Super Tuesday

Super Tuesday is over (thankfully) and the votes are in. Of course, no one has one, but front runners are emerging. I find, however, that I'm strangely disengaged from it all. You see, I'm of the opinion that 1) a single president doesn't have the capacity to repair or destroy our country, and 2) government isn't the answer.

We've seen good and bad presidents come and go. We've seen noble leaders and foul leaders. We've seen leaders in times of peace and leaders in times of great upheaval. None of them seem to be able to make things all better in this country, and none of them seem to be able to make things intolerably bad in this country. Instead we find small shifts toward better or worse. I won't launch into comparisons of presidents to illustrate. That's your job to think about. (Hey, if I do all your thinking for you, what good are you?) In America in particular, the government is set up to limit the powers of any single person. Hillary may promise to fix the middle class, but can she actually do it? I heard her promise to create jobs and I thought, "How, exactly, does a President create jobs?" Obama may promise to fix the health care crisis, but can he actually do it? He hopes to install an 18 billion dollar education package, but he cannot do that alone. And I'm not focusing solely on the Democrats. All candidates make campaign promises that are intended to offer hope to the voters, but the truth is that they are all severely limited by a host of things as to what they can actually accomplish. It's very hard, given our Constitution and its form of government, to envision a president that solves our problems or destroys our nation. It just isn't going to happen.

Conversely, I am not a believer in the "Government is the solution to our problems" position. I know a lot of people think that is the case. They think that the government can solve the health care problems and the economic problems and the education problems. They think that government can fix the problems of the poor. I'm not one of those people. I think that the health care problems, for instance, are a complex set of circumstances that include factors of greedy health care, greedy health insurance companies, bad people doing bad things to themselves and others, and a variety of other situations not brought on by an institution, but by individuals. I think that throwing more money at education won't solve the problem that kids today aren't disciplined enough to learn and aren't interested in learning (as a couple of examples of the problems in education). Our economics are a product of people, not the government. It is how we spend. It is how we try to gather riches. It is how we accumulate debt. As an example, get-rich-quick scams are a problem because of individuals and their desire for quick riches, not because of poor government control or intervention. And the poor we have always had with us. The government doesn't make them poor, nor can it make them no longer poor.

I'm disheartened at times by the lack of representation I get in our government. I'm saddened by the moves I see toward socialism. I'm disappointed with those in government who claim to agree with me but go against what we agreed on. But I don't think that a single person can fix those problems nor can they destroy our country. What I do see is that America is headed in the wrong direction. We are abandoning all the moral structures that were necessary to maintain democracy. We are undercutting family by definition and exorcising the religious perspectives that give us moral clarity. We are moving away from every value that made America strong. As I see it, there are only two possibilities for this country. Either we need to have a major, national revival, or God needs to exercise His right to temporal judgment of a nation.

I'm glad "Super Tuesday" is over. It seems like a lot of hoopla without a lot of results. I voted, and I will continue to vote, but I don't see a lot of reasons to think that, in the final analysis, the next president will make anything fundamentally better or worse. The real need for change is in the people of this country. And that, in the final analysis, is God's job. We need a revival. We need the unmitigated Gospel. We need another Great Awakening. I think that's where I should be spending more of my time and efforts.