“Are We Riding Into a “Valley of Death’ Election?” as proclaimed in bold headlines from an opinion piece in the Dallas Morning News this past January. The writers of this piece were right on in challenging the wisdom of repeating the 2020 presidential election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The disaster of another Trump/Biden election is that the nation is so deeply divided, if either were re-elected, our nation would become even more convulsed.
However, the opinion piece fundamentally missed why the 2024 U.S. presidential election might be compared to the “Charge of the Light Brigade” by focusing on the personalities of the two likely candidates and their unpopularity with the electorate. The underlying cause of our current allegorical ride “Into the Valley of Death” is because our two parties are no longer providing the creative energy and lifeblood that our Constitutional Republic requires to remain viable in this rapidly changing world. As such, both parties are nonfunctional in providing our nation with sound policy leadership or in developing new, more effective leaders from which the People can choose.
From a historical perspective, our political parties are in the end stage of a period of decline that has recurringly infected modern political systems approximately every seventy-five years. Our nation has gone through three such cycles.
The first cycle of political growth went from its founding Constitution in 1787 until South Carolina seceded in 1860, 73 years later. Following the end of the Civil War in 1865, the country progressed into the Great Depression of the 1930s which were finally rescued by World War II which ended in 1945, exactly 75 years after the Civil war began.
We are now in year seventy-nine when after World War Two our nation entered the most prosperous period for any country in history.
Similar political past historical precedents occur in other more oppressive forms of government. Following the Russian Revolution against Czarist king rule, the Marxist communist government prevailed from 1917 until 1989 – 72 years. The Chinese communist regime came into power in 1949, and observers say China’s growth peaked in 2017, 68 years later, with its decline now in process.
Coincidences? Perhaps? However, this three-quarter century time just coincidently approximates the life span of the current well cared lives of modern leaders, who are not gunned down by rivals or perish in unnecessary wars. It is quite possible that generational cycles define the cycles of governmental progress.
American development was certainly blessed with a group of unique individuals placed together to become our nation’s “Founders”. They were followed by a talented group of entrepreneurial industrialists following the Civil War who built America into the world’s largest and most productive economy. Then is it just serendipity that Presidents Reagan and Bush were the last of “The Greatest Generation”?
Without a united People, our chance for maintaining the prosperous economy and strong defenses that carried us in the past will be lost. A second glorious American century America will become a forgotten cliche. As We as a People seek to insert new energy into our Constitutional Republic and revitalize our nation for another 75-years of progress, we must focus on electing those who are intent on accomplishing the following major objectives.
Objective Number One: Revitalized political parties with new leaders must bring our divided nation back together by reprioritizing our founding principles as defined in the Preface to the Constitution of the United States.
“We the People of the United States, in order to perform a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, so ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Objective Number Two: We must reestablish our economy on sound economic and cultural foundations that can sustain our prosperity within a changing, uncertain competitive global environment.
Objective Number Three: We must rebuild our military strength to protect our country from all domestic and foreign enemies, especially China.
Our nation must find a suitable ruling formula to meet these objectives with leaders who will provide the energy to revitalize our Republic for another new seventy-five-year political energy cycle.
If We do not, then some future poet will be writing of our nation charging “into the jaws of Death” sacrificing the Great American Experiment that was established in our Constitution in 1787.
‘Forward the Light Brigade!
Someone had blundered.
Theirs was not to make reply.
Theirs was not to reason why.
Theirs were to do or die.
Into the Valley of Death,
Rode the six hundred.
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.’
Historical Note: “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, an engagement in the Crimean War between the Russians and the British in 1854, was memorialized by the poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson. England’s Light Cavalry Brigade was ordered to make a frontal assault against a Russian artillery battery excellently positioned to destroy the assault’s forces with withering direct fire.
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