thoughts on the unprotected

Peggy Noonan wrote a thoughtful piece called "The Rise of the Unprotected".  The Wall Street Journal has since chosen to firewall the article but I found most of it quoted here.

Noonan says:

There are the protected and the unprotected. The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting to push back, powerfully.

The protected are the accomplished, the secure, the successful—those who have power or access to it. They are protected from much of the roughness of the world. More to the point, they are protected from the world they have created. Again, they make public policy and have for some time.

She says that's the reason we have Donald Trump.  And I would add, Bernie Sanders.  I've heard a few pundits scratching their heads over voters who say they are choosing between Sanders and Trump.  Journalists don't see them as the same, but the unprotected do.  Sanders is promising to break oppressive systems in their favor, Trump is promising to use the systems in their favor.  People want to be protected.       

But my cry in all of this is that as Americans, we are the protected.  All of us.  Though we might fit Noonan's description as unprotected citizens, we are still better off than most everyone on the planet.  And my calling as a person of faith is to shield and uplift those who are truly unprotected.

People sold, oppressed, and uprooted -- they are the ones I am actually here for.  They will have a voice as I vote and pray and live my life.  I may be considered unprotected. But I want to look outside my circumstances and whenever I can, choose to be a protector.