It took Iran-appeaser (and embarrassingly undeserving Nobel Peace Prize awardee) Barack Obama three days to condemn Hamas’s butchering of Israeli women and children.  Pompous student groups at elite universities across the U.S. continue to ignore the barbarity of Islamic supremacists and instead blame Jews for their own murders.  John Kirby, a former rear admiral in the Navy and a longtime national security spokesman for both Obama and Biden, assessed the carnage in the Middle East and concluded that “climate change” remains humanity’s most dire threat.  

A former American president is not capable of moral leadership.  Students at some of the best schools in the world are not intellectually prepared to comprehend anything of history or geopolitics beyond trite political slogans written on cardboard signs.  And a military man fears the weather more than the prospect of regional tinderboxes in Israel, Ukraine, and the South China Sea igniting widespread nuclear conflagration — an event that would, indeed, affect the world’s “climate” dearly.  Taken together, these weak and grotesque reactions to the bloodiest attacks on Israel in half a century show how a vacuum in American leadership has left the next generations dangerously unmoored from reality and unprepared to survive the threats from our increasingly volatile world.

Kidnapping and raping young women is evil.  Bludgeoning and knifing grandmothers and sending pictures of their remains to their grandchildren is evil.  Swiping babies from their mothers’ arms is evil.  These vile acts are so depraved that they cannot even be camouflaged behind the sinister platitudes of moral relativism’s oozy sludge.  No justification could ever excuse beheading babies or gunning down sleeping families, yet there are members of Congress today defending Hamas terrorists as “victims” of Israeli “oppression.”  It is sickening to see U.S. lawmakers take sides with rapists, sadists, and baby-slaughterers.  Those who do so do not ignore evil; they embrace it.

That any American could refrain from condemning Hamas — or worse, find ways to condone its wickedness — is another glaring warning sign that America has lost her way.  For decades now, the people who have risen to the top in government, the arts, and academia have shared a common disdain for moral virtue, a haughty devotion to self-indulgence, and a malignant delight in elevating sin.  The “ruling class,” such as it is, has worked to replace Americans’ obedience to God with an unholy dedication to “politically correct” pablum, idolatry, and worthless “wokeism.”  In effect, American “elites” have demanded that the American people reject God and worship the atheists instead.  The end result has been predictable: not only have Americans suffered through a drought of character, but also they have lost the ability to distinguish between good and evil.  It should be no surprise, then, that evil has taken full advantage of this opportunity and now flourishes.

For those who have managed to keep their wits about them, it is clear that too many Americans are ill prepared for the struggles ahead.  Governments — including our own — openly embrace totalitarianism.  Rights and liberties are being remolded into removable “privileges.”  Central bank lies and thievery have reduced the financial system to hollowed out papier-mâché — too brittle to survive the next crisis.  The worst and most corrupt people have risen to power — united in iniquitous purpose to enrich themselves while distracting the American people with needless division and never-ending emergencies.  The future promises to be hard and dangerous, and too many Americans have been made weak and dangers to themselves.

The Marxist proclivity to cause social friction by distorting language has given us a generation of adolescents incapable of determining whether they are girls or boys.  Religious-like adoration of “diversity for diversity’s sake” has splintered cultural bonds and forfeited hard fought triumphs of Western civilization.  Moral incisiveness — forged through a stubborn determination to do what is right — has worn down like a blunt blade, causing more harm than good.  Strength of character — evidenced by those who refuse to blindly follow the crowd — has withered away.

American leaders have taught young generations to pursue physical pleasure without constraint, to blame others for what they do not have, and to take what is not theirs.  They have taught the young generations to reject the virtuous as too judgmental and to embrace the sinful as worthy of emulation.  They have taught the young generations to abandon hard work but to expect success as theirs by right.  American leaders, in other words, have broken our country’s moral compass and left the youngest among us lost in a thicket of despair, devoid of real purpose, and with no direction to go.  

This is by design.  An immoral and lost America deprives the world of the last, best hope for freedom on the planet.  Because morality and liberty are intertwined, the adulteration of the former guarantees the destruction of the latter.  Government tyranny thrives in societies dedicated to sin.  Moral ambivalence invites authoritarianism.

Now, in the midst of all these dispiriting observations, allow me to suggest something counterintuitive: this moral confusion and weakness in America is precisely the time when good people must stand up.  Americans have been poisoned with postmodern gobbledygook for so long that they are desperate for moral guidance.  They are like travelers wandering the desert searching for a cup of water, and those of good character are equipped to offer them what they need for salvation.  This is not the moment in history when all is lost; this is the moment in history when the lost are brought back into the fold.  

Leaders — true leaders, not the ones who pick our pockets today — rise not in times of certainty, but in times of anguish.  They stand with purpose — even while being pummeled with rocks from their enemies.  Without regard for their own safety, they seek out those suffering in the darkness and say boldly, “Come with me.  I have a light.  I can show you the way.”  If you are asking yourself what you can do to save your country, the answer is simple: stand and be recognized.  Be bold, act boldly, and by doing so, embolden others.  Courage, like light, burns brightest in darkness.

What is more, it is clear that our nation is filled with lost souls desperate for moral guidance.  They have been fed so many lies for so many years that they are battered human beings just struggling to survive.  Moral truth is an elixir that can revive the soul and strengthen the body.  It is a cup of water that can be passed from one person to the next without ever needing refilling.  Truth and virtue grow hope and purpose in once barren fields.

How does one begin planting those seeds?  By being blunt with others.

Evil is real.  It must be acknowledged and confronted without hesitation.  Negotiation will not lead to evil’s surrender.  Compromise will not confine evil to where it now exists.  Wherever it is allowed to fester, evil grows until those beyond its reach today are under its thumb tomorrow.  It is unrelenting, and so, too, then, must be those who choose to fight it.

You fight evil with a faith in God that yields to no government.  You fight evil with moral conviction that cannot be bent to appease the offended.  You fight evil by standing when others sit and by speaking when others fall quiet — because sometimes it is the outsider who inspires a righteous rebellion or the soft voice that can only be heard when others are silent. 

You do this, and people will come.  They will awaken from their moral slumber.  They will remember that there are things worth defending with their lives.  They will remember that a healthy soul and personal freedom go hand in hand.  They will find strength in your example.

This is a time for good people to fight back.

Image: Pashi via Pixabay, Pixabay License.