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The crack in the Liberty Bell is symbolic of the crack in our government. We have several options: (1) Cover it up so it doesn’t show; (2) Work to fix it; (3) Leave it there and see what happens; or (4) Expand the crack and destroy the bell and the nation.

When a politician promises to raise taxes, increase fees and regulations, destroy energy independence, restrict free enterprise, drive the rate of inflation up and up, and hinder individual prosperity, can he expect a high approval rating? Or even the respect of the people whom he hurts?

How can we believe that more people voted for that than the record number who voted for a president who lowered taxes, improved the economy, brought energy independence, combatted inflation, removed unnecessary regulations, and brought jobs and business back to the country?

Of course, certain media sources would switch the information to make the one raising taxes the good guy. Even though he wants to tax us on our mileage, if we read the fine print in the infrastructure bill being pushed through congress. And we pay more and more at the gas pump, the grocery store, and everywhere else we shop.

Add to this the moral division currently raging in our streets. People threaten violence because the Supreme Court kicked the issue of abortion back to the states. They didn’t rule it illegal or immoral or unobtainable. They just kicked it back to states to determine for that state.

Our nation’s division is such that each side thinks they are right, and both sides appeal to Scripture and/or to other “high” ideals as their support.

Political division in this country is greater than it has ever been, I think, with the one exception possibly being the division that led to the Civil War. And the media daily stokes the current division to make it more pronounced. The hostility grows.

I remember when President George Bush announced that we had entered a “new world order.” A red flag flew up for me, and I heard warning sirens. The new world order is simply a human attempt to be God. It is the coming together of the nations, as in Genesis 11, to build a tower to reach the heavens and seize control of all creation.

Of course, the modern scenario isn’t literally the building of a tower as in Genesis 11:1–9, but the motivation is the same—an attempt to supplant God and construct for humanity what only God can really guarantee.

On September 11, 1990, then President George Bush, addressed congress and the world and spoke of American military serving “together with Arabs, Europeans, Asians and Africans in defense of the principle and the dream of a new world order” (https://www.weblinenews.com/september-11-george-bush-new-world-order/). He spoke while preparing for war after Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait. That was less than one year after the Berlin wall had come down, signifying the end of the Cold War between the free world and the communist world.

Bush would use the term multiple times and expounded on it in the January 29, 1991 State of the Union address: “It is a big idea—a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind—peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law” (https://www.weblinenews.com/september-11-george-bush-new-world-order/). I wonder if terms like peace and freedom and rule of law mean the same thing to all nations and all forms of government. I doubt it. Yet all nations seem united in this grand goal.

Both parties in the USA seemed in agreement with this new world order. However, many people in the USA love our liberty and do not want to be a part of a “new world order” if it means sacrificing some of our God-given rights (such as the right to bear arms; the right to free speech; freedom of religion; and so on). We want the independence of being free citizens of a free nation, inspired by and built upon Judeo-Christian values.

Thus, when Barack Obama later declared that he would “fundamentally transform America,” I heard more warning bells. He did a fair job of bringing that to pass, though the full job is not yet complete, by God’s grace.

I challenged a college class of working adults to discuss what it means to fundamentally transform America. They were very in tune with this and realized that it means to change the principles, foundation, morals, and values of our nation into something quite opposite. It would replace a sovereign Creator with big government; personal responsibility with “social justice”; law and order with rioting and chaos; traditional decency and morality with sexual deviation, immorality, and even infanticide; and equality of opportunity and the American dream with equity of outcomes and lots of “free stuff.”

Furthermore, it means to change the economic structure, the social structure, the educational structure, and to remove individual liberties. It means exchanging capitalism for socialism, private ownership for government ownership, individual choice in matters of education, career, and location for government assignment of those in a monstrous scheme of “free education.”

Can a committed Christian really support that fundamental transformation? I know some who did. I believe that they didn’t understand it as that dangerous. They were thinking transforming the residual bad stuff (remaining pockets of racism; poverty, which they linked to race; and the presence of multi-millionaires who seem not to care about the impoverished among us.) Strange that many of those multi-millionaires are career politicians pointing the finger at hard-working businessmen and corporate executives.

But racism, poverty, and rich folks are not the foundation of this nation. So changing those things is not a fundamental transformation. By definition, a fundamental transformation would be a change in the foundation and basis of government. A change in the constitution. A change in the Bill of Rights. A change in the governance of the people. Exchanging a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” into a “government of the politicians, by the politicians, and for the politicians.”

This fundamental transformation was cut short, though, when the people elected a new voice in 2016, whose slogan was, “Make America Great Again.” Was that a plea to bring back racism? No. Racism is not what made America great in the first place. The foundation of Judeo-Christian principles, the war to end slavery, the movement to end racism (mostly completed until the fundamental transformation), the equality and freedom to engage in private enterprise, to build a business or learn a profession and succeed, and biblically moral principles—these are what made America great. This is what can make America great again.

By the way, the Liberty Bell was not originally named the “Liberty Bell.” That name was officially adopted after the Civil War—the war the Republicans fought to end slavery. (For more facts about the Liberty Bell, see my blog of July 4, 2015, “Liberty Bell and More.”)

In 2022 we have the newest slogan, “Build back better.” Apart from the classy alliteration, that phrase is fraught with dangerous implications. In order to “build back,” something must first be destroyed. Energy independence? The economy? The availability of goods? Perhaps the constitution? The “republic” as a form of government, with limited powers and checks and balances? Judeo-Christian morality which served, in the country’s beginning, as our foundation?

And what does that political party consider better? Socialism? “God forbid.”

This lack of clarity creates additional hostility. We are left to wonder what will become of our great nation and of our rights and those of our children and grandchildren. And what will become of the Liberty Bell? (Do you see the crack in it?)