In its darkest hours, the American Revolution, America faced a single threat – the British Army – but today, the list of its mortal threats is long: an open border order, rampant crime, politicized schools, politicized justice, inflation, lost energy independence, biased and corrupt media, woke everything and suppression of free speech by social media colluding with the government.
Still more threatens the life of Illinois, including unending corruption, oppressive taxes and public unions that have captured government. Our pension crisis alone threatens the state’s financial viability.
On what basis, then, is there reason to think our downfall can be avoided?
Consider what each of those problems has in common for the answer.
Each was created by policies not supported by public opinion. Think about it. I defy any reader to find any survey on any of those threats saying the public supports the path we’ve been on. To the contrary, polling routinely show majority if not overwhelming support for enforcing the border, ending lax criminal prosecution, school choice to improve education and so on down the list.
For that reason, suicidal polices can be reversed. The problem has been that extremists, representing a third or so of the public at most, have punched far beyond their weight in elections. How they’ve achieved that is a discussion for another day, but it’s undeniable that most of the public doesn’t want the radical policies they’ve implemented.
To reverse course, the majority must be heard.
They can be heard.
For an example of the kind of effort we need to get policy back in line with opinion, I submit Exhibit A: the good people of Manteno, Illinois.
In a village board meeting this month that should make your heart swell, Manteno residents – ordinary Americans all – unanimously spoke against the electric vehicle battery plant recently announced for the village by Gov. J.B. Pritzker. The owner of the grossly over-subsidized plant will be Gotion, a Chinese company closely linked to the Chinese Communist party.
“What you’re doing, it’s against everything you stood up for when you said the Pledge of Allegiance,” one resident said. “You’re going to invite our enemy into our very [own] backyard, and these people [here] to raise their children. … If this goes on and you don’t do anything to stop it, it’s on you.”
“Money isn’t everything,” said another. “It’s nothing short than a kick in the face to ask all of us, the county taxpayers to put up our own tax money to fund a Chinese, communist-owned battery plant and put up our tax money, our own health and natural resources as collateral.”
“I fought for our freedoms and here you are pissing on them,” said an Iraq veteran.
“If this isn’t time to be steadfast against this I don’t know what other time is,” said another. “If you permit it, you promote it.”
Others spoke about the environmental hazards the plant would create. No citizen at the meeting supported Gotion. Opponents left with one person telling the board, “You sold yourself to the devil.”
Conventional wisdom says you can’t fight city hall. Don’t try telling that to Manteno residents.
And don’t bother telling them that they’re also up against billionaire Gov. JB Pritzker and the Chinese Communist Party, because they are expanding their fight: Another village board meeting is scheduled for Monday, October 2, and a press conference is coalescing ahead of that meeting that will include a number of groups opposing the Gotion plant.
Speakers will include former Congressman, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee and Ambassador Pete Hoekstra; Former Ambassador Joseph Cella, who authored a new Crain’s op-ed opposing Gotion; and the Coalition for a Prosperous America, which represents exclusively domestic producers across America:
Character is destiny, it has long been said, but the courage to take a stand is an essential element of real character.
Stand up as Manteno residents are doing.
Stand up against all that’s going wrong in America and Illinois.
Stand up in whatever way you can.
The majority of our people will then prevail and their character will again be America’s destiny.