American Faces - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
American Faces
by

Sunday
I am just a few hours back from speaking to the kindest, smartest, best-looking people on this earth, the men and women of St. Barnabas Charities of Pittsburgh. Day by day, here in Los Angeles and on the road to Malibu and Rancho Mirage, I interact with men and women with tormented, scared, angry looks on their faces. But in Pittsburgh, I spoke to human beings who face life unafraid because they know very well that they have done good for their neighbors. Whether their neighbors are ill or poor or depressed or lonely, St. Barnabas gives them shelter, sustenance, education, training, companionship, and the life-altering power of knowing they are in God’s hands.

I was exhausted from travel a few days ago when I entered the room where the dear people of this charity greeted me, and when I left, I was genuinely lifted up, raised up, alerted to the power of the Lord. I felt great.

READ MORE from Ben Stein: She Is All I Ever Wanted

People of America, every day you are assaulted by the complaints and threats of people who are miserable and angry for reasons known best to them. Their lives are about trying to rip this great nation apart on the basis of race, creed, color, sexual preference, or anything else they can think of to match the horror of their inner selves with whatever damage they can do in the world around them.

I can see it on their faces. They are sick.

As far as I can tell, in Pittsburgh, at least in this part of Pittsburgh, there is peace in the Valley because there is peace in these dear people’s hearts.

I flew back the ultra-long flight from Pittsburgh to Dallas and thence to LAX, about two-thirds as long as a flight from IAD to London, thinking that there was still hope for our beloved America.

When I stepped off the plane at LAX, the lights went out. All around were people rushing to and fro, bumping into their neighbors, looking frightened and yet ready for a fight.

At the baggage claim chambers, men and women of many diverse groups pushed and shoved to catch a glimpse of their luggage. It was a room largely open to the sidewalk. Even so, it reeked of marijuana. Our driver told us that we taxpayers of California were about to have our taxes raised enough to pay every black person in California $1 million to compensate him or her or nonbinary for the horrors we had inflicted upon them and their ancestors. Is it true? Who knows? In California today, nothing is too crazy to be certainly fantasy.

Three blocks from our house in BH, our driver told us, a six-story hotel is going up that will bring in $6 billion a year in revenue to Beverly Hills. Can it possibly be true? Can anything that’s happening near our home in California these days be true?

It doesn’t matter to my wife and me. We live in North Idaho and always have.

Ben Stein
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Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes “Ben Stein’s Diary” for every issue of The American Spectator.
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