My Election Eve Prayer for Our Country We Are the Miracle

I have edited and updated my Yom Kippur Prayer because I am praying very hard this evening...
We are once again besieged.
Our financial markets are in turmoil.
Every one of us, rich and poor alike, fears for the future.

Oh Lord, we are on the eve of a great decision. We have been virtually sleepwalking through a world that, increasingly, is murderously hostile toward us.
Our people are taking rancorous positions in a political fight for the soul of this great land.
Please, oh Lord, hear my prayer.

Give us the grace and clarity to remember who we are. Help us to bear in mind that a handful of the most courageous and practical men of their generation designed this republic not just to survive but to get stronger in times like these.

Our enemies within are more of a danger than our enemies from without. Give us the vision to recognize and resist both the dead hand of the corporatization of our economy while, at the same time, you give us the strength to see through the bluster and emotional blackmail of those who seek to expand the government’s reach into our lives in the name of “the disadvantaged poor”. What’s good for giant corporations is only sometimes good for the country and serving the needs of the poor are a benefit of a free society, best done by maintaining a climate of growth and opportunity not through bureaucratic coercion charity which oppresses both the poor and those whose help is expropriated.

Give us the wisdom to elect a leader who recognizes that there are times that call for sacrifice- as long as the sacrifice is honorable- a leader who will defend us with confidence and vigor. Put the sword of this, the greatest military power on earth, in the hand of one who knows that power and it limits and will use it judiciously. We depend on our leader to know when talking and negotiation can lead to peace and when it is futile and leads only to the slaughter of innocents. Please, be compassionate to those under our new leader’s protection and help us select the leader who knows that peace is not a “natural” condition or a cause and must be won through strength, preparedness and intelligence.

Help us have the courage to turn back the tide of the exclusive belief in human rationalism as the ultimate wisdom and government as the divider of the wealth of the nation. If history has taught us anything it is that human reason is too easily influenced by emotion and when governments take responsibility for health and welfare of individuals, it is only a short step to taking control of what they think and believe.

Whether or not (or how) our fellow citizens believe in you is irrelevant, our great country was founded on separation of church and state for the very reason that the founders in their wisdom knew it is wrong for a nation to take upon itself God-like powers. So preserve us from those who are in the habit of setting themselves up as “organizers" and “teachers” to instruct us in how to change our country for a new order. All of the leaders in history who have assumed the mantle of “teacher” have been bad for the people they have undertaken to instruct. That includes the one who called himself by the German word for teacher – “The Fuehrer”.

We know in our hearts that we will be served best by a man who sees himself as a “servant” of the people. One who has regard for the wealth of people who have worked for it and will be enough of a maverick to help us break the stranglehold of corporate monstrosities that use people as spare parts and deny them fair recompense.
Lord, in this time of trepidation, help us to stay true to the wisdom of Jefferson, Adams and all the others who gave us this gift of republic on this blessed soil. Only by keeping her strong, free and aware will we continue to offer a sanctuary in which the needy may, by their efforts rise to prosperity and an arsenal and protector for other democracies around the world.

Help us, Lord, protect the powerful economic engine that has always redeemed the rest of the world from recessions of the past. Give us the wisdom to see that the Socialist Nations of Europe and Asia will be looking to a free, open and virile America to be the dynamo of the next recovery, not to sit with them in the waiting room of collective economies waiting for the next miracle.

We ARE THE MIRACLE! Help us to resist the temptation to throw it away!

Give us the wisdom and strength of purpose to remember the dictum of the great sage Lao Tzu: "Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it."