Where Are You?

As of today, I have 856 Facebook friends. Of that number, probably 150 or so are folks I have never met in person but became friends with on Facebook through a mutually shared interest, because they are a friend of a friend, or a high school classmate which time and geography has long kept us apart, or because they are a "several-steps-removed" family relation.

Add to that number at least 150 or so people I know who are not on Facebook (I’m guessing).

Now certainly all of my "friends" are not "friends" in the truest sense of the word. Many are simply acquaintances, friends of friends I met once or twice, business connections, or folks I have met along the path of life and maybe shared only a conversation or two.

Beginning in early 2007, I began to meet and cultivate a whole new collection of friends. These new friends came out of my renewed interest in political activism. That year, "Help Save Manassas" was launched in an effort to address the overwhelming flood of illegal aliens into our community. And I am talking about the menace of large groups of men hanging out all day in 7-11  parking lots, urinating in public, and showing little respect to the long-standing members of our community. I am talking about pregnant women with children in tow, pushing strollers along the gravel shoulders of the heavily trafficked Sudley Road with little regard for their own safety, the safety of their children, or the safety of the motorists. I am talking about folks darting across that same road, dodging cars and completely ignoring the crosswalks at signaled intersections. I am talking about men, young and old, on bicycles, weaving their way through traffic on this same Sudley Road—the busiest avenue of commerce in our greater Manassas community. I am talking about people who clogged our hospital’s emergency room and then walked out without paying their bill. I am talking women who brought their babies into the world in our hospital’s delivery rooms, left without paying, and rode off with their newborns in late model SUVs.

These people, or their parents, broke the law stealing across our Southern border. And our Manassas community had thousands of them. So a bunch of us began meeting in the spring of 2007 and planning how to influence our local governments to address the problem. I have collected a bunch of new friends from that season of my life.

In the winter of 2008-09, the bailouts of Wall Street, Fannie Mae, General Motors and Chrysler, the collapse of the housing market, and the election of Barack Obama and a full, Democrat Party led Congress, led to the emergence of the Tea Party movement. We feared a “government” run amok. Not that the “government” wasn’t already amok mind you. Our nation’s troubles had been slowly parboiling for decades, like the proverbial frog in a pot. It was just that with this new administration, and a Congress to aid it, we could see the heat under that lightly boiling pot, rising sharply.

It did. And I joined up.

Since then, I have been actively engaged in Tea Party work. My work has included some political activism, but I have come at things primarily from a teaching standpoint, offering classes on our nation’s founding, the principles of our Constitution and their roots in the Judeo-Christian Worldview. Many new friends of like mind have emerged from my engagement in this arena.

So, I have a lot of “friends.”

But I am sad. I am lonely. I have a broken heart.

Most of my new friends share my deep concern for the decline and the intentional, systematic unraveling of our great American republic. Most of my old friends … well I just don’t know. I have heard virtually no voluntarily-offered concern from most of them about the rapid decline of our nation, about the increased moral degradation amongst our citizenry, about the fast-paced stripping of our liberties.

Few of my old friends appear to be engaged in any efforts at all to stem the tide of tyranny sweeping our land. They just appear to be going about their lives as usual, as if nothing was going on.

Friends, America is aflame.

Do you not know?

Do you not care?

Do you see my Tea Party work, my engagements in the political arena, my passion for teaching America’s Christian history as Weaver’s nice little niche, something that I have found for myself to do, but something that has no real bearing on your life?

I work publicly. I weep silently.

Why is your voice not being heard?

Your country will soon be gone.