Gary Bauer leads a wide number of organizations — American Values, Campaign for American Values, Campaign for Working Families, Americans United to Preserve Marriage — and it has been a very lucrative set-up for him and his wife, Carol.
Today, Carol Bauer emailed Campaign for Working Families members a “prayer alert” asking them to use the holiday season as an opportunity to tell young people why Barack Obama is such a terrible president, as “today’s twenty-somethings may now be awakening to political realities.”
“The Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays will be an opportunity to give those young adults in our lives a listening ear, empathy, the chance to vent about what they thought would come of the broad brush promises of a president who is forever in campaign mode and perhaps some advice and encouragement in just the right tone,” she writes. “It is my prayer that these days will be a wake-up call to the next generation about what is and is not possible in the real world of governing.”
She concluded the email by asking people to pray for God to “end the poisonous rhetoric in our political discourse,”eventhough “poisonous rhetoric” is what Bauer’s all about.
Winston Churchill described their struggle in epic terms and brought out the best in the Brits. We knew the history, but only as we stood in the cramped War Rooms and viewed the huge maps on the wall, which were marked with pins indicating the presence of German subs many just miles off our East Coast, did the enormity of what they faced become tangible. It was a teachable moment about what a free people are capable of doing during a time of crisis.
It strikes me that the United States faces a teachable moment right now, only ours is on the home front. The past weeks have been marked by breathtaking headlines about the government shutdown and the possibility of an economic apocalypse based on a debt ceiling crisis. In the midst of all that, the president’s signature legislation, Obamacare, was formally launched.
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Interestingly, today’s twenty-somethings may now be awakening to political realities. They heard the warnings but cast them aside. Now they are coming into adulthood in a country where good paying jobs are scarce, health insurance costs are staggering, America’s debt is soaring and the American Dream seems elusive. Three of every four Americans tell pollsters the country is moving in the wrong direction.
The Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays will be an opportunity to give those young adults in our lives a listening ear, empathy, the chance to vent about what they thought would come of the broad brush promises of a president who is forever in campaign mode and perhaps some advice and encouragement in just the right tone.
Sometimes the most enduring lessons are not learned in the classroom. It is my prayer that these days will be a wake-up call to the next generation about what is and is not possible in the real world of governing.
I pray that everyone who reads this Prayer Alert will have an opportunity to touch the life of a young adult in the next two months as extended families gather to spend holiday time together. May these conversations be heart-to-heart words of understanding, encouragement, and guidance to the nation’s young adults — our future leaders — who may feel frustrated, angry and disillusioned.
Ask God for the opportunity to mentor or guide a young person who feels the country’s best days are behind us. Pray that we as a country, together, would have a common desire to face facts, acknowledge what is not working, be open to change that rewards individual effort and responsibility and move in that direction in our individual choices, lifestyle and political involvement.
In addition, pray that God would heal the divisions in our country and end the poisonous rhetoric in our political discourse.
