America Today & The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

By Dr. Jay Lehr & Tom Harris January 12th, 2021

This past week we realized that our lives are about to change significantly, definitely not for the better, for at least the next two years. Contrary to the desires of half the electorate, a new wave has landed on our shores. 

Many of us have been disappointed by the contrary attitudes of family and friends. We look at people we have known all our lives,  filled with hostility. But at last, they will have an opportunity to have politics and governance agree with their opinions. And, if you think this is a bad thing, you might want to reconsider the situation. With the presidency, the House of Representatives, and the Senate now firmly in Democrat control, it’s their turn to have it all their way. And they will discover that it’s far easier to criticize and attack than actually to be in charge of the country.

We see other nations going the way of Socialism and collapsing. But, for inexperienced young people, it all still seems like a great plan. Many others have long had a desire for the government to run, if not their lives, everyone else’s. Consider how America has changed in the past couple of decades: 

• Somehow, it’s become un-American for the census to count how many legal US citizens are in the United States.

• People who say there is no such thing as gender are demanding a female president.

• Universities that advocate equality discriminate against Asian-Americans in favor of African-Americans.

• Some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, and other people are not held responsible for what they are doing right now.

• Criminals are caught-and-released to hurt more people, but stopping them is bad because it’s a violation of THEIR RIGHTS.

• People who have never owned slaves should pay slavery reparations to people who have never been slaves.

• If a man says he is a woman, you are required to agree with him…or is it her, regardless of their anatomy.

• Irish doctors and German engineers who want to immigrate to the US must go through a rigorous vetting process, but any illiterate with a questionable history who jumps the southern border appears to be welcome.

• Five billion dollars for border security was said to be too expensive, yet we spend a bigger fortune for “free” health care for Illegals. Think about this, if you cheat to get into college, you go to prison, but if you cheat to get into the country, you may get to go to college for free.

• People have died of a Chinese virus, but it is considered racist to refer to it as such even though it began there and spread across the world occurred because the Communist Party of China allowed its infected citizens to fly all over the world even while quarantining Chinese cities to prevent its spread in their country. Regardless, it is no more racist to call it the Chinese Virus than using German Measles or Spanish flu. German, Spanish, and Chinese (and Mexican, for that matter) are nationalities, not races. 

• The death penalty for murder is considered wrong, but the unborn may be terminated without a second thought.

We are clearly living in a strange new world where what was once right is now questionable, at best. Things once considered moral can be immoral. Or as Alice said in the classic tale by Lewis Carroll:

“When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!”  

No doubt, many of our readers may be depressed at this turn of events. We are not. America has been trending this way for many decades. The most effective, if painful, way to stop the trend is to engage in a full trial of ideas that many thought would lead this country to less opportunity for all. There is simply no way to end the squabbling and hostility of one half of the country against the other until the entire country sees the actual results of the others’ ideologies. While the past election clearly had questionable results, no one can deny that the nation is split down the middle, with half of us very liberal and the other half less so.

We have been through four years of total polarization due to the left’s daily attacks on the President. Even while doing many excellent things for the country, President Trump brought to a peak the differences that exist among us. While four more years would have accomplished more positive results, it also would have probably deepened the left/right divide. 

Many people think that it might be a good thing to alternate government systems every six years. Now, like it or not, we have the opportunity to experience just that. However, the country will get to vote on it again in just two years when both the House of Representatives and the Senate could be flipped back to Republican control. So, the new administration will have two years to prove whether or not it has the ability to govern.

Many of our readers fear that in this time, Joe Biden and his new cabinet will destroy much of the country willed to us by our founding fathers. At the very least, much of what has been implemented in the past four years will be undone:

• They will surely rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and pay another half-trillion of your tax dollars to it. 
• They will raise your taxes and inhibit further development of our vast petroleum resources, raising prices at the gas pump. 
• As wind and solar power proliferate, your electric bill will skyrocket, and brownouts and even rolling blackouts will become more common. 
• They may rejoin the nuclear treaty with Iran providing more money to breathe new life into once-powerful ISIS. 
• And, of course, as totalitarian ‘progressives’ often do, they will further limit free speech with the help of Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Amazon. 

However, the old saying “what does not kill you will make you stronger” certainly now applies. In the final analysis, those of us who value our great nation outnumber the socialists. Our passion for getting our country back is being displayed with greater exuberance than at any other time in recent decades. We now clearly see how our freedoms are being eroded by mainstream media and their powerful establishment allies in the elite and the deep state. 

The trail the United States of America has followed for 245 years to become the greatest free country the world has ever seen will not have been obliterated. The blazes that mark that trail will shine brightly, helping us to guide our way back.

 Part II

We wrote two weeks ago here at AmericaOutLoud that regardless of the Democrat, really socialist party’s, take over of the United States government, there was reason to believe that in their first two years they would do far more damage to their own party and its followers, than they could actually accomplish against the entire country.

We received a great deal of support for our premise some of which added to the support of our argument.  We will express these additional views here part two of our effort to lift the pessimistic views of so many patriots back to a more optimistic position where they can continue to fight more effectively on behalf of our country.

One reader made it clear that this election does not mean the democrats will have it all their way to offer a full trial of their terrible socialist ideas. The House and Senate are in fact in a near state of deadlock and one or both may  begin to slide into the R column as the 2022 election approaches, even before more legislative action can occur.

Many believe that Biden will be unable to hold his position for more than two years bringing  on Kamala Harris to replace him. Harris will likely be ineffective for the final 24 months of their term, having zero experience, public support or leadership skills.

We also said the the nation was split down the middle politically and were taken to task on that view. Critics felt strongly that no more than 15% of the country were the “woke” liberals trying to take down the country established by our founders. More believed that as many as 70% of us are broadly supportive of a populist/libertarian brand of politics which Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform has long called “center right”.

This was surely true a year ago when President Trump was cruising to an easy re-election victory when the China virus derailed things with a fake pandemic, fake race riots and then rampant election fraud ending his ability to win 4 more years. A fair election should have found that Trump won a majority of the popular vote by a few percentage points.

We were also fairly criticized for saying that Trump deepened the political divide in the nation when in fact he was healing old racial wounds which Obama had reopened, tryin to end the global warming hysteria. Fixing the judiciary, ending foreign entanglements, confronting political correctness, expanding school choice all of which actually alleviated rather than deepened divisions among Americans.

The appearance of “deep division” we were told was and clearly is because Trump isolated and ridiculed the radical left and they fought back by weaponizing every situation they had captured in the past three decades including public school, colleges and the many unelected government officials working against him.

We beat them once in 2016, perhaps because they ran against  the most disliked candidate in history, but we can do it again in 4 years.. Of course our biggest obstacle may be fixing the election laws that made possible vote harvesting, no excuse absentee voting, no signature checks, and unsecured election computers. That is admittedly a big “ask”.

24 months and even 48 months with a gridlocked House and Senate are not enough to time to descend into even the pessimistic chaospolitical we described last week. While that is Abood thin perhaps the lessons we hope will be taught by a democratic disaster will not be taught.  Most of us will not notice a bi change in our taxes or the regulations that protect our communities.  In the short term our critics feel it will mostly be just political theater. They have made us even more optimistic than our original beliefs .

So we can more firmly predict that the blazes that marked the trail for our ancestors will shine brightly to lead us back and ensure that America gets through these latest challenges  and continues to be the land of the free and home of the brave.

About the Author:Dr. Jay Lehr & Tom Harris 

Dr. Jay Lehr is Senior Policy Analyst with the International Climate Science Coalition and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute. He is an internationally renowned scientist, author and speaker who has testified before Congress on dozens of occasions on environmental issues and consulted with nearly every agency of the national government, as well as many foreign countries. After graduating from Princeton University at the age of 20 with a degree in Geological Engineering, he went on to receive the nation’s first Ph.D. in Groundwater Hydrology from the University of Arizona. He later became executive director of the National Association of Groundwater Scientists and Engineers. Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition, and a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute. He has 40 years experience as a mechanical engineer/project manager, science and technology communications professional, technical trainer and S&T advisor to a former Opposition Senior Environment Critic in Canada’s Parliament.