Leave me alone. . .

There seems to be a rather profound political division in America between those who think the government and our leaders are doing too much and those who think they are not doing enough.  It is a rather classic controversy between those who want to be left alone and those who insist upon being being noticed.  I am not sure how it falls along party line but I think it is pretty obvious that the folks who do not want an interventionist government are more on the Republican and Trump side than Democrat and Harris side.  Although it is a great divide of distrust, it is also a philosophical difference.

We all have people we do not trust in America.  As is rather obvious, I do not trust the experts whose expertise is driven by ideology nor do I trust the educational elite or the media elite or the entertainment elite or the big pharma/corporate medicine cartel.  Although I have not trusted them for a long time, after the pandemic I trust them even less.  I do not understand how thinking people could be corralled so easily by their fears to believe in masks, social distancing, or a vaccine that does not quite prevent what it was invented to prevent.  I do not impose my choices on others in this regard and you are perfectly free to disagree with me, thank God!  But I do not want to have the choices of others imposed upon me either.  And I refuse to grant that because someone makes gazillions in Hollywood or reads the news from a teleprompter or confuses ideology with education that person has a better opinion than mine.  Taylor Swift is free to vote for whom she chooses but we are all fools if we are influenced by her choice.  The same is true on every side for every political color or candidate.  Truth should not be red or blue.

Others do not trust industries or corporations, real estate tycoons or those who wear the uniform of a soldier or police, or those who hold to values we all once held a generation or so ago.  I get it.  The old establishment of politics, government, the ruling class, and such have let you down.  You do not understand why we would not use force to accomplish the good the people are not choosing for themselves.  For you society is not changing fast enough and you have had it up to your eyeballs with those who put a monkey wrench in the work of transforming America by executive order and governmental rules.  You are free to have your opinion.  But again, truth should not be red or blue.  Without truth in common, we are only our divisions and without a moral compass shared we are all over the page in our recognition of what ought to be done in the name of America.

What I do say is this.  America was founded as a place where the government was not our conscience or our God, where a minimal government was preferred over one that constrained too much of our freedom, and as a place where we all have a right to be left alone as long as we are not directly harming someone else.  I think the truth is that those on both sides are voting more against each other than for the standard bearer of their cause.  Harris may not be the spawn of Satan but neither is she the Messiah.  Trump may be an egotistic sleazeball but he is not the end of the world.  One candidate has made it clear that Christians may not be welcome nor will the freedom inherent in our land protect them from the grip of the government while the other wraps himself up in the fabric of religion in ways that are bound to make orthodox Christians uneasy.  In the end, however, I am more for the one who will leave me alone than I am for the one who promises to remake America and right all our wrongs in the name of progress.  Sure as shootin, progress will come at a cost and it may well be the liberty that protects my right to worship without fear or threat from the government.  If I need improving (and I surely do), the Holy Spirit is the agent to do it and not the government.  Of all the rights so valuable to us in this blessed nation, none is as valuable as the right to be left alone.  It is this that moves my heart more than political promise or fear.