No Common Enterprise
May 5th, 2010 by Randy Toman
I have been having an on going discussion/battle with the Pa. Lehigh County Republican leadership as to what we thought would be corrective action for the party. I have consistently said the Republican Party, on all levels, have lost their way and need to get back to principles that they once had and stood for. They are not showing leadership through a principled approach to issues and that in fact they should be taking charge of those pressing situations. The Republican leadership is not considering principles but instead concentrates on electing Republican candidates, not worrying as to principles of those Republican candidates, or the party’s principled position; this is indeed troubling.
Having Republicans in control of the process is the desired result, all the while the drift into and toward less and less in the way of principled government continues. Now that is bad enough, having your standards slide and/or not having high enough standards, which could prove to be a disaster but I do believe we have slid to a lower level. The very fact that we are discussing principles as a problem, within the party, leads me into other areas with these types of problems.
Let me try and explain the seriousness of this my latest complaint.
I quote from “Documents of Political Foundation Written by Colonial Americans” Edited by Donald S. Lutz Publication of the Institute for the Study of Human Issues Philadelphia 1986.
“Eric Voegelin stresses that political analysis should begin with a people’s attempt at self-interpretation, a self-interpretation that is most likely to be found in their political documents and writing.”
http://www.artsci.lsu.edu/voegelin/EVI/EVI_dtf.htm
Lutz goes on to explain Voegelin;
“The crucial point is that at some point, either before or after creating a political society, a people reach a shared psychological state wherein they recognize themselves as engaged in a common enterprise, a people bound together by values, interests and goals.”
I believe we have reach a point here in the USA those values, interests and goals have shifted so much that they have redefined what our principles are. We now view principles through a “Political Correctness” lenses—it matters not to what degree. If you link PC to the “Progressive” mode of thinking and then consider one’s interest in government hand outs and power with control, depending on being the elite God-less in thought or the poor you start to distort the goals. Goals have changed to were God, Freedom and Family has become Survival, government handouts, greed, lust and sex as we slide.
If you have two different sets of principles that are acting as guides, there can be no agreement, and how can anything be resolved between the two groups? The principle we started with “a city on the Hill” from the Bible and God, psychological/religiously we were a people of one accord with Biblical teachings and belief in God. We have now become a nation that is continually rejecting God and have standards that allow the killing of baby’s. The standards have divided us to the point, unless we get a touch from God, we will not survive, because the principles are no longer running parallel nor in line with God’s law, and we do not have the same values, interest, and goals. The folks I talk to and mention principles too, have no idea what I’m talking about, and I, to my ignorance and lack of understanding did not realize this terrible gap. And I’m not talking about ones soul and salvation through Jesus Christ, I’m talking about understanding different world views, a Socialist/Progressive will never understand a Christian Capitalist, it will be Socialistic/Progressive big Government and nothing else.
If this is not a bigger problem then not having principles “We Shall See”. For we have principles that move in opposite directions and have no way of connecting, thereby having a nation divided which can do nothing but fail. We have no “Common Enterprise” anymore and therefore no common principles.