Hope.  Americans are in danger of losing hope.  When I tried to find out when the cause of this despair, COVID, with all its isolation and lockdowns, would be over, here in Idaho, I was told that it would probably be next spring.  Our local board of health has just extended the mask mandate another one hundred days.  That is past Christmas.  It's like the expression from Dante's Divine Comedy: "Abandon hope all ye who enter here."  We are told to learn to live with a new normal.

But wait a minute.  Are we not admonished to "be strong and of a good courage"?  Does not the Bible tell us, "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee"?  Does not our National Anthem say: "Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, and this be our motto, in God is our trust."

No, those things are all true, for those who have put their trust in Him. 

But what can we expect?  We have kicked God out of our schools and out of our government.  We no longer allow a reading from the Bible at the start of day, and prayer — even a moment of silence — has been outlawed.  One person tried to eliminate "In God We Trust" from our money.  Teacher colleges, teacher unions, and textbook publishers have all accepted the Marxist line that the world owes us a living.  Teachers graduate lean left.  Children are taught from kindergarten to the end of college that they are entitled to many things that are not rights at all.  Living under these delusions many of our fine young people grow up to be lawbreakers. 

So we have organized crime that is destroying our cities, people breaking and entering and stealing merchandise and burning what they cannot steal.  Are we surprised?  Wanting to further freedom, many Christians have even joined with Black Lives Matter not recognizing that it is a Marxist organization dedicated to destroying Christians and our national Republic.

If we have hope, it is that we can reclaim our government.  President Trump promised to "drain the swamp," but he found that it was not an easy task.  Still, he has made the effort, and the Democrats promise even more destruction if they are elected.  We should determine right now that we will never vote for another Democrat as long as their party has abandoned them.  Many good Democrats have simply been abandoned by their party.

So we see the destruction of our country one city at a time, and we wonder what we can do about it.  One young man attempted to protect a business, and he was assaulted.  He ultimately had to shoot to protect himself, and now he is being charged with murder.  One young lady was sitting in bleachers when she was arrested by a police officer for not wearing a mask.  The person taking the video was dumbfounded: "They can arrest you for not wearing a mask?"  So they dragged her off.  A church decided to assemble at City Hall and sing, not wearing masks, but several were arrested because they did not observe "social distancing."  I sent a letter to a number of good folk, and one responded by asking to be taken off the list because I did not support wearing masks.

The police have traditionally been our friends, and they have stood with us time after time.  I have the picture of a small child holding the finger of a policeman as they walked down the sidewalk.  In one county here in Idaho, the sheriff said he would not enforce the mask law as it was unconstitutional.  Our own sheriff simply said he could not enforce the "law," as it was impossible to do so.  Will the police just do what they are ordered to do, regardless of the Constitution?  History has demonstrated that that is no defense. 

If a policeman happens to kill someone in the line of duty, we read about it immediately, but the press is much slower to tell us about a policeman who is shot while doing his job.  One man dies while in police custody, and we are told he was "killed by the police" when the most that can be said is that he died while in police custody.  We will probably not know the truth until after these police are tried for their "crime."  The man said, "I can't breathe" and wanted to lie on the ground.  So he died, but he had a long rap sheet, and the autopsy indicated no problem breathing but enough drugs in his system to kill him.

So one man dies, and riots erupt all over the country in protest of his death.  In city after city, "peaceful protests" take place "spontaneously" and end with the destruction of property.  And what they cannot carry off they set on fire.  Even the fire departments seem to be powerless to control these fires.  Are the fire departments controlled by the same politicians who ordered the police to "stand down" and not stop the riots?  It is interesting that these riots are taking place in cities with Democrat governors and Democrat mayors.  One mayor of a major city stood solidly with the protestors, but when they threatened his own house he packed up and moved away. 

What, then, can we do?  As noted above, we can determine not to vote for another Democrat.  Some Republicans are not true to our Republic, but most of them support the Constitution and the party platform.  At least they are not dedicated to the destruction of personal property.

We can all do our part.  One couple entered a Target store in Florida not wearing masks and they walked all over the store asking folk to join them.  Do masks really help?  The governor of a state with a strong mask culture admitted that he and his wife both have caught the coronavirus.  Some doctors believe that masks do more harm than good.  And some folk will not shop at a store where masks are required.  Many stores have a policy to require masks, yet do not enforce it, and many people in the stores are without masks.  When I talked to our governor's office about the mask mandate I was told that it did not make any difference because in Idaho people did pretty much as they pleased.  One Republican governor has promised severe jail time for rioters and he has had no riots in his state. So the first thing is to band together and follow the Constitution.  Of course to follow the Constitution you first must know it, in these days even many lawyers actually know very little about the Constitution.

I saw a long time ago that our children were being taught a lot of false "science" especially concerning global warming and climate change.  One little girl came home crying because she was taught that the world was about to end and she could not stop it.  Many years ago we were given the narrative that we had only ten more years to live, but we are still here.  It is a false narrative.

I cannot go and picket, but I have written a short book for children to try and overcome the false teaching.  If you have lost hope, reading the book will give it back to you. Though it was written for children it is a book that anyone can understand.  It's called Climate Change: A Convenient Truth.

The governor of Missouri declared the emergency over in June with the desire for things to go back to normal.  Can we not hope that our own state follows his lead?  Will we simply lose hope, or will we do whatever we can to see our country return to normal?  A close friend travels the country selling a service.  He found that businesses with no debt were managing to hang on, but many of those with debts are declaring bankruptcy and closing their doors.  These have lost hope.

Most states are following the lead of the Center For Disease Control (CDC), but it has been wrong more than once.  President Trump has a new health advisor, Dr. Scott Atlas, who sees things differently.  His research indicates there is no reason to continue being locked down and all the measures that go with it.

We can have hope if we determine to do right, and if we band together to do so.  Men and women have fought to give us a nation that is the land of the free and the home of the brave.  I pray we will wake before it is too late; otherwise we may have to fight again just to remain free.

Image credit: Pixabay public domain.