Tancredo: Do You Miss America?

Columbus discovered America. Sadly, 525 years later, Americans can’t find it.

I miss America. Do you?

Now, I am not necessarily talking only about the good ole’ days when you could play outside till the street lights came on, and when you did play games there was a winner and a loser but no participation trophy. I am talking about something much, much more devastating to the national ethos. I am talking about the approaching end of patriotism, when loving the America put together by the founding fathers gets you branded as a racist, sexist, white supremacist, Islamophobe, homophobe and just plain stupid.

Twenty-first century America gives everybody something to rail against. For Antifa and the Democrats, it’s the mere semblance of things we were and, for conservatives, it’s the daily realization of so many things we have become.

Conservatives recall a time when you could actually trust the major organs of government, especially those tasked with the responsibility for keeping us safe. Remember when we believed the Department of Justice was actually on our side? Are you wondering what happened to the America where even your local police department seemed to actually be focused on catching the bad guys and was, for the most part, working in unison to protect law-abiding citizens? Who would have imagined a local police force standing down, as they did in Charlottesville, to let the mayhem escalate to the point where bloodshed turned into murder?

Are you nostalgic for the America where a sanctuary city was a whimsical place where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid found refuge? In 2017 America, it’s a place where murderers and rapists and child molesters can find safe harbor but only if they broke into the country to commit their crimes.

In 2017 America, a man rents a room in Las Vegas and the next thing you know, there are 59 dead and nearly 500 wounded. But a week after the event, you still don’t know his motives– whether he was a “ lone wolf” or a simple lunatic or a radicalized ISIS convert. Or was he a Trump-hater who was, as the shooter at the Republican baseball team practice, driven to mayhem by the persistent rantings of late night TV “comics” and a national press that is obsessed with fueling a coup and overturning an election?

Questions abound, and even when there are official “ answers,” too many Americans are skeptical. Truthfully, are there any folks out there who don’t harbor at least a modicum of reluctance to accept the “official” accounts of the horrific event? Can anyone blame those of us who remain leery?

Many of us look at the media reporting the same way thinking Germans and Russians must have looked at the daily emanations from their respective Ministries of Propaganda. Look at how our Ministry regurgitated the story that a video no one in Libya ever saw caused an attack on our people in Benghazi. Look at how the Ministry feeds the ludicrous narrative that Russia engineered Hillary’s defeat.

After all, for eight years we saw President Obama turn the U.S. Department of Justice into the lead agency in charge of “fundamentally transforming America.” We saw Obama’s first attorney general, Eric Holder, tell the nation he would not prosecute crimes committed by members of the New Black Panther Party. He was busted for gun running to Mexican cartels in an operation called Fast and Furious that ended up costing God knows how many lives — including that of a Border Patrol Agent, Brian Terry. Holder refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court even though constitutionally, he was charged with the responsibility of enforcing federal laws. And the list goes on. Holder was followed into office by another wizard of weaponized bureaucracy, Loretta Lynch. Think tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton supposedly to discuss grandchildren — of which she has none. Or does the cover-up of the Clinton email scandal ring a bell? Do Americans think Obama’s appointee as head of the FBI, James Comey, is a paragon of virtue or a fabricating political hack?

Obama weaponized the EPA, BLM, and every agency under his control and encouraged them to go after anyone deemed a problem to the new progressive order. Case in point, a 77-year-old veteran by the name of Joe Robertson, who owned a small 200-acre ranch in Montana. In order to enhance the water supply for the volunteer fire department to which he belonged, he built a few stock ponds on his land, which is 60 miles from the nearest minimally navigable river and many miles from any creek tributary of the river. Yet, the Obama EPA said he had violated the federal rules implementing the Waters of the United States (“WOTUS”), a law aimed at protecting “navigable waterways.” After a hung jury in the first trial, a judge whom Robertson had criticized years earlier came out of retirement to preside over a new trial and deliver a conviction.

In November, disabled veteran Robertson, now 79, will finish a year-and-a-half prison term for a concocted pseudo-crime against Mother Earth. Oh, and incidentally, those Obama EPA “WOTUS” regulations used to prosecute Robertson are now being withdrawn by the Trump Administration.

And how about abusing the vast powers of the CIA to gather — or make up — incriminating evidence on the regime’s political opponents? Or using the nearest thing to an American Gestapo, the IRS, to target non-profit groups that need  “re-education”? Can anyone spell Banana Republic?

Patriotism and trust in government have deteriorated to dangerous levels. We have replaced the Rule of Law with the rule of bureaucracy. Americans no longer trust the government to tell the truth about anything — about abortion, crime, terrorism, or the government’s institutionalized violation of privacy and civil liberties. When a majority of citizens believe both the mainstream media and the government are telling lies every day, civic life declines to a poisonous competition between angry tribalism and corrosive fatalism, with no-win battles between hyper-activism and quiet cynicism.

Yes, I really miss America.

• I miss the time when Hollywood produced movies that instilled pride in who we are.
• I miss the time when citizenship meant something more than immunity from deportation, when the study of Columbus, Magellan, and Ponce De Leon inspired a sense of adventure, not a sense of shame.
• I miss the time when the First Amendment was sacred and colleges were bastions of free speech.
• I really miss Teddy Roosevelt’s America, a nation that heeded  his admonition that a nation made of people who refused to assimilate was not a nation at all but simply a “ polyglot boarding house.”
• And I miss Ronald Reagan’s America when we had an uplifting rebirth of pride and self-confidence.

However, the political establishment’s depravity and corruption are resilient, and the historical roots and pillars of American greatness remain malnourished in our schools and colleges.

Although Obama is gone from the White House, his operatives still hold onto the reins of power and Trump’s team seems uninterested in dislodging them.

The president has some enormous challenges ahead of him, not the least of which is inspiring a rediscovery of the America our founding fathers fought so hard to establish. How will we ever recover America if we stop looking for it?

Where is Mighty Mouse when we really need him?