Live Fire with Chuck Holton

This piece aired on 3/25 on the 700 club.  It’s from my recent trip to Juarez, Mexico with a side-trip to visit the US Expat enclave at San Carlos, Mexico.

My recent trip to San Carlos, Mexico got me wondering how many Americans live south of the border. It’s hard to be exactly sure, but this article quotes “official” government figures at around a half a million, but then goes on to assert that the number is much lower.

Suffice it to say: lots of gringoes are migrating south to take advantage of the low cost of living, the warm climate and one thing that I never imagined saying – freedom. America was once the freest nation in the world. Today, we’re number 8 according to this article - and falling (though I tend to agree more with this guy who thinks we’re just about dead last).

That’s right. Freedom. You remember what that’s like? It’s the ability to do what you want without worrying about getting fined, taxed or sued.

It’s the expectation that you can protect yourself and your family without going to jail.

It’s the liberty to live without punitive taxation on everything you own.

It’s the ability to keep control of your life with a minimum of government intervention.

When I was a kid, America was like that. But it seems to be going away. I’d like to blame it all on Obama, or big government in general, but if I really think hard about it, much of the blame has to be shouldered by the culture at large – you know, the culture that says “I am never at fault.” The culture that expects the government (or somebody, dadgummit) to pay me whenever I experience any kind of loss, whether it be from market forces, Acts of God, or acts of war. It’s the culture that allows the President to slap punitive taxes and regulations on my second amendment rights and then prosecute those who try to protect themselves.

It’s a culture that has thrown away the ruler of objective truth and then wondered why nothing it builds works quite right.

I’m not saying these things can’t happen in other countries. But many of our neighbors to the south are, shall we say, behind in this particular area of “progress.”

Our neighborhood in Panama was working-class. It wasn’t an exclusive gated community by any stretch. But after getting to know the people, I had no problem allowing my children to run around the barrio during the day, because we became a part of the community, and could trust others to watch out for our kids. Unfortunately, I can’t do that where I live in the US. Too many perverts. Come to think about it, in Panama, there is virtually no pornography available like it is in the US, and that fact alone made me feel more comfortable letting my kids roam.

So would you ever consider moving? I love the ideals America once stood for, but now it seems like every day those ideals are being buried in a mountain of regulation and litigation, drowned in a sea of moral relativism. It makes me sort of wish for a remote, beautiful place and a government that would just leave me alone.

I went for a walk in the rain this morning – it felt good on my face.  But West Virginia in the springtime has one unpleasant aspect:  Mud.   The mess on my boots when I returned reminded me of this article from the Family Research Council:

The Washington Post reported yesterday on a new survey of Americans’ religious affiliation. Among the highlights: “The percentage of Americans who call themselves Christians has dropped dramatically over the past two decades,” and “The only group that grew in every U.S. state since the 2001 survey was people saying they had ‘no’ religion.” It sounded like bad news for faith–until we looked more closely at the numbers. This survey has now been done three times–in 1990, 2001, and 2008, but the decline in people identifying as Christian and the increase in those with “no religion” took place between 1990 and 2001. From 2001 to 2008, the percentage of Christians dropped only from 76.7% to 76.0%, and the number with no religion increased only from 14.2% to 15.0%.

Thanks to the media sensationalism, a key fact of the survey was buried. Among Christians, 44% identify themselves as “born again or evangelical,” including substantial numbers of “mainline” Protestants and Roman Catholics. The report says, “These trends also suggest a movement towards more conservative beliefs and particularly to a more ‘evangelical’ outlook among Christians,” and it calls this an “important historical trend.” Meanwhile, the biggest decline among Christians is found in the more liberal “mainline” denominations, which plunged from 17.2% to only 12.9% just since 2001. The biggest drop came in two of the most liberal denominations, the Episcopalian and United Church of Christ, and it’s not unreasonable to suspect that their growing embrace of homosexuality and same-sex marriage is a big part of the reason.

Nobody likes walking in the mud.  We prefer something solid to stand on.

The same goes for faith:  When we attempt to placate the masses instead of lead them, we lose.  People want to believe in something.  We need to make sure to give them something strong and unmoving to believe in.

My piece on the drug problems in Panama’s Kuna comarca aired on today’s 700 club. Check it out.