There is an opportunity here for true change, for tough-sounding political talk to meet some pretty impressive Inauguration Day speech poetry to, ultimately, meet a vision and a direct call to the Louisiana people to make this state their own again.

There is an opportunity because this entire nation is on the cusp of something spectacular, and Louisiana, given its current depths, is ripe for something equally spectacular that even the great Henry Wadsworth Longfellow maybe couldn’t put to words.

His Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie should be in every high school English curriculum in south Louisiana.

Even all of that sounds overly poetic, I realize, but I hope to unpack this unique opportunity newly minted Governor Jeff Landry has by article’s end. Here’s the thing: in a sort of irony, I will actually not be addressing kinetic action as much as I will be challenging Landry to introduce a whole new lexicon to the governor’s position that the next governor and even governors from other states can unleash into this battle for the Republic’s soul.

I will be challenging Landry to be a trailblazer today, a head coach of a state from which players have too often been entering the transfer portal in droves.

Lost Louisiana

On Friday Scott McKay argued that not-quite-yet-Governor Jeff Landry’s #1 mission is to fix Louisiana’s outmigration crisis, calling it an “utter disaster” and providing hard evidence from UHaul’s state numbers.

That means this is a hell of a fight Landry will have on his hands. It also means nothing short of hyper-competitive economic policies and social standards will do.

We’re famous around here for a laissez-faire attitude about government and culture. That attitude is not serving us well and it’s going to have to go away for a while.

We are way, way behind. We’re going to need a radical change in direction as a state.

And Landry and Louisiana’s newly-elected state legislature simply cannot afford to listen to the voices of those people who are responsible for where we are, particularly when the voters of the state utterly rejected them last fall.

McKay is spot on, and I believe the default reason why most people think Louisiana has this outmigration issue is because of economics. I am a teacher, after all, so my view may be biased. However, that economics serve as a major reason in this pernicious exodus is undoubtedly true, but I want to focus on the second item in the pair McKay mentions: social standards.

Landry’s Sunday speech was peppered with images from the history and culture of the state, a unique society that goes back hundreds of years and is wholly American while boasting of an unequivocal Louisiana flavor as well. That speech can be read in full, but here is just one small piece of the Homecoming theme Landry so aptly raises:

We know far too well why those who leave our state for other opportunities, shall always hear the whisper of the live oak to come back home!

The everlasting love of our culture tugs at their heart, it speaks to their soul.

Coming home to Louisiana feeds their soul and their endearing longing to be here—home where they belong.

As I mentioned in my opening, the poetry in this speech is breathtaking at times, every bit as moving as Longfellow’s. It recollects the young boy inside me, of riding around with “Dah” in his pickup truck to a little red tin store in Four Corners called Metz (I think!) that looked more like a big barn shed than a store. He’d buy me an IBC root beer or strawberry pop to savor while he coolly and innocently sipped on his beer driving down the back roads home. For some reason, of all the times I could picture, every time I remember this image, I see the Saturday night LSU played at Texas A&M and won 17-3. A quick Google search indicates to me now that it was 1987, and I was nine years old.

An orange track around the Aggies’ field. Just 75,000 capacity. Victor Jones. Mike Archer. I believe A&M was in the Southwest Conference back then.

Memories.

That feeling can be nostalgic for any person in any state, I realize. But I am from Louisiana, and because I am human, I graphed my rich personal history onto Landry’s speech, and it spoke to me. I realize that a lot has changed in this state and in this nation in the last few decades, and that in turn makes me sad. The nostalgia turns to melancholy.

I remember how nice it all was, the days before social media and NIL and transfer portals and super-conferences.

McKay asserts that we have to leave behind the laissez-faire attitude about our government and culture, that we are going to need a radical change of direction from both government and the people. The people of Louisiana spoke in the fall, as voters decidedly rejected the previous values of government. So we have addressed the laissez-faire attitude toward government it seems, at least for the time being. What needs to happen now is that radical shift in terms of society, and I believe this is where Landry can blaze a trail for every other state in the Union.

Beyond Conservatism

America is bleeding, and it is bleeding largely because of the ever-growing hyper-focus on the federal government’s power, a power We the People were never supposed to give them. This nation was founded based on the principles of a constitutional republic, and we all need to revive that basic civic understanding in terms of government and society alike. We have seen what centralized power can do. It can create a de facto totalitarian state where the lazy mob opens the door for a very real sort of tyranny legitimized and weaponized by the Mockingbird media and Big Tech. We have seen this point blank with the propaganda surrounding Covid-19 and the jab and with cancel culture.

That is what has been changing since that landmark 2020 year. Governments–led by the people–are growing ever more radical. We are fighting the federal tyranny just as our forefathers fought an established world power centuries ago. Citizen journalists have their muskets always at the ready. We are popping off Mockingbirds one by one, week by week, story by story.

We are winning the information and culture war one voice and one stubborn, mule-headed, principled person at a time.

We have to do better than this if we are to win this war. We have to move beyond conservatism, to a spirit of revival that is the responsibility of not one nation, but one nation under God comprised of fifty states. We have to revive in us that passion that was actually first necessary in producing the country and that Constitution we keep talking about.

Each state possesses the responsibility to do its own unique thing to make this happen. And Governor Jeff Landry is in the absolutely blessed position to be able to risk a few mistakes and chuckles along the way to make Louisiana Great Again.

“When we provide that unity,” he said, “when we show that we can come together and solve the problems of this state, we then show America and the world how it will be done.”

Do you mean this, Governor?

Do you really, really mean this?

Because the American people have heard it before.

It all sounds great. No arguments here. But I want to challenge you today, not to simply leave these pretty-poetic-political words behind another eight years of business and bull**t as usual.

See, I can write poetry too. None of that alliteration matters without the substance.

Governor Landry, go be the coach Louisiana needs, the general. Challenge us at times, not just the legislators on each side of the aisle to compromise on meaningless bills, but more importantly, every single parent out here, every single child. Don’t just leave the “society” end of this awakening in the basket of deplorables like transgenderism and the like. That’s easy. Everyone will agree with you. But the change will last only until we elect the next Democratic governor. Reject that. Reject the status quo. Go beyond the norm. Go beyond the talking points of the anti-Left. Take the entire lexicon of governance into a realm it has never been before.

Your mother was a teacher, and a damn good one, I bet.

The most important voice in a child’s education should be that of their parents.

It is only through education without indoctrination, that a child finds his or her true potential.

No one knew this better than my mother.

She taught as a profession.

She taught as a calling.

She taught with leadership and courage.

And mom taught by example.

I want you to treat this new position of yours as exactly that–a calling.

As a teacher myself, I am challenging you, as though you are a student of mine and pledging my loyalty to you as a student of yours in return, to live in the spirit of your mother over the next eight years.

Coach us, teach us through the darkness. Get creative with your vision. Go to places that politicians usually don’t go.

Amidst the political jargon, sneak in a reminder about the importance of Sunday rest and church. Make a comment here and there about how destructive year-round sports are becoming, particularly when Sundays and weekends in general are saturated with them and families are fractured every which way trying to get kids to ballgames. Sneak in a request for parents to lean on and worship God on this greatest day of the week, to maybe even consider a true day of rest in honor of our Creator. It doesn’t have to be intrusive, arrogant. Doesn’t even have to be a dedicated speech. Just subtle. Maybe you even tell us what your family will be doing on some Sundays to honor that day.

Will you piss off some people, some conservatives? Of course you will. I’m sure I just did myself. But that’s the point. We have to move beyond conservatism to save this state and this country. What exactly are we conserving when families can’t even stay home for a Sunday meal together anymore? Is that what we’re holding to as traditional values?

We shouldn’t want to conserve anything that even hints at Leftist culture, and that’s exactly what some of our habits and some of our culture is doing, if we really sit down and think about it. We can’t rail at the Satanists or the sick transgenders indoctrinating our kids if we can’t even sacrifice one day a week for God.

I’m not trying to be harsh, reader. I’m trying to stir up in Governor Landry a cause that will actually mean something.

So please, you want to speak to that whisper that keeps calling Louisianans back home? It sounded great in your speech. Now let’s make it real. Why not keep them here in the first place? Amidst the economics jargon, amidst the talk of jobs and rates and salaries, sneak in the notion of how much you love your wife and your family. Encourage husbands to love their wives, for wives to love their husbands, for married couples to be open again to raising larger families that actually want to stay in Louisiana, because simple logic says that bigger families just means “home” more. It becomes a colony that you want to grow in the here and now and even into the next generation. I haven’t heard a governor challenging the citizens of this state to make the home–the actual house on 628 Mary St or wherever we live–into the primary nuclear society that in turn grows out into the communal one. Society as we think of it fails because the society at home fails. I haven’t heard a single governor address the fact that until the mini-societies of our homes are changed, nothing on the larger level will ever be authentic. It doesn’t matter if we separate boys and girls bathrooms if divorce continues to skyrocket and birth rates inside the two-parent family structure continue to decline.

There is a reason one of the primary strongholds of the Deep State maniacs is to tear apart the nuclear family. And we play right into their hands with so much of what we do.

Husbands, love your wives. Wives, love your husbands. You can even make a little wink-wink joke out of it. They’ll be using you and your leadership as an excuse to go to the bedroom instead of to their phones.

I don’t mean to be crude, reader. We are all adults here. It’s true. Couples need to love each other the right way more. We need to bring and love more children into the world. Be fruitful and multiply, says the Lord.

Coach us, Jeff Landry, on how to combat that insidious enemy tearing down our connection to home and family and God while we play 600 baseball games in a year. Coach us beyond the political rhetoric, beyond the predictable platitudes involving the economy. Blaze a path, truly make Louisiana different, by leading a people intent on sincerely making home the place to be, the dinner table the place to share, the Sabbath day the time for rest and worship. Do these things, Governor Landry, and you will invite God into the cause and into the movement. And even though you likely won’t see a huge change by 2032 when you leave office, you will indeed see, like the first shoots of sugarcane smiling out of the soil, the groundbreaking, foundational fruits of a battle well fought, the five loaves and two fish God is just waiting for us to give him.

Then we let him take us home.

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May everyone named directly or referenced indirectly ask forgiveness and do penance for their sins against America and God. I fight this information war in the spirit of justice and love for the innocent, but I have been reminded of the need for mercy and prayers for our enemies. I am a sinner in need of redemption as well after all, for my sins are many. In the words of Jesus Christ himself, Lord forgive us all, for we know not what we do.

Jeff LeJeune is the author of several books, writer for RVIVR, editor, master of English and avid historian, teacher and tutor, aspiring ghostwriter and podcaster, and creator of LeJeune Said. Visit his website at jefflejeune.com, where you can find a conglomerate of content.