Commentary
On October 5, 2021, my wife and I celebrated our 65th wedding anniversary.
Perusing our album of black and white wedding photographs was a vivid reminder of how times have changed since 1956. I would suppose that wedding photos today are taken on an iPhone.
The American flag hung in every classroom, where the pledge of allegiance was repeated each day, and prayers were not out of the question. Our public schools were held in esteem. Our police, too.
The nuclear families valued freedom and had work ethics then. There were those on welfare, but the thought of being paid not to work would not have been accepted. Life was a lot simpler.
I wasn’t interested in politics then, but I clearly remember my father’s stories about FDR. He was a Democrat who, I am sure, voted for Adlai Stevenson that year. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t admire Dwight Eisenhower, but there was that party thing.
Eisenhower did continue most of the New Deal and Fair Deal programs, while emphasizing a balanced budget.
Speaking of a different era; in September of 1955, Eisenhower suffered a heart attack and spent seven weeks in the hospital. In February 1956, his doctors reported his recovery. And in November he was elected to a second term in a land slide. That would not be possible today.
Just seven states were in the blue column in the 1956 election, nearly all in the deep south.
“I Like Ike” was the campaign slogan, and my wife still has an “Ike” pin she wore back then, though like me, she wasn’t into politics.
When I think about that time in our lives, it isn’t hard to understand why we are so disappointed in what is happening to our nation today.
Patriotism and freedom of religion are frowned upon by the left. There are those who demand a second anthem be played at our sporting events and others who want our beloved flag to be redesigned.
It is encouraging that people across the nation are raising up against school boards that are embracing the teaching of critical race theory. However, President Biden’s attorney general has mobilized the FBI against parents who oppose it, deeming them a threat. Similarly, the secretary of defense has executed a search for those in the military who might be considered extremists.
Meanwhile, the Democrat candidate for governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, a former Clintonista, recently told the state’s voters that parents shouldn’t decide what their kids learn in school.
Moves to defund the police continue to be supported in many cities. The leftist George Soros’ Open Society Policy Center, one of Soros’ advocacy arms, recently gave Equity Austin $500,000 to defeat a policing effort in Austin, Texas.
And at our southern border, the Biden administration has turned a blind eye on the thousands of illegals crossing our border, while directing they be disbursed across the nation, many with Covid and other diseases, without the consent of the receiving cities and states.
The same administration is more interested in the impossible task of altering our climate than the security of the nation from bad actors like the Taliban, al Qaeda and ISIS-K. I firmly believe that Biden’s abandonment of Bagram Air Base as a withdrawal base resulted in the deaths of the 13 lives at the Kabul airport.
Now this feckless president wants us to believe that he wrote the legislation that Pelosi and Schumer are trying to peddle as a fully paid for “investment.” Our Republican Congressmen need to stand strong.
Biden’s feeble Build Back Better infrastructure plan doesn’t come close to Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System, the single largest public works program in U. S. history that saw 41,000 miles of roads constructed across the country.
Now, more than ever … may God continue to bless the United States of America.
