By James Wilson
Should Americans take my advice and seek authentic reconciliation between our hateful factions in the wake of Donald Trump’s electoral victory we will have to dodge the media in order to do it. Having milked his previous intemperate statements for all they are worth and making some up from whole cloth the organs of organization now seek to show him up as a waffler on the very things for which they recently derided him. Talking heads from America to Australia gleefully report Trump backing off from plans to repeal Obamacare on the one hand and build a border wall on the other. Now, they say, he plans to retain the Affordable Healthcare Act provisions forbidding insurance companies to deny coverage of pre-existing medical conditions and compelling them to permit children to remain on their parents’ policies until age twenty-six. Now, they also say, he is backing off from a wall running the length of the US-Mexico border and will settle for a fence.
Reality is – on the medical issue – Trump appears to be favoring what amounts to a resurrection of the Price Plan. Republican Congressman Tom Price of Georgia – a medical doctor and favorite to become the Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Trump – proposed a plan in 2009 that incorporated the provisions Trump favors alongside a vigorous interstate market for purchasing healthcare without coercive features. The plan was never given a hearing in the Democrat-dominated congress that rammed Obamacare through. Trump has always said he favored freedom and competition – they lower premium costs and enhance coverage. That he sees the value of restricting insurers’ ability to deny coverage or charge the astronomical rates they get for pre-existing conditions that have no impact on their actuarial liability is simple common sense; the same logic goes for leaving young adults on parental policies.
Reality is – on the border issue – Trumps’ commitment to building the wall is neither more nor less than a commitment to existing federal law, a law virtually ignored by both parties the last quarter century. To concede a fence will do as well in some locales is simply to acknowledge a fence already exists in some places and will do as well as a wall in some others. The oft reported boast he would make Mexico pay for the wall does appear to be fading into the rhetorical woodwork – to which I can only say Praise the Lord he is abandoning such a silly idea.
Truth is he has clarified but in no way abandoned his commitments in these crucial areas. The same can be said for his statements about American overseas commitments. Trump recently reiterated his support of NATO without backing down from his expectation NATO nations would begin to shoulder more of their responsibility for financing the operation that keeps them safe these past seventy years.
I have no idea what he means to do about trade agreements he finds disadvantageous to his country. The Trans Pacific Partnership – for example – has yet to be ratified by any of its signatory nations. But he spends a lot more conversation on renegotiation than cancellation; he says the days of US deep pockets for all to pick are over. I find that both refreshing and consistent.
Well, say the pundits, he needs to distance himself from the haters who claim to speak in his spirit if not in his name.
The pundits are close to the truth, although they need to recall that “close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” Trump does need to clarify that he has no more in common with haters on the right than with leftist demonstrators advocating the rape of his wife. But that clarity is a far cry from holding himself accountable to groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group co-founded by Dr. Martin Luther King but now so crazy-left it labels James Dobson a supporter of terror. Dr. King – Pastor King – would be appalled at the anti-Christian bigots who claim to operate in his spirit and Trump can rightfully ignore them.
Trump has set the proper tone by acknowledging how the job ahead has humbled him, paying proper tribute to the magnanimity shown by Hillary Clinton, and volunteering his willingness to seek counsel from even his nemesis, Barack Obama. What the country needs now is for the rioters – from Portland, Oregon, to Washington, DC, and especially up and down California’s university corridor – to take a leaf from the book of Trump, Clinton, and Obama. What Trump himself needs now – and the country along with him – is serious adherence to the Lord Jesus who revealed Himself to the president-elect and turned the election in his favor through the evident fruit of that revelation in his character-in-progress.
Fuchida Mitsuo, leader of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, said this of his country some years after his own Damascus Road encounter with the Living Lord Jesus. “Though my country has the highest literacy rate in the world, education has not brought salvation. Peace and freedom – both national and personal – come only through an encounter with Jesus Christ.
I would give anything to retract my actions…at Pearl Harbor, but it is impossible. Instead, I now work at striking the death-blow to the basic hatred which infests the human heart and causes such tragedies. And that hatred cannot be uprooted without assistance from Jesus Christ.
He is the only One Who was powerful enough to change my life and inspire it with His thoughts…He is the only answer for young people today.”
Fuchida’s words are precisely what Americans of all types and persuasions need to hear today. Our present polarization merely renders the need more urgent and the gift more valuable.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@gmail.com
