A Shining City: America at a Crossroads

By Frank Mitchell

A Shining City on a Hill is a vision of God's will for Good, Just, and Righteous government done in Wisdom for the Common Good. This is not a Liberal or utopian vision for government but rather a practical, moral one based on the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God of the Judeo-Christian worldview of Thomas Jefferson and the American founders, and this worldview creates "Liberty and Justice for all." Unfortunately, today's Democrats openly embrace a statism and Social Justice that are, in fact, the opposite of traditional "Liberty and Justice for all." Mitchell argues that America is at a crossroads in history, and we must choose between the classical Justice of the founders or the Social Justice of today's Liberals and Democrats, and this means the key to Republican victories now and into the future is choosing the classical "Liberty and Justice for all" ofA Shining City on a Hill.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514489819

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Copyright © 2016 by Frank Mitchell.

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CONTENTS

Part A

The Vision: The American Founding Vision and Western Civilization

Chapter A.1

The Reagan Lincoln Republicans and A Shining City on a Hill

Chapter A.2

America’s Current Dire State of Affairs

Chapter A.3

The Decline and Fall of the American Republic

Chapter A.4

Just Imagine the Closing of the American Mind

Chapter A.5

Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, and Plato’s Republic

Chapter A.6

The Greeks, Western Civilization, and America

Chapter A.7

The Judeo-Christian Worldview and the Purpose of the Good State

Chapter A.8

Justice, Private Property, Free Enterprise, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Part B

The Wrong Plan: How to Lose Every Election from Now Until the End of Time

Chapter B.1

The Republican Establishment: On Not Knowing Itself nor Its Opponents

Chapter B.2

On Knowing One’s Self: There Is Conservative, and Then There Is Conservative

Chapter B.3

The Republicans: On Taking Not Knowing One’s Self and One’s Opponent to New Heights

Chapter B.4

Winning Elections: Vision versus No Vision, Vision Wins Every Time

Chapter B.5

The Republican and Conservative Myth of the Three-Legged Stool

Chapter B.6

For the Republicans: Another Seventy Years in the Wilderness?

Chapter B.7

Is There Any Hope for Conservatives in the Tea Party?

Chapter B.8

Lessons from the Goldwater and Tea Party Landslide Losses

Chapter B.9

The Republican Party: From the Frying Pan into the Fire

Chapter B.10

How Republicans Can Lose Every National Election from Now Until the End of Time

Part C

The Victory Plan: How to Win Every Election from Now Until the End of Time

Chapter C.1

To Win, You Must Know Your Enemy or Opponent and Know Him Well

Chapter C.2

Reagan Lincoln Republicans Stand Resolutely and Defiantly in the Gap at Thermopylae

Chapter C.3

Only a Shining City Vision Can Take Down the Democrats, Once and for All

Chapter C.4

I’m Mad as Hell, and I’m Not Going to Take This Anymore!

Chapter C.5

There Is Only ONE Question for Good Government: What Is Justice?

Chapter C.6

Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Justice, and Capitalism

Chapter C.7

America and the Federal Budget: Greece We Are, Greece We Will Forever Be?

Chapter C.8

There Is Global Warming, and Then There Is Global Warming

Chapter C.9

William O. Douglas, Robert Bork, John Roberts, and the Constitution

Chapter C.10

The Supreme Court: There Is Judicial Activism, and Then There Is Judicial Activism

Chapter C.11

The Crossroads: Liberty and Justice for All or Leviathan Statism and Social Justice for All

Chapter C.12

The Revolution Has Begun: Every True Citizen, to the Restoration of America Battle and to the Voting Booths!

PART A

The Vision: The American Founding Vision and Western Civilization

In 1964, Ronald Reagan said famously in his A Time for Choosing speech:

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

We in our day stand at a momentous point just as great in history for America and the world that might well, yet again, determine the next thousand years on earth. We as a nation and as all individuals in our nation stand at a Crossroads.

We, in our time, must choose between A Shining City on a Hill founding vision of America with Liberty and Justice for all or the Democrats and Left’s false, counterfeit Shining City of an irrational, hedonistic, and even utopian Entitlement statism with so-called Social Justice for all.

Biblical and classical Justice and Righteousness are based on Common Sense, Reason, and the Higher Moral Law.

Biblical and classical Justice and Righteousness are based on Common Sense, Reason, and the Higher Moral Law of the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God of Thomas Jefferson and the American founders of the Judeo-Christian worldview.

Justice, Righteousness, Common Sense, and Reason hold that every person deserves the fruits of their own labor, while Leftist, irrational, utopian Social Justice holds that each of us do not deserve the fruits of our own labor—rather, someone else does—and it is the job of a massive, all-powerful, all-controlling Leviathan beast state to give those fruits to others of its choosing, and thereby, it is supposedly doing Economic or Distributive Social Justice.

Our Crossroads

Do we choose "one nation, under God, indivisible with Liberty and Justice for all"? Or do we choose a divided and fragmented humanist nation of servitude to Leviathan?

However, before Leviathan chooses how to appropriate and divide out the fruits of our labors, we, the people, by how we vote, first choose the leaders of our country and the leaders who are to serve as models for the whole world, since as Lincoln said, America is "the last best hope of earth."

What is our Crossroads in this generation? Do we choose "one nation, under God, indivisible with Liberty and Justice for all"? Or do we choose a divided and fragmented humanist nation of servitude to Leviathan with no true Liberty and Justice for all but only the poor substitute of the Democrat Party’s ill-conceived Entitlement Social Justice?

I know not what course others may take, but "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord," as Joshua said so many years ago.

CHAPTER A.1

The Reagan Lincoln Republicans and A Shining City on a Hill

Ronald Reagan said that if the lights go out here in America and if the humanist Left of Communism prevails, then the light of Liberty and Justice for all will probably go out on the entire earth for the next 1,000 years. And so too we can say in our time, the light of Liberty and Justice for all is no less threatened today by the Democrats and the Left’s secular, utopian, hedonistic Entitlement statism and its Social Justice. For us, the question is

Liberty and Justice for all is no less threatened today by the Democrats and the Left’s secular, utopian, hedonistic Entitlement statism and its Social Justice.

not so much Light and Freedom versus the Darkness and Slavery of Communism, but rather, it is the false Light and the false Justice of a deceptive, amoral, and utopian Liberalism that so threatens us today and that is not based on the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God of Thomas Jefferson, the American founders, and the Bible, but rather, it is based on an irrational and supposedly higher spiritual consciousness of compassion only as the only basis of life and not on Justice and Righteousness and classical moral virtue.

As Teddy Roosevelt said of his time, "We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord! We are in a battle of the worldviews, and one of these competing worldviews of Liberty and Justice for all" versus Social Justice statism will prevail and triumph, and one will pass off the stage of history, never to be seen again in long as annals of recorded history. The question is quite simple, and let there be no ambiguity. This is our hour of decision. The Crossroads we face is, do we reassert and reestablish A Shining City on a Hill with Liberty and Justice for all, or do we continue down the path of a false Shining City, the path of Liberalism, Humanism, and Entitlement Statism with its truly foolish, destructive, and deceptive Social Justice for all, as advocated by today’s Left and Democrats? This is the one single question of our time.

What exactly is the light of America of Ronald Reagan’s Shining City on a Hill? It is A Shining City on a Hill, spoken of in the Bible by Jesus himself, and it was first said of America by the early Puritan founder John Winthrop. What can be said of that city or nation? It is a country that is one nation, under God, indivisible with Liberty and Justice for all.

There is a harmonious interaction of all the parts of the body politic in free activity and association and in open economic exchange based on the Higher Moral Law or what Jefferson and the American founders called the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, and this harmonious interaction creates a true Republic and a true Commonwealth and so have held all the great social political philosophers of Western civilization such as Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, and Aquinas. And this harmonious interaction is seen to create A Shining City that is a model for all the world and that America was always seen to be before the rise of modern theories of Liberalism and Humanism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, theories which threw out traditional theories of government, law, and economics based on the Higher Moral Law and on one nation, under God, indivisible with Liberty and Justice for all.

The Higher Moral Law, with its theories of Liberty and Justice for all, is often called the Judeo-Christian worldview of Western civilization. It has its roots in ancient Jerusalem, ancient Athens, and finally, in the Early Church Fathers, who combined the traditions of ancient Jerusalem and ancient Athens with the New Christian faith of the New Testament, and what will emerge from this over the following seventeen centuries is a vision for a nation of America based on the Bible and on the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. A nation that held certain truths of life and human existence are undeniable, indeed, self-evident. Famously, the Declaration of Independence held, "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty,