【陈凯是一位坚强的民主斗士和虔诚基督徒，他的担忧值得探讨。】

Kai Chen on Trump's Rise 

"Power without moral compass is the most dangerous and destructive force that dooms mankind. Maybe "Lord of the Ring" can inspire you with my point." --- Kai Chen 

Trump's rise does not inspire me. It alarms me. 

As Rubio maintains: "America is great and has been great. " America's greatness is not defined by her power alone. America is great because it is good with a principled foundation - Human liberty and freedom. America is great not because of the stats or strength. America is great because of her values and meaningful existence. 

It is not what Trump said that bothers me. It is what he always and consistently does not say: Despite his hugging the flag and wanting to 'make America great again", he fails thoroughly to understand and articulate what America stands for and what being an American means. Liberty/freedom has been lacking entirely in his speech. Trump wants power and power alone. He thinks only power defines America, not values. He believes "might makes right", not other way around. 

Alarmingly, many Americans identify themselves with Trump's view of world and America. This is where dictatorship arises and endangers everyone's life and liberty. At the best, Trump is a nationalist, not a Conservative for liberty and freedom in society. At worst, Trump is trying to make enemies (he mixed China with Japan, not differentiate despotism and democracy) domestically and internationally. In Trump's world, like in most liberals' view, there is no right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good and evil. There is only power by strength/guns. Mao maintains the same world view. That is why I left China to look for a place with true values. I came to America. I fully understand in a gun/power dominated society, what a human being can become - zombies via a process of zombification by the government. 

Indeed, America has never been perfect. Yet America has always been great, for America is the only country in the world guided not by tradition, language, religion, territory, etc.... America is guided by the eternal values/principles of mankind, manifested in the "Declaration of Independence" and "American Constitution with the Bill of Rights". America has always been under the guidance of divine moral compass, striving toward light and hope. 

This is why I identify myself as an America since I was born. Only I was born in the wrong place. Trump can never represent me or America. I'd rather have Cruz, Carson, Rubio, Fiorina..., for they understand what America stands for and what being an American is all about.

美国不需要救世主。 美国需要价值的传播者。 
We don't need a manager, a dealer or a savior. We need a preacher. 

陈凯新作/川普-又一个救世主？ 
Another Savior?! Are You Kidding Me? 

Kai Chen on Trump phenomenon 

www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com 

We don't need a manager. We don't need a dealer. We need a preacher likes Reagan. 

We are a "nation under God". That is what makes us special and great. Our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, has always asserted this unique feature of us as a people. Our constitution has been written to protect us from usurpers and imposters and saviors. We have always been great, because we are a nation made by God and a divine spirit of human freedom and liberty, regardless of our trials, tribulations and failures, for we have always had a moral compass from above.... 

We only need a preacher to remind us of that, from time to time. 

It has been a while since the last true preacher of our virtue and purpose - Ronald Reagan. We have forgotten who we are as Americans. We let demagogues and imposters like Obama to lead us to "fundamentally transform" this last bastion of human freedom into a nation of robbers and freeloaders yearning for free lunches, because of our own fears and weaknesses, because we are blinded by our own creation of "political correctness". Skin color and more money in our pockets have become our obsessions. We have indeed forgotten what being an American is all about - "Self-government through a set of values and principles - a moral compass by God, via the virtues from each and everyone of us." We have created a government to control itself, to enforce the laws by us due to our own weaknesses. We have never created a government to "save" us. 

Now after we have lost sight of who we are as Americans for too long, we are thoroughly frustrated and angry. We are actually irate of our own inability to find a direction. So we searched in the dark, not seeing the guiding light has always been in our founding documents with the eternal principles based on our unchanging human nature and our dreams/ideals of our potentials. That "shining city on the hill" has somehow disappeared in our vision. Short-cuts and expediency have somehow become our GPS to tell us where to turn. We have thrown away our own compass. 

Now we struck out blindly again, trying to find a "savior", not God but man among men, to save us from our past mistakes and errors. We again found someone in ample supply through human history - a power-worshiper to bestow upon us freedom, happiness and prosperity. After the fakes and frauds we are so tired of in the current administration, we finally have found - Donald. Hooray! 

Bigger government is not what we want now. We want unlimited great government to correct the big government. Freedom is not what we want now. We want more money in our own pockets. True happiness with meaning is not what we want in our lives now. We want more short-cuts and conveniences. American moral leadership is not what we want now. American power to threat and blackmail, in order to "make deals" to make us "strong again" dominates our mindset. 

I came to this great nation, under God, to have found a "shining city" in the 1980s. Everyone was optimistic toward future with a moral compass - good against evil, right against wrong, truth against falsehood.... Everyone in the world yearned to become "like an American". The world progressed from under the communist threat to annihilate human freedom toward a new world of hope with limitless potentials for joy and creativity. 

Yet after the down fall of the Berlin Wall, we seem to lost our direction as a nation: Good vs Evil, Right vs. Wrong, Truth vs. Falsehood somehow have disappeared from our own language and vocabulary. We are more concerned with emotions and feelings, touchy to the degree of paranoia. GPS by men replaces Moral Compass by God. We are moving by a nameless, invisible force toward "zombification" - a state I was ever so familiar when I lived in the soulless China. We are moving from "moral compromise" to "moral decay" to "moral nihilism". Obama is going to receive the second Nobel Peace Prize without mentioning another Nobel Peace Prize winner languishing in the Chinese jail in any of his speeches. Yet, we are still worried about putting more money in our own pockets promised by the Donald. Are we fast becoming a joke for our posterity? Are we kidding ourselves? 

Wake up, America! We don't need another self-proclaimed savior to save us from our own weakness, sin, and blindness. We have always had God. We only need a preacher to remind us of that. Let's return to our senses, values and founding principles. 
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