Op-ed by Summer Lane | Photo: Alamy
The threat of war hangs heavy over the heads of Americans today, illustrating yet another bleak prospect amid a disastrous period in our nation’s history. Joe Biden has plunged the country into economic devastation, domestic turmoil, and self-inflicted weakness.
In 1817, Thomas Jefferson observed, “My hopes indeed sometimes fail; but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.”
Hope is essential. It drives forward the dream of liberty and justice. Hope is the action of looking up and thinking ahead despite oppressive circumstances. While the United States is certainly still the freest country in the world, the current degradation of our sovereignty through illegal immigration and the catastrophic weakening of our position on the global stage has set the world aflame with chaos.
As America goes, so goes the rest of the world.
The last frontier
The United States is the last frontier of true liberty. It is easy to get mired down in the day-to-day struggles against tyrannical legislation and the endless stream of negative news. Despite it all, hope persists.
“I want to say to you today: Do not despair and DO NOT lose hope,” President Trump told supporters in late August.
He addressed the ongoing “difficult times” that the nation has been facing lately, acknowledging the current destruction of the “rule of law” and the politicization of the justice system.
The president declared that these trying times would only “harden our will and steel our resolve to SAVE our nation.”
Indeed, as iron is forged in the flames, the soul of the American spirit and the seed of buoyant hope is refined throughout turbulence. This is apparent in history. Time and time again, within the conflicts of the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II, the United States has emerged stronger, wiser, and victorious.
“God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: This is my country,” Benjamin Franklin said.
The love of God, liberty and hope
The nation’s first president, George Washington, eloquently expressed his desire for the nation to cling to the “holy protection” of Almighty God, providing generations to come with an unmatched example of humble wisdom and leadership. In what is perhaps his most famous prayer, Washington expressed:
Almighty God: We make our earnest prayer that Thou wilt keep the United States in Thy holy protection; that thou wilt incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government, and entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another and for their fellow-citizens of the United States at large. And finally that Thou wilt most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility and pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion without a humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation. Grant our supplication, we beseech Thee, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
The love of God, the love of liberty, the love of country, and the love of one’s home is the spark that sets hope ablaze. “The world has not yet seen the true glory of what this nation can be,” President Trump said last November while announcing his 2024 presidential candidacy.
It is the hope of future glory and tomorrow’s promises that keep patriots moving forward, looking upward, and holding fast to the essential liberties enshrined in our most sacred founding documents. Therefore, despite the tempestuous challenges facing America today, men and women across this great nation can cultivate an attitude of gratitude for the rich and wise history of our founders and the leadership of today’s most selfless modern-day patriots.
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