Proponents of limited government who understand exactly what changes are in store for the U.S. are a glum, dispirited lot today following the landslide victory of Barack Obama.
Rev. Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute, brilliantly summed up the situation at the group’s annual dinner in Grand Rapids on Oct. 30: http://www.acton.org/commentary/486_the_way_forward.php
“We have worked for nearly twenty years to limit the tendency of the State to corrupt our civil, economic and moral lives only to wake up as though overnight to massive government interventions and a near takeover of vast sectors of our economy,” he said.
And that was before Tuesday’s election results.
But in what can only be described as the audacity of hope, Fr. Sirico outlined a way out of the current dilemma that doesn’t depend on a discredited Republican Party clawing its way back into power, but rather on individuals who champion the idea that “the only society worthy of the human person is a society that embraces freedom and responsibility as its two indispensable pillars” and makes “the building of the free society once more a moral adventure….
“People will never surrender themselves for an abstract point of utility,” he says. “But for a moral adventure? For a deed of moral courage on behalf of human liberty? For this, we will be able to summon a vast army.”
Time to enlist.
