Opinion: The End Of The Beginning?
BY REV. TIM J. SMITH
After Britain’s success in the second battle of El Alamein, Winston Churchill looked back in 1942 and memorably said, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
At times, America seems to be at one of those threshold periods as well. Some good Supreme Court decisions, check. Increasing skepticism of the whole, lunatic COVID response, check. The new Republican House sticking it to various censors, liars, and scoundrels, check. Alternative media casting light in formerly dark places, check. Is it the end of the beginning in the battle to restore a measure of cultural and political sanity? With the Left consistently overplaying their hand and the courts more frequently returning issues to the basic words of the Constitution, are we now on the cusp of a conservative resurgence? A Churchillian reticence would certainly be in order: It may merely be the end of the beginning.
For example, the 50-year struggle to support life and work to overthrow the scourge of Roe v. Wade is a better picture of what it will take. Yes, the Dobbs decision was great, but this simply returns the issue to the status quo ante, the situation existing before 1973. Now the states can determine the regulation of abortion. The long struggle begins again in each state to promote life. And, with a view to the long game, to pass laws that support faith, family, and freedom. There will be plenty of work to go around for all to play a part in this stage of the struggle.
There will be no magical restoration. In our darker moments, we worry that we only buy time for our children to enjoy liberty. And we pray they are not lost to our debased culture. Do you doubt it is this dire? Look, conservatives have not really conserved much of anything. The characters of this movement have heretofore offered only a slight brake on the downward slide. It appears that conservatives are just lagging a few years behind the leftists. In five years, the conservative argument regarding drag queens in schools will be “We believe in small government and the free market! So we will only support privately funded transgender activists in classrooms.” Seriously, it almost seems to be that bad with the professional losers on the Right.
So how do we take heart at this end of the beginning? How will we provide a good start for those who follow us – our children and their children? Moving forward, lofty dreams and despairing despondence are equally to be avoided. Instead, we must have a steady-eyed realism that takes in the truth of the world. A vision that will not look away from the unsettling coarseness of the culture or the encroachments of the digital Machine – and keeps on building.
Both realism and hope are needed. The fighter pilot James Stockdale spoke to this need. He was shot down and became a prisoner of the communists during the Vietnam war. He was held in prisons and tortured and beaten for years. Afterwards, Stockdale was asked, which POWs did not make it out alive or with their sanity intact? Who could not handle living between hope and despair? Stockdale answered,
Oh, that’s easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart. This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
Confronting the reality of conditions as they are is the only way forward – Towards what is required to restore this beloved nation. To again cite Winston Churchill, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”
