[Editor's Note: Today is the second installment of a six-part series by Jim Wallis reflecting on the past two years and painting a post-election vision for people of faith and Sojourners. We encourage you to read the essays, engage in conversation with others, and support Sojourners in making this vision happen.]
Scriptures say, "Without a vision the people perish," and soon after he was elected, the president let the vision perish and the people soon followed. Without it, a vacuum formed and allowed the growth of a different sort of movement. Most unexpectedly, after the new "progressive" moment in January 2009, the "new populism" in America is now decidedly on the Tea Party Right; sparking an anti-Obama, anti-Democrat, and anti-government movement; questioning the president's religion, patriotism, and even his birth place; and tinged clearly by some with an ugly racial edge. The "movement" is now on the other side of the political aisle. A campaign of "Hope and Change," and "Yes We Can" was slowly replaced with the governance of diminishing expectations, and "They Won't Let Us." But people who feel that they are perishing can be both afraid and angry.
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