Retreat Is Not An Option

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
-Article II, Section 1, U.S. Constitution

Recently, President Obama has spoken of “economic patriotism” to entice and hold responsible businesses in job and market creation. Ironic, as his administration’s own fiscal and economic policies – particularly overregulation and corporate taxation – have not been very patriotic, especially in terms of fiscal responsibility and economic growth. In fact, they have been more hindrance and a heavy burden for a still-ailing and vulnerable economy almost six years into his presidency. While the president likes to tout a rosy picture based more on wisps of hope than facts in his incessant campaign speeches, unemployment, household debt, national deficit and the overall economic outlook are abysmal. Or, is he simply talking about the golf courses he keeps in business as the nation, and world, disintegrates around them? As such, there has been little incentive under his myopic “leadership” for businesses to maintain and confine activities to the United States in a competitive globalized economy.

Let’s talk about patriotism in general, though. No doubt, there is a humanitarian crisis occurring on the U.S. southern border. Yet, it is a manufactured one due, again, to the president’s porous immigration and homeland security policies that, despite Democrats’ delusional proclamations, have failed to secure the border. How patriotic is it to request and spend taxpayer money – and once again advance the fallacious idea of amnesty for illegals – for non-citizens in order to address a politically self-inflicted crisis, while American citizens and veterans continue to suffer hardships with no recompense from their own government? From mandates to executive decisions, how patriotic is it to keep instituting contemptuous policies that maintain that burden and reflect nothing but a general disregard for those same Americans, our inherent values and the rule of law?

Yet, without even detailing the administration’s numerous growing scandals it wishes ignored, these are only but a few examples as far as homegrown issues. There are the broader, global issues as well.

Whether the Obama Administration wants to admit it or not – and they won’t, preferring, again, to spin a fantasy worldview betrayed by facts – the U.S. is still a nation at war on multiple fronts old and new. No matter the amount of rose-colored rhetoric they wish to use as whitewash – or the boorishly tiresome and erroneous predecessor “blame game” – there are those in the world who want nothing less than the destruction of this nation and everything for which it stands. How patriotic is it not to secure our borders against that potential, and persistent, threat? How patriotic is it to abandon allies, like Israel, relentlessly fighting on the frontlines against those very same threats to our mutual existence, by insisting on essentially one-sided negotiations in the face of such barbarism? In every circumstance, unfortunately, lessons always are learned in hindsight – and, typically, by a time when it is too late.

Have we already heard the chimes at midnight though? Or, is it the signal bell for steadfast determination and unfettered patriotism to the cause against the current administration’s executive overreach and failed – upon occasion, outright unconstitutional – policies both domestic and foreign? As Abraham Lincoln stated in his Cooper Union, NY, speech on February 27, 1860:  “Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” 

©2014 Steve Sagarra