11 years of failure

On Sept. 14, 2001, WND published my first political column, "Yield no more freedom." I wrote it in response to the Sept. 11 attacks in an attempt to warn Americans of the assault on their rights and liberties by the U.S. government that I believed would soon follow. Unfortunately, despite being correct, my warnings largely fell on deaf ears, as conservatives and liberals united in an attack on American freedom that culminated in the Patriot Act, drone killings and secret assassination lists.

Over the last 11 years, my predictions have been both eerily prescient and ludicrously inaccurate. While I did correctly foresee the financial crisis, the global economic depression and the collapse of the housing market, my ability to anticipate election results was reliably poor. Unfortunately, the one area where my expectations seldom went unfulfilled was the way in which the federal government continued to expand its intervention into the U.S. economy and the lives of America's citizens almost unchecked by resistance on the part of the people or their elected representatives.

Given that my primary goal in writing this column was to convince the American people to aggressively defend their God-given, Constitution-guaranteed liberties, I have to conclude that the most honest way to describe it is 11 years of unmitigated failure. I'm not ashamed of that, nor do I consider the effort wasted. But, at the end of the day, American freedom has been yielded.

That failure, however, is not why I am ending this column. This will be my last column because everything has its season, and I am no longer the youthful firebrand with an active interest in U.S. politics that I once was. H.L. Mencken once wrote, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." I find that I no longer have any interest in the fate of a people who are quite clearly content to choose between the likes of George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney on the right and Barack Obama on the left.

Democracy has spoken. The die is cast. There is little more to say, except wait and watch as events play themselves out.

Let me be clear and assure everyone that I have joined neither the IMF nor a revolutionary militia. I have simply reached a point in my life where I wish to focus my writing on novels such as "A Throne of Bones" rather than political commentary. And I am deeply appreciative of Joseph and Elizabeth Farah, WND and the commentary editors for permitting me to write so freely on these pages for so long.

I leave WND with one last prediction and a reminder of a promise. The prediction: The times ahead will be difficult, much harder than most of us presently imagine. All empires fall in time, and the days of the imperial U.S. are numbered. As the global economy continues to contract, as secession fever spreads from Belgium, Catalonia, and Scotland to the American South and West, the bipartisan ruling faction will react as elites always do, by attempting to tighten their grasp over the populace, by trying to disarm and enslave them.

But Americans are the heirs of Lexington and Concord. Rebellion is in our blood. Independence is our birthright. Our fathers were the original revolutionaries. And one day, our sons and daughters will be free again.

Satan and his minions rule this fallen world. But we who are in, but not of, it always have the unquenchable hope that the true King of Kings will return and set things right again. Don't put your faith in gold or guns, still less in governments, but in Jesus Christ. We have no king but Jesus, who came to set captives free.

The promise: "If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame."

May God bless and keep you all.