10 Wishes for 2022
1. Police Refunded
Without doubt, defunding the police was the worst idea to spring from progressivism’s new Gilded Age. Its impact has been devastating for those deep blue cities that have indulged, with historic spikes in violent crimes — especially gun crimes.
Remarkably, but perhaps not surprising, the George Soros-funded prosecutors who have chosen this lawless path now refuse to back off in the face of citizen outrage. And still, the establishment media refuses to focus on the skyrocketing violence that so disproportionately impacts minority communities.
2. Pipelines Reopened
One of President Joe Biden’s first acts was to order the shutdown of the Keystone XL Pipeline and freeze natural gas exploration on public land. Climate activists cried, “Hallelujah!” The few remaining blue-collar union Democrats… just cried. Nevertheless, the deed was done and 10,300 highly compensated union jobs vanished overnight.
A one-day story last summer contained all the karma a pipeline-supporting voter could wish for as that same president went on the airways to ask (beg) OPEC to increase oil production as energy prices soared. There may be a GOP midterm commercial here. Just sayin’.
3. Speech Restored
Enough with those who wish to degrade our freedom of speech. Enough with the academic constraints on campus that limit free expression and intellectual engagement. Enough with the establishment’s indulgence of the woke threats to cancel those who dissent from fashionable views.
Enough with the ’60s liberals who so proudly stood for speech and dissent but are now intimidated by social media backlash and progressive primary challenges to their formerly safe seats. Enough with those who seek to undermine our most fundamental right.
4. Wokeness Rebuffed
How much more virtue signaling by media, academic and private sector leaders can we take? The not-so-secret underbelly of wokeness is that it presupposes the average person cannot walk and chew gum at the same time.
Yes, we can celebrate American exceptionalism while reflecting on our country’s shortcomings; yes, we can respect transgender people while preserving competitive female athletics; and yes, we can support teachers while insisting that parents have a right to know and a right to weigh in on what is being taught (or not) in the classroom.
5. Parents Respected
The message from November’s gubernatorial election in Virginia was impossible to miss: Don’t get between the education of public school children and their parents. Progressives may not truly understand this foundational concept, but enough left-leaning moms and dads not only understood it, but acted on it. And now the parent power revolution is spreading across the country.
6. Prosecutors Recalled
Along similar lines, average folks in the deepest of blue states are beginning to revolt. They see the homelessness and spiraling violent crime rates in Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, Seattle, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Portland, and they have had enough.
The defeat of “defund the police” candidates and the recall of Soros-funded prosecutors is only the beginning. Recent videos of large-scale smash-and-grab invasions at retail stores make the point. Chaos cannot continue to constitute “normal” in our largest cities.
7. Border Reinforced
Many on the right believe the dire situation at the southern border is intentional, while others see gross administrative negligence as the primary culprit. Regardless of motivation, the ongoing chaos is clearly unacceptable and unsustainable.
Citizenship and sovereignty die where borderlessness prevails. Tax-paying citizens who live and work in or near border towns are being deprived of their peace of mind and quality of life. All the while, sex traffickers, fentanyl and a terrorist or two continue to cross the border.
For those of you attempting to understand why there has been a significant jump in GOP support from Hispanic voters, look no further than this issue.
8. Inflation Repulsed
Those of us of a certain age recall the bad ol’ days of high unemployment and slow growth and inflation. Seems the “WIN” (Whip Inflation Now) pins marketed by the Ford administration failed to stem the tide during that difficult era.
But now fast forward to a time when the really smart people in Washington, D.C., no longer view inflation as transitory — which means it’s going to be around for quite some time, doing its best to kill the upward mobility of the working poor and lower-middle class.
9. Liberty Reclaimed
The new normal is not… normal. Today’s mandates are often inconsistent and fail to “follow the science.” Who really thinks that keeping kids out of school for a year or censoring contrary opinions offered by respected physicians and academics is science-based?
Add to this environment the arrests and intimidation of parents who show up to protest at school board meetings. Who thinks this is regular order in American education? All this and so much more occurs when liberty is suspended — until it is reclaimed.
10. America Resolved
Much of what is going wrong in America today — authoritarian mandates, massive government spending, religious liberty lost, spiking urban violence, historic numbers of teen suicides and drug overdoses, the soaring cost of living, a malaise (to borrow a Carter-era phrase bizarrely used by Vice President Kamala Harris just last week) — can be overcome if our national will is strong enough.
Some say we have lost that sense of unity that saved the free world (twice), got a man to the moon, defeated the Soviet Union, (still) produces enormous wealth, and most recently came up with a vaccine in world record time. I am not of that opinion.
But it all begins with resolve from each of us, and then a whole lot of resolve come November.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
