2026 arrives with many questions, problems

The year 2026 appears to be none like America has seen since 1861.

President Trump is working to return America to a nation with less interference while the unelected Deep State is doing its best to thwart him at every turn.

Hence all the Left-created chaos which the frustrated Left is attempting to blame on President Trump.

The current zeitgeist among the elite is that socialism is a cure for America’s current affordability problem.

Actually, inflation is down and President Trump is working on the housing affordability by reducing the regulations inflicted on people – especially the young – by previous Democrat regimes.

The wild breakdown in the nation’s immigration laws during the Biden years – engineered by who knows which left-wing zanies operating the auto-pen – didn’t help matters.

Columnist Byron York writing on Townhall.com believes President Trump has made outstanding progress, first by shutting down the wide-open border and second by bringing about the deportation of 605,000 illegal migrants through the efforts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Plus this month, the Department of Homeland Security announced the departure of more than 2.5 million migrants who were in the country illegally.

The flood of illegal immigrants (that makes them lawbreakers) created unnecessary burdens – schools, health services, police services – on the communities where they settled, not to mention the chance of settlement of terrorist squads in our midst.

President Trump has committed himself to the goal of Making America Great Again.

He seemed to have become even more dedicated to that pledge following the attempts on his life during the 2024 election campaign.

America is preparing to observe its 250th anniversary this year.

America isn’t what its founders intended – a nation of patriots who put God-given rights at the forefront of their top desires.

Does God concern himself with the affairs of man? It seems to me that there are signs he does. The happy circumstance of President Ronald Reagan in the U.S., British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Catholic Pope John Paul II emerging to leadership in the 20th century at a time when Western Europe was floundering and America had just survived the disastrous administration of Jimmy Carter seems to indicate there is still hope for the Christian world.

Reagan and Thatcher pulled their nations back from the socialist excitement of that time.

Mere happenstance? Maybe and maybe not. President Trump arrived on the scene in 2016 to upend one takeover that I, for one, considered socialist, lost the next election in 2020 to Joe Biden before winning election to a second term in 2024 overwhelmingly. Pope John Paul was a friend of both Reagan and Thatcher and seemed to me to view their efforts positively.

I pray for the restoration of America daily. America looks nothing like it did at its founding. But that doesn’t mean it can’t return to such determination.

Our pledge of allegiance still calls for one nation under God.

The last line explains the specialness of America… “With liberty and justice for all.”

I listed some of Margaret Thatcher’s more famous quotes in Wednesday’s edition and saved some for now. (She was ardently anti-socialist.)

As mentioned Thatcher and U.S. President Ronald Reagan worked closely during Reagan’s presidency. I like what she said.

Here are the last:

•“I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbor and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations. There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn around and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.”

•“I set out to destroy socialism because I felt it was at odds with the character of the people. We were the first country in the world to roll back the frontiers of socialism, then roll forward the frontiers of freedom. We reclaimed our heritage; we are renewing it and carrying it forward.”

All Americans should heed Mrs. Thatcher’s words today.