Dear America,
Today, we shall get to the heart of why I believe The CuRe All Letters are necessary. Pointedly, what is their point?
While I have blended theology, philosophy, literature, history, and political theory into these letters, that is not what they are about. They are about the story of We the People and our search to rediscover our true path.
Since I’m a storyteller at heart, let me make my point by spinning a yarn…
The world changed on June 24th, 2022. Whether you are pro-life or pro-choice—whether you rejoiced or raged that the 10th Amendment was finally upheld—the overturning of Roe v. Wade is the moment that the witch’s illusion, which had already been losing its potency, first flickered.
We the People had been under the spell so long by then that many Christians barely batted an eye, while those most in the grip of the witch’s illusion shrieked.
God was speaking to us as through Balaam’s ass: “There is yet hope,” he said. “Wake up! Clad yourselves in my armor! Fight!”
And the witch screamed in frustration and loathing.
In her moment of triumph—having nearly vanquished yet another American in the Blue Suit and on the verge of forever claiming her victim, We the People—everything began to crumble. So many before him had fallen. This wearer of the Blue Suit, for all his aggressiveness, had merely attacked shadows. Misapplied strength is useless, she mused. He had been beleaguered by her conjured henchmen and cheap tricks from the start. And he had failed to rescue us.
But sometime during the struggle, our would-be savior had slipped us medicine on the sly. It had taken longer than he expected to produce results, but We the People at last began to stir awake. In that moment, he saw how to defeat the witch once and for all.
He was shown a vision. A memory of subverted Progress.
***
The culture war at the heart of the American System—the fierce fire harnessed by the combustion engine that drives our nation forward—exploded into Civil War.
Fast forward to 1912. Fifty years after the Civil War’s end, despite the best attempts of our greatest “accidental president,” the American economy was thriving but We the People were suffering. Deep resentment lingered in the Old Confederacy. Corrupt corporatism and crony capitalism ravaged the north. Post-Reconstruction laws systematized civil rights abuses in the south and the north. The Mexican, Indian, and Spanish-American Wars left some of us with a bitter taste. All of this was exacerbated by territorial expansion, land speculation, a transportation revolution, and mass immigration.
The American Progressive movement offered a vision of an augmented American System that maintained integrity with the Charters of Freedom while recontextualizing them to solve contemporary problems.
Three candidates vied for our hearts. One, who had previously worn the Blue Suit, inspired by God to ease the burdens of We the People, nearly died to an assassin’s bullet. His revival-like rallies had invigorated the Bull Moose movement, but his dream disintegrated. Weakened, he only succeeded in opening the door for his most detested rival—a man he considered weak and of no substance—to step cleanly through.
Sensing weakness, the witch came on the scene.
She convinced the new leader to control We the People (for our benefit, of course) rather than lift us up. Under her influence, he steered America toward a reenvisioned world order modeled after Modernist principles—one of internationalism, class struggle, and moral legislation. The people had shown themselves incapable of repenting and avoiding sin, so he would take away the option to sin in the first place.
“The armor of God?” the witch croaked derisively. “Surely, it’s useless. Look at America’s sorry state. Try on this instead.”
We the People had failed, she cajoled him. God had failed. The solution? "Augment God’s power on earth with your own power." But she had warned him to move cautiously. “You yourself cannot afford to appear sinful, or they’ll never accept our new direction. My illusion has yet to take hold.”
Sensitive to her evil scheming, the leader’s brash and crude rival thundered in protest, but to no avail.
World War I came and went, and We the People thought that perhaps our culture’s wounds were healing after all. The economy roared. Spirits rose. And when the inevitable collapse occurred, the stage was set for the witch.
Our newly elected leader—inspired by admiration for his distant cousin, the now-deceased rival of the witch’s first puppet—set Progressivism into reckless overdrive. In doing so, he fully left behind the movement’s original vision and mission.
Yet, nothing he did solved our nation’s problems. Although not inconsequential, the New Deal instead served the main purpose of giving We the People a measure of hope and comfort in dark times.
When we entered the deepest shadows, the witch pounced. “Rebuild the entire thing. The whole American System is broken and unfixable.”
The leader, whether due to goodwill, desperation, or vanity, listened to her. He began working feverishly on a new American System, a better one more suited to the times.
It was only a war that saved him from his folly, really.
The witch was furious for having been waylaid. After the war, she went into hiding because We the People had been alerted to her presence. Instead of battling us head on, she summoned illusive shades, powerful beasts, and foul marionettes, biding time until her revised plan could be set in motion.
The witch’s adulteration of the American System had left it functioning poorly, but at the time We the People knew little of her involvement or true plan. We had seen our leader acting boldly and lovingly even if misguidedly, first to ease our pain and then to vanquish our foes. To us, she was merely a shadowy threat, a cautionary tale.
Still suffering from problems never solved, we were ripe for the witch’s picking. For she had realized that to destroy the American System she needed to corrupt its power source: We the People and the great debate at the heart of our American Culture.
While facing her proverbial “time in the desert,” she had at last discovered how to win.
At the heart of the American Cause with its lofty ideals of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…
At the heart of the American System with its clear emphasis on vocation, checks and balances, and merit…
At the heart of the Bill of Rights with its encapsulation and defense of essential human freedoms…
At the heart of all of it was God. If she could not kill him, she would kill our memory of him.
From the 1960s, the witch’s attack on traditionalist perspectives, especially the Christian worldview, was frenzied and vengeful. The Great Society forever changed the trajectory of our nation. Since then, every good, necessary, or well-intentioned idea has been subverted by the witch.
Globalism was used to strengthen other nations’ position on the world stage at the expense of America’s, not to solidify our role in leading international cooperation. The United Nations, the Panama Canal, NAFTA, IMF, etc. The author feels no more needs to be said.
Civil Rights were used to divide and subjugate We the People, not to unify and lift us up. The witch’s instruments and mouthpieces stirred the mob to a frenzy and had great men killed to ensure fracturing and disunity. A president, a preacher, and a peacemaker. Then she leveraged our grief and disgust to further undermine our faith, our conviction, and our “constitution.”
Education was used to convince us that God never existed at all, not to help us think critically about how all knowledge fits into the grand tapestry of His design. New ways of interpreting Marxist ideology emerged as the Postmodernists further subverted the Great Debate and Culture War to eliminate truth, morality, and meaning. In an absolute defeat of the Reformation and Enlightenment, the West began to return to Old World thinking about class structures and “might makes right.”
Government was grown to steal power away from We the People and the vocations established in the Charters of Freedom, not to fix problems facing our nation and people. Environmental protection was used to fuel fear, control behavior, and enforce investment policy, not to ensure clean air and water. Green New Deal, anyone? Immigration was used to shift demographics to tilt the balance of power, not to add new voices to the chorus of We the People. And so many other abuses…
Women’s rights, gay rights, and trans rights have all served a dual purpose as levers of power, division, and control, not simply as ways to genuinely help people who need it…
Rather than viewing everyone as Children of God who should live according to Natural Law, Natural Reason, and Faith, we have come to view every group within our society as needing to wage a subcultural rebellion against the prevailing power structures of our day.
In summary, every well-intentioned expansion of government has been repurposed to undermine the American System, toxify the Great Debate (i.e., Culture War), and disestablish the American Cause (and God along with it).
All the while, the so-called conservatives went into a defensive shell. They who—while largely considering themselves classically liberal and espousing the outright Progressive policies of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Nixon, and even Reagan—are ironically doing battle with a group that has chosen to call themselves “liberal” despite espousing policies that implement ever greater controls.
Rather than countering the witch’s attacks, the conservatives erected a shield and hid behind it in false safety and ephemeral comfort. Their strategy, apparently, was merely to accept a slow defeat. In so doing, they took positions that made them seem callous and uncaring to people who still suffer today as they did in 1912. Whether by lack of vision or courage, they failed to effectuate any meaningful change at all for the better part of 50 years.
I fear to think how many of them were also under the witch’s spell, wolves in sheep’s clothing.
***
The vision concluded, we return to the American in the Blue Suit…
As the memory of subverted Progress faded, the American in the Blue Suit began counterattacking. He knew the witch’s weaknesses now.
Every tool she had devised, every subversion she had wrought, every trick she had conjured, every weak point she had attacked—all of these were his weapons now.
For the first time, the American in the Blue Suit had the witch on her heels. Using her own instruments against her, he forced her to take indefensible positions unpopular with the people, totally flipping the table on her. Flustered, she began to flail wildly and backpedal.
Panicked, she called upon her evil mouthpieces to summon the mob. With a lucky blow, she dazed the American in the Blue Suit and the mob tore into his right arm. Gleeful but for a moment, she could only howl in fury as he—now also clad in the armor of God, for he is of Us—became stronger as a result.
Thus concludes our tale for the time being.
Ultimately, at the heart of The CuRe All Letters is this idea: You may not agree with how the author interpreted events and recounted the story of We the People, the Witch of the Flickering Illusion, and The American in the Blue Suit.
Wonderful. Seriously! I mean it.
Luckily for us Americans, thanks to the American System (even though it could be running better), we have the First Amendment and a mostly well-functioning infrastructure. As such, we can easily access source texts in the fields of history, literature, philosophy, and theology.
Go read and form your own opinions. Please.
But before you do that, learn who We the People are and what our vocation is! Study the Charters of Freedom and the great works that inspired their authors. Even if you are not a Christian, learn the basic thought processes of Christianity so that you can use them as tools and reference points, just as we Christians should learn and use Atheistic principles of Marxism, Postmodernism, Scientific Materialism, and so on.
How else can we continue the Great Debate in civility? How else can we contain and guide the fires of the American Culture War to fuel the American System? How else can we prevent another wicked witch from toxifying the Culture War and subverting Progress for the sake of control?
And, please, to Non-Christians: Stop trying to kill God. It cannot be done. Not even by Lucifer himself—if he could have, why send a witch? Also, stop trying to eradicate God from the hearts and minds of believing Christians. It, too, cannot be done.
For my part as a quiet Christian, a recovering cynic, and a less than saintly figure (all as previously established in these letters): I have no intent to convert or convince you.
In that spirit, my warmest regards (or coldest, if you prefer Dante’s take). Get it? I’m only kidding, I promise!
With love, America,
Finch Fries