It is 0430.  My house is silent except for the soft breathing of the German Shepherd at my feet.  I have headphones on, and inside my head the epic instrumental song “Heroes,” by Michael W. Smith, is filling my heart with the joy that only someone who truly loves music can understand.   In the midst of the piano and the swelling strings, I realize that this—the simple pleasure of being a homeowner, sitting in my house early in the morning, secure and safe—is just one more thing that I am very close to losing.  As the instruments swirl around me, I am suddenly filled again with a deep sadness…and a knowing.  The weight of that knowing is nearly crushing. It is the knowledge of inevitability.

You know it too, don’t you?  We talk about Congressional business, we get angry about this vote and that vote.  We yell at the TV and we blog and we tweet and we talk about 2016 like it will come.  But deep down, in the dark place we all have to ourselves, we know better.  The idea of a conservative President in 2016 is a pipe dream.  In fact, those of us who are paying attention already know what so many refuse to believe:

Our nation will not survive this administration.

In 2005, Obama promised that his goal was “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”  He told us that “My legacy will be an America brought down to the level of the rest of the world.”  He has been telling us for years what his plans for America are.  He has no intention of leaving that office until the destruction of America is complete.  So many talk of voting these people out, as if the election system is somehow still impartial.  You and I know better.  So many talk of how we need to be tolerant, bipartisan, and compromising.  You and I know that compromise is how we got here.  Erosion, little by little, of the very things that have made this country a beacon to the world for two centuries.

I am not appealing to those who still labor under the assumption that we are in a fair system, and that all we need to do is Get The Vote Out.  They are already lost.  I am not speaking to those for whom politics is a status, and fundraising luncheons are a pastime.  They are worthless.  I am not even bothering with those who think liberty means being able to light up a joint on their way to the abortion clinic.  They are clueless. 

This post is for you, the ones who have fire in your hearts.  Those who cannot hear the national anthem without feeling in the bottom of their soul what Francis Scott Key felt as he looked out that morning and saw that the flag–and the nation–was still standing.  This is for all of you who cannot walk past an elderly man wearing a World War II veteran hat without stopping to shake his hand and tell him that even generations later, some of us still care about what he did for us.  This is for those of you who weep for what our country has become, and wait only for the opportunity to stand and say, “No more.”  It is for all of you who, like me, have felt the nearly overwhelming weight of knowing what is coming, and what our enemies have in store for us.  It is sobering, it is frightening.  It is everything that we do not want, and I know some of you have purposed in your hearts that you will fight alone if you must.

Know this: You are not alone.  There are many of us who see the endgame coming, and we pray desperately that violence does not come.  We want nothing more than the peace to raise our families and live in quiet liberty.  But our enemies should not confuse a love of peace with an unwillingness to engage in war.   We wish with all our hearts that this cup would pass.  But if it comes, it must be answered. We have no other choice but slavery, and I would rather give my life this second than live as a slave to a king.

I call upon those who feel as I do, that our nation’s ideals are worth any sacrifice.  I ask you to continue to be ready, to be willing to stand in the fire and fight.  I know that you may be afraid, you may wonder if the sacrifice is worth it.  But I ask you to remember the American boys who stepped out of landing crafts in the shallows at Normandy; the ones who looked out the jump door of their plane to the madness below and jumped anyway.  I ask you to remember that those same men are being arrested today for simply wanting to view the memorial that stands in their honor.  How can we allow this?  How can we tell them that their sacrifice was worth so little that even before the end of their lifetime, they are nothing to us but criminals jumping a barricade?  We owe them so much more.  We owe them the lives we have enjoyed.  We owe our fallen dead the greatest of respect and honor, and yet our government spits in their faces.  There are things that We the People cannot tolerate.  We have tolerated far too much already.

We are about to enter something that we do not want.  We are about to find ourselves in the darkest, most horrifying time this nation has ever known.  Paine wrote on the eve of another pivotal time in our great history, that these are the times that try men’s souls.

Let us not be found wanting. Not in the company of others who faced evil for us and won.