cabal of conspirators.  People that think alike get a sense of each other just like sensing the anticipated moves of your teammates on the basketball court.  The unannounced, tacit sole aim of the dictatorship is to control all speech, especially in the natural sciences, religion, law, and the humanities for the purpose of monopolizing the power to rule and, as they claim, for the ultimate moral good of humanity.  The theorists of the dictatorship believe that reality is a social construction of language.  If a single-minded belief system gets control of the words of the language, the believers of that belief system will control and order social relations and dominate the natural order of things.  The purpose of modern science is to construct mathematical models of what things are, how they work and to dominate them.  The social scientists throw human beings into the pot of things that are to be figured out scientifically and controlled politically. Critical common sense shouts out, “Don’t make objects out of subjects!”.  

Over the past fifty years I have witnessed the furtive application of mind control by the true believers and by their thoughtless followers or in Lenin’s paraphrased words, the willing idiots of progressivism. (Progress is a reality, but the meaning of progress is not owned by any political organization.)  The irony of Trump’s election, a real politically incorrect capitalist elected by real populists, forced the underground into open resistance for two reasons: 1. Trump and his flaws presented them with a visible target to pin on their label; 2. his jobs, jobs drum beat and a flourishing economy benefitting middle and low wage-earners made in-roads to their voter base. The mind manipulators used the same strategy of controlling the words of language to define the opposition as dictators, racists, unscientific, domestic terrorists, to stoke guilt in the consciences of traditionalist and to incite the fear of being scapegoated.  It worked, that is, many people succumbed to the finger-pointing-shaming tactic. After all, the “educational system” had softened them up for the kill. Even powerful CEO’s caved under the fear of being labeled socially unjust. Instead of fighting them they joined them.  They implemented diversity training programs, put their tales between their legs and scurried off.  Seeing them against the backdrop of the young men invading the beaches of Normandy makes a person wonder what those young citizens died for. 

The tactics being used today are flat out brain-washing activities.  Diversity training sessions, committees monitoring politically correct speech,  eliminating the use of personal pronouns by the speaker of the house of representatives and mandating the language to be used in crafting laws, indoctrinating children with politically correct language,  asking questions on medical forms about gender, race, pronouns that have nothing to do with human health, blacklisting medical doctors that treat COVID patients with ivermectin and other medications not politically correct,  requiring teachers to use certain text books and a universal designed learning program that conform to dictatorial specifications, issuing executive orders based on erroneous but politically correct interpretations of scientific data, and many more activities are assaults on the first amendment and on the very being of persons.   

The theistic-spiritual-traditional progressivism of the Declaration of Independence expresses the ideals that inform the political background of the American social contract.  The United States Constitution, rooted in theistic traditions, spells out the operating principles and procedures according to which we may individually and communally move toward experiencing a more perfect union with our individual and communal ideals that are the reflective aspirations of our essentially spiritual nature.  Only spiritual beings engage themselves in reflective free speech.  Only spiritual beings are intuitively in touch with their felt aspirational values.  Only spiritual beings can be authentic or destructive toward themselves and toward others.  Only spiritual beings can experience truth.  Only spiritual beings can create a just citizen and a just world.

The Marxist-atheistic-materialism of scientific progressivism is the political background calling citizens to participate in collective action that will emancipate them from the oppressive institutions constructed by the privileged classes of a capitalist economic system.  (The revised Marxism of the China Communist Party prudently subsumed the economic system of capitalism under its control to cure its sick economy. By infiltration it established its brand of state capitalism instead of free market capitalism.) Still, revised Marxism of any type demands an elimination of religion and philosophy that are the languages of the human spirit. For them closing the gap means to eradicate the traditional beliefs, institutions and practices of the present idealistic socio-economic order to emancipate all human beings through the agency of science to create one world of equity for human individuals. The United Nations’ program for the “education” of global citizens based on a model of a human being constructed by social scientists is now functioning in educational institutions around the world.  This program and similar homegrown indoctrination schemes have infiltrated the American educational system.  

Long before Mr. Trump became president the beliefs of the American-spiritual-theistic tradition expressed in the Declaration of Independence and spelled out in the Constitution, namely, that God created all human beings equal, that God is the guarantor of each person’s worth and each person’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness according to each person’s values inspired Americans from the inception of the country.   Americanism is a particular form of theistic-spiritual-progressive-traditionalism that tolerates the intolerant attitudes of militant atheistic materialism.  The Marxist-atheistic-materialist brand of science, especially the social sciences, however, cannot embrace theistic traditionalists, until they are deprogrammed, re-educated and fully repentant of their unscientific beliefs.  Historical events have demonstrated that the application of Marxist socialism and other variations of socialism lead to dictatorial forms of government.  Emile Durkheim, one of the fathers of sociology, proposed the following analogy between the human body and body-politic:  the brain is to the human body as the controlling socialist bureaucracy is to the body-politic.

A reasonable hypothesis contends that the real problem underlying the social, cultural, political, and other divisions in the country is the conflict between citizens that have a strong, moderate or even weak allegiance to beliefs of American theistic-spiritual traditionalism and citizens that have an allegiance of varying strengths to atheistic-materialist-scientism.  In the last fifty years committed atheistic materialists under the banners of scientism and American progressivism have been planting the seeds of Darwinian evolution, Freudian psychology, Marxist sociology, and a host of other dogmatic ism’s in our educational, legal, legislative, executive, economic, and religious institutions.  They present the fruits of these seeds as absolute proven indisputable facts. There is no such thing as absolute proof about anything except, maybe, mathematically proved equations. Nor is there any such thing as a pure fact. The experience of what is immediately present in consciousness through thought and sensation simultaneously involves an “I” that speaks about what is “there” internally and externally.  Critical common sense again shouts out, “The human mind is not an empty bucket collecting objective facts nor is it a programmed brain processing information.” We can intersubjectively “fact-check” whether an event took place, but we cannot “fact-check” the meaning of that event. 

Using the technique of triangulation and mental jiu-jitsu described in Rules for Radicals the mind-infiltrators directed the flow of ideas, language and attitudes to reject the immoral past of America and to embrace the new world freed from the mental, economic, social, racial, political, and religious oppression of the past.  They succeeded in damaging the two pillars of human freedom: the religious attitude toward the sacred that inspires authentic hope and the philosophical attitude toward the spirit that inspires freedom of speech and courage.  A main strategy in battle is to cut the communication and supply lines of the enemy.  Government schools have been eliminating the traditions of religion and philosophy and stripping the students’ burgeoning mental immune systems by cutting off the free and critical communication of ideas from the resources of their traditions and their common-sense intuitions of life.   

As a high school and university teacher in schools of humanities, social sciences, communication, and education and as a school psychologist I have witnessed the practice of Marx’s maxim.  The social sciences took over the language, that is, the thought of the universities and future generations, and evicted philosophy and theology from the curriculum. The two basic historical human activities of thinking and speaking about what ultimately counts were ridiculed and kicked to the curb.  The traditional meaning of words such as, truth, he, she and it have been canceled. Instead, we identify what and who we are, name ourselves accordingly and then create our narratives.  No more, unto thine own self be true or proving that scientific hypotheses are true. We and science are just narratives.  TV “news” reporters and politicians use the word, narrative, compulsively without a clue about its significance. The fact that the word, race, used for the erroneous classification of humans, is a socio-psychological construct without any foundation in biology and genetics does not matter.  There are no objective meanings to words.  Words mean whatever the narrative requires of them. The environment, health-care and education have become Trojan horses for the infiltration of an atheistic-materialist ideology instead of separate problems to be investigated by specific disciplines. Even the word, politics, has lost its traditional meaning of being the practical art of governing for the lawful achievement of the good of each person based on a rational understanding of the individual and social nature of human beings. The contemporary meaning of politics has the sleazy connotations associated with getting, using and keeping power.  Twenty-five hundred years ago Confucius warned that when words lose their meaning, people lose their liberty.

Political power is being used for indoctrination.  The practice of contemporary brainwashing is based on the pleasure principle not the pain principle used by the communists in the Korean War.  Manipulating the satisfaction of basic needs such as the need for security and, especially, the need for belongingness that are accompanied by pleasure is the current means used by educational, political, media, and legal elites to take control of the citizen’s language, that is, the very being of the person.   The satisfaction of our higher needs of experiencing truth, beauty, creativity and the sacred through free inquiry and free speech is a threat to the mind controllers.    

Given all the above that infected our politics Mr. Trump heeding the common sense of the deplorable masses runs for president.  To almost everyone’s surprise he wins. Then we had the wringing of hands, the gnashing of teeth, the rising level of anxiety, the dissolution of friendships, predictions of the stock market crash, the fear that women’s rights would be abrogated, this and more all within twenty-four hours after the election. Banner headlines from major newspapers announced on the day after his inauguration that the political and psychological vaccine of IMPEACHMENT would be administered immediately to halt the spread of the virus emanating from the illegitimate election.     

The infiltrators could not abide the winner of the 2016 election. Mr. Trump’s victory had the effect of a Rorschach card. Posing as elite political detectives they claimed that the enemies within were Trump voters.  They unwittingly unmasked themselves by projecting on to Trump, who had given voice to the gut feelings of the traditionalists, the image of a dictator that was produced by their own dictatorial tendencies. Mr. Trump’s brash, brawling and unpolitical exchanges with the media created a perfect foil for the ‘spontaneous’ resistance.  In a rage the infiltrators shed their fuzzy sheep-skin clothing. They fully displayed their wolverine hostility toward American culture by calling for an open resistance to overthrow the 2016 election. They proclaimed themselves the moral champions that would slay the dragon.  For the greater good they had no choice, so they claimed, but to weaponize the levers of power to control treasonous thought and language, to demoralize theistic traditionalists by demanding self-shaming confessions for America’s past sins, and to fundamentally change people’s beliefs by “reimaging” a constitution aligned with the beliefs of scientism, that is, atheistic materialism.  Marxist-atheistic-materialists are not interested in debates, dialogues and the free exchange of ideas.  They want to change existing oppressive institutions and the constitution, not discuss them.  

Given that the above description of events has a reasonable degree of accuracy, it is worth exploring whether the following hypothesis provides a probable account of what is happening in the halls of Congress and elsewhere.

Let us assume that suppressing speech in the spoken and written word, that violating due process, that violating the constitution that charges state legislators to establish the place, time and manner of elections, that using the powers of government to spy on and frame political opponents, that  scapegoating political opponents and ethnic groups as the Jews were scapegoated in World War II, and that engaging in the violent activity of barring access to markets and employment to scarlet lettered Trump voters as the Jews were marked for exclusion by the ruling political party of Germany during World War II   means to think and act as a dictator.  If certain members of Congress, the media, state government executives and courts, education institutions, and corporations have engaged in some or all the above actions, then, they are dictators.  

An  abundance of documented evidence supports the claims that the Steele Russian collusion dossier was paid for by the Clinton campaign and used by the FBI to secure FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, that the media was complicit in these actions by publishing the information illegally leaked by the CIA, that Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden, the acting attorney general, and FBI agent met in the Oval office in the beginning of January, 2017 to discuss ways of incriminating General Flynn, that members of Congress and the Obama administration lied under oath to Congress about these actions, that the suppression of speech is taking place through the agency of big tech,  members of academia, certain members of Congress calling for truth commissions, and that CEO’s are black-balling anyone with an allegiance to traditionalism.  Dictatorial tactics of branding citizens with fraudulent and malicious labels are now in plain view.  The same CIA director who lied under oath is now broadcasting that Trump voters are domestic terrorists.  The speaker of the house of representatives referred to Republican members of the house as the enemy within requiring the fortification of the Capitol by the national guard.  Scurrilous politicians and government bureaucrats behave with impunity.  The justice department fears that the indicted criminals will accuse the prosecutors of the same crime that they are prosecuting.   

So, who are the real insurrectionists, the real enemies within, that are trying to overthrow the United States Constitution?  Could it be the few hundred dimwitted rioters that broke into the Capitol building, that took selfies, that had no plan to achieve anything, that caused havoc and deaths by their thoughtless behaviors, and that were rounded up and herded out like cattle after a stampede?  Or, could it be the shrewd, legal architects and engineers of a coup d’etat that over four years steadfastly executed their plan to remove President Trump from office and silence those that voted for him, that pounced on the opportunity of the break-in with a plan in hand to by-pass due process to impeach the president once again, and to squelch any investigation of the events leading up to the riot?  

There have been state capitol beak-ins and the execution of John Doe warrants that did more lasting physical and psychological harm to elected officials than that experienced by the members of the congress.  As usual, the police, the guardians of life and the defenders of both sides, and the imprudent followers, no matter how well-intentioned, were the good citizens sacrificed by mindless mobsters and scheming politicians.  We need the whole story of the January 6 event, instead of the irrational claims of some politicians that the break-in by a manipulated mob is equated with a meticulously planned second attack on the Twin Towers by sworn enemies of the United States that were suicide bombers for their cause. We need an investigative assessment of the events and adult personal assessments, perhaps by combat-veteran congress members rather than the attention seeking, adolescent, histrionic outbursts of some members.   

Why was the Capitol guarded so poorly even after the New York City Police Department informed the director of the FBI in mid-December with actionable intelligence of a riot? Who were the planners of the riot?  Was President Trump informed by the FBI director about a possible riot?  If the speakers of the House and Senate and the sergeant-in-arms were informed, why did they not demand more police and the national guard?  Was the mayor of Washington informed?  What was the response of the Capitol Police Board?  Since the break-in occurred during President Trump’s address, why was he not informed immediately as President Bush was when the towers were attacked? If the same security system was in place on January 6 as January 20 why did the Capitol look like an armed fort on January 20 and like a museum on January 6?  There should be a paper trail with answers to these questions and more.  There have been forty or so Trump rallies without a minor incident.  Without truthful answers it appears that the impeachers of the president took a calculated risk, as they did with the FISA court, but this time more shrewdly to entrap by proxy the witless, politically unsavvy and genuinely frustrated demonstrators inveigled by provocative agents of many stripes.  As a citizen these are only some of the questions that I want answered.  

The incipient dictatorship of the deep state, the media, big tech, academia, celebrity, and the core of the Democrat party is a coalition of self-proclaimed power-seeking elites, not the iron-fisted dictatorship of Stalin, Mao, Castro, et al. They were easily identified by their use of military force. The velvet-glove-stealth dictators use more insidious means to seize the authoritative power of government that belongs to all the citizens of the United States.  

The state receives its authority from all the citizens that have consented to live by the principles and rules of the United States Constitution. Politicians are entrusted with temporary powers applied within the boundaries set by the constitution and derived from elections conducted according to the rules specified by the constitution.  Politicians do not own the instruments of entrusted power. The president does not own the White House.  The politicians do not own the Capitol.  People in the media do not own the electro-magnetic waves of communication nor the meanings of words in the dictionary.  Plotinus, an ancient philosopher, speaks to the human arrogance of elites.  He wrote, “Who do we think we are?”  The meaning with inflection translates to, “Just who the hell do we think we are?” 

The same constraints on individuals hold for all political parties.  They are required to function within the principles and rules of the constitution informed according to the extreme belief that the being and value of each person and the rights of each person flow from a Divine Source called God, Nature, Life Force, Allah, The One, The Great Spirit, or some other designation. Extreme means the ultimate outer limit. In the human situation extreme means the ultimate explanation of my existence.  The essential meaning of being human is to stand between extremes.  I can be like Hitler, or I can be like Gandhi. I can choose to be God, or I can choose to recognize that I am a reflection of God.  A person that condemns extremism is an idiot.  The word, idiot, is not used sarcastically. The Latin root signifies that one is ignorant.  By extension idiot means thoughtless, unreflective, ignorant about one’s own being, a go-along, get-along nice guy.  Common sense tells me to condemn extreme violent behavior that leads to senseless death, and to praise extreme courageous behavior that defends and advances life.  Common sense tells me to choose wisely between extremes.  The personal understanding of Jesus’s words would be because I am neither hot nor cold, I will vomit myself out of my mouth.  

The Marxist extreme belief regarding the ultimate explanation of the existence of humans is the negation of the mysterious Divine Source and the acceptance of the atheistic-materialist belief held by many people in all societies in all eras. It claims that mysterious matter is the source of our conscious life that emerges from some mysterious mindless algorithm.  There is no middle political ground that can twist the meaning of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution into a compromise.  The fundamental problem underlying the surface political conflicts confronting American citizens is an either/or choice of attitudes.  To condemn extremism regarding the fundamental attitudes that people decide to take toward themselves, society and the universe and by extension the United States Constitution is foolish.

We will decide courageously and thoughtfully to commit to the beliefs inherent in The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, or we will decide out of fear to junk them for something else.  The only existential crisis that we have is ourselves, not the climate, not the environment.   The real problem is to not challenge the arrogant belief that we are the lords of the universe and not its stewards.

In the wake of the Capitol break-in fiasco the dictatorship of the elites made a hundred and eighty degree turn from trashing the American past to defending American traditions.  During the summer months of riots, killings and property destruction to the tune of a billion and a half dollars the elites were quiet as church mice.  The idiots of January 6 that took the bait and/or set up the bait for the break-in served up a political meal of optics for the dictatorship.  By using projection, the psychological defense mechanism, they point to the break-in and milk it for all its worth to distract people’s attention from their dastardly insidious behaviors over four years intended to break-down a legitimately elected administration. 

If the above analysis has a reasonable probability of being correct, then according to Einstein’s maxim we should be on track toward reaching some solutions.  However, Einstein solved theoretical problems. Our problem is theoretical and practical.  We can come up with some useful principles to do some clear thinking about the ideals of the American tradition, but the practical meaning of our insights will depend on the circumstances of individuals and communities.  The heavy lifting needs to be done in the courts.

1.Do not get sucked in by repeating brain-washing words such as, narrative, racism, politically correct, social justice, white supremacy, reimagine, hate-speech, etc.  Keep in mind the maxim of Confucius: When words lose their specific meaning, people lose their freedom.   

2. If in a “conversation” about the above words ask the person to define their meanings.  Ask for a clarification of the assumptions behind the definitions and the probable consequences of acting out those meanings, for example, “Please, instruct me on the meaning of racism? “.  Demand the scientific basis for using the word, races, when referring to human beings.  There is no justification in biology or in genetics that establishes the fact of races within the human population.  To claim that “races” in the human population is a fact is to be a “science denier”.  Two can play the game of mental jiu-jitsu. 

3. Stay in touch with your traditional, critical common-sense intuitions of what is good, fitting and true.

4. Stop using words and phrases for verbal short-cuts like: left, right, conservative, liberal, my friends across the aisle (friendship is based on truth not on lies), polarization, extreme, middle, etc.  There is more emotion attached these ‘words’ than clarity of thought that indicates productive actions about identified goals.  For example, does left mean that the group’s thinking and behavior has primacy over an individual’s thinking and behavior?  If true, then how does that meaning of ‘left’ fit the letter and spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that safeguards the individual’s value and rights bestowed by God?  Polarization between the interests of the individual and the group is the stuff of life.  Without polarization we fall into a state of disorder, death.  The problem is whether we respond to polarization thoughtfully and creatively for the good of everyone.

5. Confront prudently dictatorial language and behavior with dialogue and with the tactics fitting the circumstances.   For example, the command, “Follow the science”, is used to force compliance.   Demand an explanation of the command by asking, “What is science?”  “What does follow mean?”   Science, a noun, is used for the mental activity of making experimentally validated statements about the structure and operations of things.  Scientific statements do not command.  Science did not command the use of the atomic bomb.  Humans make use of scientific knowledge to make prudent decisions that fit the circumstances. 

6. Do not use words such as, crazy, insane, ridiculous, ludicrous, deranged syndrome, etc. when referring to behaviors that are dictatorial. Search the dictionary and find the word that fits the behavior.

7.  Meet with friends and colleagues to discuss problems in the light of traditional ideals to discover practical ways to realize the meanings of those ideals in everyday situations. 

8. Get involved in school boards, even if your children attend private schools.  Education is the problem.

9. Persevere.  This problem will not be solved with a few elections. 

10. Don’t get faked out by the opposition’s diversionary tactic of making president and citizen Trump the target.  The issue is not president Trump, Democrats vs. Republicans, or conservatives vs. liberals. The integrity and the survival of the Constitution, the integrity of the vote and the education of young citizens about the living traditions and history of the country are the perennial issues. Take control of your language and the socio-political language to define the issues. 

11. Don’t use analogies and metaphors that do not fit the social and political problems that arise from a lack of understanding of and/or a lack of commitment to the Constitution or that arise from a surreptitious or public rejection of the Constitution and American traditions.  We do not need healing.  We are not sick.  We do not need to be unified in our commitment to the Constitution.  We will always have different points of view on how to bring about a more perfect union.  The division is between citizens that are committed to the Constitution and those that want to fundamentally change it into something else or flat our reject it.      

I have been a registered Democrat for fifty years.  The current social, cultural and political conflicts go way beyond the political party differences of the past. During the era from presidents Roosevelt to Johnson the belief that the instruments of government can help low to middle income workers become economically independent shaped the party’s policies and strategies.  Submitting to an atheistic-materialist ideological supremacy over the principles and ideals of the Constitution was not part of the fair deal.  Political parties are not philosophies of life. 

There are no Democrat, Republican, American, New York, or any modified values.  The aspirational values of the individual and the practices that realize them are freely chosen by persons.  What human being in any culture does not esteem the common goods of knowledge and freedom; but, how many people are constrained politically, economically and psychologically from realizing them?  

The exceptionalism of the American Declaration and the Constitution lies in its setting out the broadest framework for individuals and groups to choose and realize their ideals and practical values and to resolve conflicts through rational discourse and judicial interpretation of the law according to the Constitution.  Citizens are free to commit themselves to a theistic or atheistic life plan, but no person or government has the right to impose practices that impede the free actions and free speech of a person’s chosen values that are doing no harm.

Politicians took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution.  They are not elected to do the collective will of the people.  Nor are they elected to preach morality or make laws to make people moral. Their function is to safeguard the citizens and to set up the maximum conditions through legislation, so that all citizens can effectively use their own wills to choose their own values to live their own life-plans.  Collective action such as, the general will that inspired the French Revolution, is not the safeguard of individual liberties. According to the Declaration of Independence the Divine is the guarantor of the person’s freedom.  Self-governance according to laws inspired by justice, prudence, wisdom, and intelligence is the American tradition, not the dictatorship of the proletariat or of the elite.  A more fitting motto than E pluribus unum would be E Uno plures Uni (From the One, the many of the One). 

Throughout our history citizens shared a common faith in our traditional principles and ideals with the full recognition of the distance between the ideal and the reality.  The faith of the farmer, the cop, the accountant, and everyday citizens is no different from the faith of constitutional law professors and supreme court judges. In the past parties debated and sometimes fought violently about the practical meanings of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but the common faith in our traditions held us together.  We, Democrats and Republicans, had a feeling for our country, that is, for our fellow citizens that shared a common vision, common sufferings and common victories.  Some that we esteem highly made the ultimate sacrifice to the benefit of all of us.  The question is: do we want to continue to commit to this common faith or commit to a different vision? 

The mentor of my doctoral dissertation was a Polish Catholic priest that lived through World War II and the subsequent communist dictatorship.  He maintained that evil existed in the world.  He referred to it as a living being.  I never caught on to his thinking. Even in my attempt to understand the atrocities of World War II, I thought evil was a by-product of ignorance and other human deficiencies.  I am catching on. Evil is personal because as Max Scheler, the philosopher, said, humans are bridges between good and evil. Nevertheless, we have tendencies for good over evil, truth over lies and justice over injustice.  We struggle through free speech, free thought and critical analysis to understand the full meaning and practical applications of our biases. There are honest atheists and duplicitous atheists.  There are honest theists and duplicitous theists.   The fault of not being honest and courageous lies in me not in someone else.

I believe that the interpretation of the recent events as an incipient, creeping dictatorship of the self-appointed elites of the social sciences and their followers versus the traditionalists of critical common sense and of self-governance does not overstate the problem.  We have more than a problem.  We have a crisis, a turning point. 

Arnold Toynbee, the great historian, contends that the Spirit working its way in the universe will succeed. Freeman Dyson, the well-known physicist, wrote in Infinite in All Directions, “In contemplating the future of mind in the universe, we have exhausted the resources of our puny human science.  This is the point at which science ends and theology begins.”  Tom Holland, the historian, when referring to the moral failures of Christians wrote in his book, Dominion, “ … the standards by which they (the Christians) stand condemned for this (their moral failures) are Christian ….”  Further on referring to the empty churches in western Europe he says that although attendance at church is waning, it does not seem likely that Christian standards will change.  In fact, even the atheistic-materialist elites make use of those same Christian principles to shame their opponents.  The United States will flourish, if as citizens we assent to the theistic ideals of The Declaration of Independence and if we conduct the civil dimension of our unique theistic or atheistic lives defined by our personal values and life-plans according to the principles of the Constitution. 

J.J.McMahon

New York City

2/4/21

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