We have experienced a return to common sense in America, and it couldn’t make me prouder. President Donald Trump has been the key to this return, and I will give credit where credit is due. But let me also say upfront that I am not here to tell you Donald Trump is a perfect man. He is not. There are things about his style, his manner and some of his decisions that I find myself uncomfortable with, do not like and sometimes, find very disgusting. He is far from a “holy” person despite what some of the memes depict him as. That is not what this editorial is about.
This editorial is about something simpler and, I believe, harder to argue with: we are better off as a nation today than we were two years ago.
I think most honest Americans, regardless of how they feel about the man personally, know that to be true.
Think back to where we were. The border was, by any reasonable measure, in chaos. Millions of people were crossing illegally, and the federal government’s response ranged from indifferent to welcoming. Our military had just endured one of the most embarrassing moments in modern American history with the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Inflation was eating the paychecks of working families alive. The country was being asked to rewrite the basic definitions of womanhood, of fairness in sport, of what it means to be a man or a woman, and anyone who raised a question about it was labeled intolerant.
That was the America of the Biden years. Today, the border is a fundamentally different situation. People are being held accountable for the fraud and abuse of government programs that hardworking taxpayers have funded for generations. Our military posture has been strengthened, and record numbers of volunteer recruits have joined the forces. Crime statistics have moved in the right direction. The debate over transgender athletes competing against biological women in sports has, for the most part, been settled with a return to common sense.
These are not small things. These are the kinds of things that affect real people in real communities like ours every single day.
I’ll be honest with you about something else; the national Democratic Party has lost me entirely. That may not surprise you, but I want to explain why because it goes deeper than politics.
The party that once represented working people, farmers, small business owners and people of faith has drifted so far from those roots that it is nearly unrecognizable. The policies and agendas being championed at the national Democratic level are not the values of common-sense Americans. They are not the values of the people I grew up with, worshipped with, or run into at the local hardware store. They represent a vision of America that is far removed, in philosophy, in spirit and in practice – far from the nation that was founded some 250 years ago by men who understood that freedom is a sacred and fragile thing.
What I have witnessed over the last yearanda- half is something I genuinely did not know if I would see in my lifetime: a return to patriotism. A return to the idea that America is worth being proud of. A return to policies rooted in the principles our founding fathers established, including limited government, personal responsibility, national sovereignty and the God-given rights of free people.
This July 4th, as our nation celebrates 250 years, I find myself grateful – grateful that the celebration will take place in an America that feels, at least in meaningful ways, like itself again. I shudder to think what this moment would have looked like under a Kamala Harris administration. What kind of America would be celebrating its 250th birthday if the last election had gone the other way is not something I care to imagine for very long.
We are not without challenges. We are not without things to fix, debates to have and work to do. But we are, I firmly believe, headed in a better direction than we were.
And on the eve of 250 years of this grand American experiment, that is something worth acknowledging. May God continue to bless these United States of America, and may common sense continue to increase in our nation.
Craig Franklin is the Publisher/Editor of The Jena Times
