The litany continues: Romney is a Mormon, which fact alienated Evangelical Christians, and perhaps Catholics, who again gave a majority of their votes to a supporter of infanticide. Romney is almost a generation older than the Kool slam-dunkin' Afro-American dude, and therefore Romney did not attract the 18-35 group, who are more than happy to hear that MAObama might cancel their college debts. Romney is a multi-millionaire, which fact alienated the middle and lower classes, who bought the class-warfare agitprop on television.
Here in Columbus, Ohio, the local CBS station carried a poll breaking down the Ohio vote, and it carried three things of interest, especially if Ohio is indeed a microcosm of the rest of the country.
MAObama won the women's vote by 55%. He won the young adults by 2/3.
But there was a third category in the poll which showed why Romney lost, and why Republicans may be at a future disadvantage without some sort of transmogrification.
The category was: "Which candidate cares about you?"
MAObama won this category by 85%.
And now our so-called "republic" staggers on: today's Wall Street Journal has a lead editorial which was written before the results were known, but which suspected the worst would happen. It observes that the republic will survive even MAObama's shenanigans for another 4 years.
I fear that we are entering a 40-year wandering in the wilderness, from which we may emerge purged in the end, and ready for rebirth, or where we may bury all of the original ideas of what "America" has meant to people. A society which votes for a government to "care about" it, rather than to let us have the freedom to care for ourselves, is a society begging to be swaddled in the strait-jacket of a benign oppression.
We must resist this trend with every atom of our strength! We must continue to point out the ridiculousness of our opponents, their illogicality, their duplicity, and their dangers. But we obviously have lost too many battles for the emotional side of the electorate.
We must show why it is better for government to care about the country, rather than to care so much about the individual. By caring about the idea of America, the people can - or should - take care of themselves.
To be sure, as my son said last night: "Well, he did not win by as large a percentage as in 2008." And also a good percentage of that 85% who thought MAObama "cared about" them still voted for Romney: they understood the difference!
The percentage of people whom we need to convince is small: this should give us hope!
A late Latin philosopher named Boethius - who lived after the Roman Empire in Italy was gone - wrote a famous work called The Consolation of Philosophy. He wrote it while in prison awaiting execution by order of a barbarian king in Italy.
Allow me to offer similar philosophical consolation: at the end of my European History course, I discussed with my students whether "The West" and specifically America were in "decline." No matter where the debate went, I concluded with this idea.
Even if we believe that we live in an era of decline, that should only invigorate us to lead lives which will lay a foundation for the next rise.
Boethius is seen NOT as the last of the great Roman philosophers, but as the FIRST of the great Medieval Christian thinkers, who will lay an intellectual foundation to rebuild Europe. With its feudal energy which will protect it from Arab invasions, Europe will build the great castles and cathedrals still standing today, and will set the stage for ideas on freedom and individuality which we are attempting to preserve today.
It may very well be that a majority wants a state to care about them. In contrast, we can lead lives bearing witness to the primacy of freedom and individual responsibility.
