By: R.J. Moeller

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We're roughly a year away from the next Inauguration Day.  At this time next year, one of three men will be sworn in as our president for the following 4 years.  For all intents and purposes, it's between Mitt and Newt for the Republicans, and then obviously between Barack Obama and the winner of the GOP family feud.

It's a frustrating and nervous time for many voters - especially conservatives.  Many people who share my worldview are disheartened by the prospect of having to vote in the primaries for someone they aren't thrilled about, followed by 6 months or more of wall-to-wall partisan quarreling.  Added to this is the fact that all Americans are frustrated and nervous about things like the economy, education, and foreign policy time-bombs that appear on the verge of massive explosion.

The hard, bitter truth is this: all of those worries are legitimate and justified.  No sense in denying it.  Acceptance is the first step to recovery.

But alas, all is not lost.  Not yet, anyway.  I stumbled upon one of my all-time favorite YouTube clips this evening and it reminded me of something very important: This is a special place, our country.

The ideas, ideals, and values we have built our society and government on are different.  They are special.  We aren't individually special or better than the people of other countries.  We're all God's children.  We're all fallen men and women, no different than Americans of any other age.  The times in which the Founders or Abraham Lincoln or Ronald Reagan lived in weren't special.

The beliefs those men lived by, governed by, were special.

It's easy to grow nostalgic when you watch a clip like this one above.  It's easy to grow discouraged when you step back and take an honest assessment of the political and cultural landscape of our time.

But I still believe that this is a special place, made so by our ideas, ideals, and values.  The capstone of the American experiment in self-government - one which the progressive builders of a secular welfare state have rejected - is simply this: "endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights."  That's it.  That's everything.  With it we may still fall, should it be God's will.  Without it, we cannot help but fail.

Americans still claim a faith in God, however weak the beating pulse of true religion in this country may be.  We still acknowledge the importance of family, even to the point where we have contentious on-going debates about how "family" (and its precursor "marriage") will be defined.  We even still have huge swaths of young men and women who volunteer their lives to serve and protect their fellow citizens. (Thanks Brent and Matt!)

God, family, country: and in that order.

It may be a different time, but it's still the same place. We don't need another Reagan.  We need an intellectual and spiritual revival - a moral resuscitation.

We need 300 million "Reagan's" who share in the vision articulated above.  Or - and this is in closing - at the very least can agree on the moving words from a WWI soldier's diary that The Gipper quoted that cold, blustery Inauguration Day 21 years ago:

We are told that on Martin Treptow's body was found a diary. On the flyleaf under the heading, "My Pledge," he had written these words: "America must win this war. Therefore, I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone."

In a day and age when it often feels like we have very little to be thankful for when it comes to politics, it's important we remember just how lucky - how blessed and free - we truly are.

God, family, country: and in that order.  A thankful people are a happy people.  They are a brave and confident people, one ready to help the helpless and fight for causes and ideals that appear all but lost.

Americans aren't special: but our ideas, ideals, and values are.

Here to remind us of a few things we ought to be thankful for this Thanksgiving Weekend are two clips from President Ronald Reagan.

From 1985:

And this one, The Gipper's farewell address to the nation in 1989:

God bless you and your families. God bless America.

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the speech in which Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union precisely what it was: an evil empire.  Speaking to the National Association of Evangelicals, President Reagan made his case for Judeo-Christian values and called God-fearing Americans to action in the struggle for moral clarity at home and abroad.

I think what is most shockingly refreshing about this speech is the candid, frank way a President of the United States used to be able to speak.

Enjoy:

To put the importance of this speech in to some proper, historical perspective, here is Newt Gingrich's presentation at the American Enterprise Institute.