The America I’m reading about from Malawi is not kinder and gentler, nor more rational. From here it looks like everybody is running around screaming for their rights, and how they’ve been offended. Never have I see America so divided, with the Internet full of pictures of angry demonstrations. I have no intention of ever giving up my U.S. citizenship, but I’m mighty glad I have a Permanent Resident Permit in Malawi.

Where did America go? Where it once was, there is a new land, where it is against the law to hurt the feelings of a gay person, but it’s okay to slice and dice babies and sell the parts. Smoking tobacco is prohibited because of health concerns, but marijuana is now okay. Judges are ordering defendants to submit to psychological counseling (brainwashing?) because they (the defendants) have the wrong views on politics, religion, and/or homosexuality.

They did the same thing in the Soviet Union. Dissidents got sent to mental institutions. Ever hear of Alexander Solzhenitsin? He was a nonconformist in the USSR, who got packed off, but he wrote a book, Gulag Archipelago, and pressure from world opinion got him released.

Today judges in America are ordering people visibly lacking in Political Correctness to gulags, figuratively speaking. The latest victim is Christian author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza. The judge has just ordered him to undergo more psychological counseling. His personal life in recent years suggests that he has his eccentricities, but think of all the citizens of the U.S. walking free while mad as a hatter! Is the judiciary going to go after all them? Not as long as they don’t make movies that express the wrong beliefs.

States, municipalities, retail chains, and TV networks have banned the Confederate flag. Because of the actions of a lone madman, it has become a symbol of hate. At the same time, the religion that proclaims love for enemies is being suppressed; it may offend atheists. Atheists are free to express their beliefs in educational institutions, but Christians must not; it violates separation of church and state. Hate speech? What about Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panthers?

The present administration has done nothing to alleviate poverty and crime, while its foreign policy has been described as a disaster. It has dismayed our traditional allies while giving reassurance to our enemies. China is now seen as the preeminent superpower and economy.

As for the administration’s immigration policy, there is actually a bright note. No longer must Christian missionaries get passports and go overseas to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus; there are now so many pockets of unreached peoples within America’s borders.

As for affordable health insurance, there have been winners and losers. The losers are people like me who have seen their premiums shoot up. And I understand that for those who used those state insurance market places, a big rate hike is upcoming. Oh yes, and there are those big deductibles, so insurance companies will seldom actually pay for anything.

The America I’m reading about from Malawi is not kinder and gentler, nor more rational. From here it looks like everybody is running around screaming for their rights, and how they’ve been offended. Never have I see America so divided, with the Internet full of pictures of angry demonstrations. I have no intention of ever giving up my U.S. citizenship, but I’m mighty glad I have a Permanent Resident Permit in Malawi.

Larry Brown is a minister in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and serves as Professor of church history, world history, hermeneutics and missions at the African Bible College in Lilongwe, Malawi.