Inauguration protesters went too far
Along with about 50 percent of all Americans, I was thrilled and proud as I watched the peaceful and dignified inauguration of Donald Trump.
But for the past few months and most likely to continue for the foreseeable future there persists a vicious, and unseemly tumult that shames us before the eyes of both our enemies and our friends.
It is the refusal by many to accept the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s election victory. This comes even in spite of President Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s oft repeated concessions. But I wonder, has this now gone beyond a proper and legitimate protest? It appears to have devolved into an assault on decency and decorum by the profanity laced speeches, false accusations, and subtle threats by a number of movie stars and other entertainment celebrities.
They are abetted by a constant harangue from liberal pundits, and the incessant clamor of radical racial groups, feminists, and sexually deviant groups such as the LGBT’s and NAMBLA. Even more shameful were the over 60 Democratic House members who put partisan demagoguery over national unity by absenting themselves from the inauguration ceremony.
These continuing protests are more than a departure from a venerable national tradition of the right of lawful dissent. They border on an assault on our democratic republic and reveal a defiant disdain of our Constitutional guarantees. This is a dangerous and misguided departure from legitimate and healthy protest and sets at naught our nation’s tested and honored protocol. As I listened to several of the indecent rants by Madonna and Ashley Judd’s and viewed the signs carried by so many protestors even those dressed in “vagina costumes,” I was amazed at the number of times that President Trump and America are accused of being “fascist” or “Nazis.”
It is difficult to think that a person who possesses even the minimal intelligence required to walk in a parade would be so pitifully bereft of common sense and historical knowledge that they would dare equate America with fascism and Donald Trump with Nazis. The unspeakable atrocities committed by the Nazis are, infamously, in a class by themselves. Such labeling then is vile and absent any merit or justification. Moreover, it might be helpful for those who bandy these absurd accusations about so easily to consider that it is they who are actually more in tune with Nazism and Hitler than Donald Trump and the Republicans.
They seem to care not the least that the same values that destroyed Germany are being taught in many of our educational centers today. Our freedoms are constantly being eroded and we are being betrayed by the political, cultural, religious and entertainment elite. It has been the observation of many that when the true God is separated from government and society, then judgment follows. From the very beginning of his rise to power, Hitler sought to marginalize the church. He demanded a guarantee that no Christian influence would be allowed to inform or influence government policy. Hitler stated often that he was willing to give churches freedom, “so long as they did not do anything subversive to the state.” The fly in the ointment was that it was Hitler himself who determined what might be “subversive.”
It seems that our social planners are bent on reshaping America into a nation with purely secular and humanistic values. They, like Hitler, believe that God and religion,聽 especially Christianity, must be excluded from government and every other facet of American culture. Thus, with the public square or market place devoid of any Christian values, the vacuum is now being filled with secular values such as the cheapness of life聽 with abortion and euthanasia聽 and every sort of sexual deviancy including homosexuality, gay marriage and the “normalcy” of a person being transgendered. This remaking of our children’s values is often accomplished with pornography and especially, by the ridicule of all traditional family values. And how successful has the remaking of America been? I submit that when many hundreds of protestors march and dress in vagina costumes and multitudes march for and demand absolute abortion rights, and when there is an incessant demand for freedom from any restraint of any type sexual behavior and when these demand that government redistribute all wealth to pay for any lifestyle one may choose, then it is past time to “drain the swamp” not only in Washington, but, also, throughout the nation.
Human dignity and the right to lawful protest are cherished elements of our culture and our tradition, and both are constitutional and are founded on biblical principle. These ideals which were forged in the furnace of adversity, and secured by self-sacrifice, have nurtured a national character that historically will abide no tyranny. But our legacy of liberty and the right of legitimate protest is not without limitations. Personal freedom does not mean moral nihilism, nor can it justify a contempt for the rights of others, or defy constitutional law, or trample on divine authority.
A ubiquitous and arrogant haughtiness thrives in many liberals and progressives within America. It is an attitude that will abide no contrary opinion, and despises censure and which opposes restraint of self-assertion in any facet of life or activity. There will be a bitter price to pay by all of us should this continue.
William “Ed” Nicholson is current pastor of Grace Baptist Chapel at Little Summit in Dunbar Township. He holds graduate degrees in Bible and education.
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