This was an election for the ages. By the morning after, there were still many races “too close to call,” and the results were completely unexpected in other places. The loudly heralded red wave never happened. And some critical races were deep disappointments. 

Florida was a win, and so was Ohio. Michigan was a loss, and so was New York. Iowa was a nail-biter with its District 3 Congressional race, and so was Georgia with its Senate race. Arizona was problematical from early morning when the Dominion voting machines weren’t working properly (again), and voters were asked to put their ballots “in that box over there.” And a judge refused to allow the hours for voting to be extended, even though some voters were deprived of their opportunity to vote because of the problems. Pennsylvania elected a man whose prior experience and platform, as well as his inability to speak coherently, proved he was unfit for the US Senator job he ran for. The high-profile Warnock-Walker race in Georgia turned out to be inconclusive, which now puts the candidates in a run-off. Two days after the election, there were still votes being counted, and far too many races than is reasonable were undecided.  

It was hardly the big red wave the Republicans were expecting. Not even close. The governors’ races were disappointing: the Republicans didn’t win in New York, Michigan, or Minnesota, although they had significant wins in Georgia, New Hampshire, and Florida, where Governor DeSantis won by almost 60% of the vote, and in Iowa and Arkansas, where Governor Kim Reynolds and Sarah Huckabee Sanders also won handily.  

Republicans picked up a few seats in the House, but they didn’t get the clear majority they had hoped for and will not get a substantial majority in the Senate either. All that hard work and loud rhetoric – it just wasn’t good enough. 

To say that the results were disappointing is an understatement. And there is a lot to unpack. 

Look at New York. Crime is at an all-time high in New York City, where news of random people being pushed onto the subway tracks is so common it is hardly newsworthy anymore, and a no-cash bail system is putting violent criminals back on the street through their revolving door of what they call “justice.” And yet they elected Kathy Hochul for governor over law and order candidate Lee Zeldin, who promised to restore sanity to the streets of New York. 

In Pennsylvania, the voters elected a stuttering stroke survivor, who can barely string two sentences together into a coherent thought, to serve them in the US Senate. In Michigan, voters re-elected Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who was the author of some of the most draconian lockdown measures in the country, as they did in California, where they re-elected Governor Gavin Newsom, who imposed strict lock-down mandates and then ignored them himself. 

Since Biden became President in January 2021, we have seen a rash of sexual reorientation programs – even for small children – by their teachers and counselors at school, who promote sexual identity experimentation and even recommend ‘gender reassignment surgery’ without parental knowledge. This may indeed have been being done in some schools before Biden became President, but after January 2021, it was out in the open. And when parents began to rebel against this attack on parental authority, the federal government attacked them and called them “domestic terrorists.”

The damage goes deeper. In less than two years, America has gone from energy independent to a nearly complete shutdown of domestic production of oil and gas, and President Biden put himself in the position of having to go to Saudi Arabia to beg for more oil from their extensive resources (he didn’t get it). America has gone from a powerful influence in the international arena to a laughing stock among the leaders of Europe and Asia. Our southern border has been thrown wide open, and more than five million people have already surged illegally into our country, including drug smugglers and sex traffickers, bringing diseases we haven’t seen in decades. And if that weren’t enough, the Biden administration has been sending them to cities all around the country, at taxpayers’ expense, without the knowledge or consent of the localities to which they go. 

Thanks to Biden destroying our energy self-sufficiency, we are now facing the real possibility of severe energy shortages this winter, with a dwindling supply of the diesel fuel that heats our homes, and fuels the trucks and trains and planes that deliver our food, and the tractors and combines that plant and harvest it. So we are now facing a fuel shortage that will lead to a food shortage in the middle of a staggering inflation that has already sent the cost of necessities – including essential food – sky high.

And if that weren’t enough, with the concept of “peace through strength” that Ronald Reagan championed, and Donald Trump followed, communist China is now flexing its muscles and threatening war at any moment. Iran is making threats against the West and Israel and its own people, and our growing involvement in the Ukraine war without oversight has cost us billions, with no end in sight. 

America’s position in the world, and its policies at home should give us pause as we begin to digest the stunning results of the Midterm Elections. 

America is changing, and not in a good way. Just as Canada did before us, Americans seem willing to explore another form of government that aligns more closely with socialism and away from our value-driven love for freedom through democracy. This does not spell a bright future for the land of the free, home of the brave. And if the elections of 2022 demonstrated anything at all, they show just how far to the left we have drifted – or been led. We have seen what has happened in Canada, whose democracy has slowly slid into socialism and the tyranny of government. Here, south of their border, we are headed towards a totalitarian state, a loss of freedom to run our own lives as we see fit, and a poor position in the rapidly changing order of world events. 

A woman in Philadelphia once asked Benjamin Franklin, “What have we got, a republic or a monarchy. “A republic,” Franklin replied, “if you can keep it.”

The 2022 election is a wake-up call for Americans who still believe in the values for which our founding fathers were ready to give their lives. We can sit back and accept what appears to be inevitable, or we can stand up and refuse to be silent in the face of this silent evil as we slide into tyranny. We are at a crossroads. The crazy, patchwork quilt of an election that we just experienced is a warning to all of us who still love America and everything that it stands for. 

We still have the tools we need to return America to its founding values, but we will have to fight for them. Not on the streets, not in anger with abusive language and violence, but at the forefront of political action, through well-organized political activity, and through the power of the written and the spoken word. And by the manner in which we live, upholding the values we cherish, and letting them serve as an example to America that these values still have meaning and continue to shine a beacon to the rest of the world.