Now that the Holidays have come and gone, it’s time for us to focus on the year ahead, and the opportunities and challenges that it will bring. For folks who believe in faith, freedom and free-markets, 2012 was not a banner year. A year that began with high hopes and great anticipation ended with disappointment and, in too many cases, disillusionment. Now, however, disappointment must give way to determination and disillusionment to decisive action to restore the American Republic. This nation has endured many existential threats throughout its relatively short history, and has always come through stronger, more resolved and more united than before. We shall do so this time.
Though there are seemingly insurmountable odds stacked against human freedom and flourishing, I believe that the heart of American Culture still beats with a desire to live in liberty. Many of our fellow citizens are uncertain and unsure as how best to maintain this liberty, but their desire for it endures unabated. For this reason, I maintain my hope that this nation can be restored. As the secular-progressive agenda comes crashing down under the weight of its own implausibility, Americans will seek an alternative. The deception and duplicity that has led to the rise of a secular socialist political agenda will be exposed, and our fellow citizens will seek a new way forward. When this inevitable moment comes, we must be ready to answer their call.
Answering the call has been the hallmark of the American Experience. From the First Great Awakening, which first began in New Jersey in 1726, and spread throughout the American Colonies by 1750, was the spiritual foundation on which the American Revolution rested. It was the firm conviction that rights come from God, not from government, that provided the political philosophy necessary to fundamentally transform the future of freedom with the foundation of the United States. It was the Second Great Awakening, which began in the 1830s and built upon the First, which ushered in a reapplication of American Principles. The abolition movement, which gained steam during the First Great Awakening, was propelled to the political and cultural forefront, and the scourge of slavery was routed from this nation as a result.
The same spiritual foundation that preserved freedom in the Revolution, and reasserted it during abolition, remains at the heart of American Culture. We are an exceptional nation, not because of “blood, or birth or soil,” but because we are a nation of exceptional values. These values are the product of centuries of human history and experience, and they are time tested and battle tried. That’s why I’m convinced that the next Great American Awakening is coming, and it is coming soon.
I ask you to join all of us at “Common Cents” and our Palmetto Conservative Alliance as we seek to spark such an Awakening in South Carolina. As I’ve said many times, South Carolina is the state that can lead the nation back to its founding values. Let’s rebuild South Carolina’s culture, so that South Carolina can lead freedom’s revival on the national level – beginning in the year ahead.
Together, 2013 can be everything 2012 was not, and so much more.
God Bless You and Yours, and God Bless These United States.
-Josh
