Prescription for Truth

Have you ever cared about someone or something so much that it hurt? Have you ever worried yourself sick?

A lot of you who care about America are hurting and sick with worry as you consider where our country is going: More unemployment than in almost three decades; the prospect of higher taxes, fines, deficits and a new government mandate from a health care law that most Americans did not want; big government spending more dollars which seem harder to come by in a new global economy.

You ask: Will I have a job next year? Why didn't my opinion and those who made up the majority of Americans matter as the president transformed a sixth of our economy? Why were we patronized by White House officials who acted as if they knew better?

You don't understand what you're getting, they lectured us.

You ask: Can popular will survive in the growing shadow of big government? In the blink of an eye the allegedly humble, post-partisan face of a new American government engorged with political victory openly mocked those who spoke out in opposition. Even the smug bravado of embarrassing vice presidential braggadocio became a proud fundraising tool for 2012.

Legitimate objections to an arguably unconstitutional scheme demanding that you buy health insurance as the price of citizenship were dismissed by a presidential laugh line about asteroids and Armageddon to win the hearts of MoveOn bloggers.

Last week in Greensboro, North Carolina, I met a sensible mother who said to me, "I didn't vote for the president but I understood what 'yes we can' should mean for Americans: hope and opportunity for all. Now it's being used to divide us not unite us."

It's a sad dilemma for a lot of Americans. One man I know in upstate New York tells me, "Peter, I don't have time to be a Tea Partier, but I can't afford to stay quiet. It's not fair to say that if I'm opposed to the new health care it means that I'm against civil rights too. I'm for everybody's rights."

The shared message of Passover and Easter is that hope springs eternal in resilient peoples. The promise of new jobs, new faith in a government that earns our confidence and a new era of American exceptionalism will only be won when the disquiet and disillusionment of a nation whose popular will has been ignored is replaced by a commitment that yes we can is a rallying cry for an entire people and not just a single political party.

The lives and viewpoints of loyal Americans are not legitimate subjects of mockery, mimicry and marginalization by the government it relies on and trusts. The history of our nation requires that our leaders reach out in reconciliation to reassure disagreeing voices.

Next year we hope that with the annual return of the cherry blossoms a fresh wind of change also sweeps across the Potomac. It may be too much to hope that the White House heeds your honest voice. It's not too much to expect that our president is not embarrassed by your strong voice and that he understands that you care so much for America it hurts.

The prescription for truth and for change continues in your hometown and on Fox News.

-- Peter J. Johnson, Jr., has served as a legal analyst for the FOX News Channel since 1997