To Save A Great Nation

In the past I have written about Harry Reid. (Please refer to Feb. 2, 2009 post). I don’t like writing about Harry Reid because writing about Harry Reid inevitably requires the mentioning of offensive matter processed by the bowels. Nevertheless, I believe it is time we return to the unpleasant subject of Harry Reid.

Harry Reid is coming up for reelection on November 2, 2010, and although I understand, as we all do, that excrement happens, I don’t believe it should occupy a seat in the U.S. Senate. So here is an opportunity for us to flush Harry Reid down the toilet and put him in the septic tank with other raw sewage where he belongs.

Okay, now that we have the really repugnant part of this out of the way, let us get on with the milder, though no less important, aspects of our case against Harry Reid.

We Americans seem temporarily to have lost our sense of priorities and proportions. We are more concerned about the qualifications of airline pilots, train engineers and bus drivers than we are with the qualifications of those we entrust with the important job of guiding our great nation. For instance, we didn’t know diddly squat about Barack Obama’s personal and political background, and still don’t, yet we elected him to the highest political post in the land.

This isn’t the way it is supposed to be, dear friends. The people--we the people--are supposed to be thoroughly and meticulously scrutinizing candidates before electing and reelecting them to public office. This entails, for the most part, avoiding the mainstream media’s liberal biases while assiduously gathering and sharing information from more honest and reliable sources.

Come on folks, let’s get real here. We are considering these candidates for service as trustees of a trust--a very sacred and valuable trust. These men and women will be holding the fate of our entire nation in their hands. The future welfare and happiness of our children and grandchildren will depend largely upon the kinds of decisions they make in our behalf.

Think about it. How much weight can you put into a boat before it sinks? And similarly, how much debt load can a nation, even a great nation, bear before it goes under? We have to start getting practical and serious about our future. We’re in grave danger, people!

In times like these, more than ever, we need honest, capable and trustworthy men and women in public office. This is no time to be reelecting misguided and corrupt politicians like Harry Reid who pose as champions of the people while recklessly spending every available dollar in the U.S. Treasury, whether it be a tax dollar or a borrowed one, to fund their twisted and cockeyed vision of America.

Let’s be candid. Harry Reid is ill-equipped both mentally and morally to be a U.S. Senator, regardless of what he may say about himself or what his supporters in the liberal media may say about him. He has clearly demonstrated that he is a staunch opponent of limited government and a very strong supporter of big government. He has clearly demonstrated that he believes in taking power away from the many and consolidating it in the hands of a select few. He has clearly demonstrated that he is in favor of replacing people rule with elitist rule, elitist rule being a government administered by people like Harry Reid who believe hard-working American taxpayers are too stupid to know what’s best for them.

There is, and I know you can all smell it, a putrid stench emanating from our nation’s capital. Please join with me in removing the source of that stench, Harry Reid and other odious officials like him, from public office. It is not this generation’s calling to establish a great nation, but it is this generation’s calling to save a great nation from destruction.

If you are not already one, become a true American patriot!

“Government is a trust, and the officers of government are trustees. And both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.” --Henry Clay

A Dark and Tragic Tale of Despair

Sundays are decep-tively quiet in the town where I live. In the morning men cringingly nurse their throbbing hangovers with generous doses of tomato juice and Tabasco sauce, and then hurry off to church with their hastily groomed families in tow, usually arriving a little late. When church has run its course, they return to their homes tired and out of sorts, and take a nap, if circumstances prevented them from catching one during the sermon. Later, if there is a sporting event on, they immerse themselves deeply into that so they may engage vicariously in a contrived and distant thrill while they swill beer and devour anything loaded with empty calories and salt. In the evening, when it starts to settle in that tomorrow is a workday, they grow moody and restive. Another feeding frenzy begins. Frequent trips are made to the refrigerator and cupboards in search of snacks of questionable nutritional value. As the evening wears on, unflattering words are sporadically and off-handedly fired off with no particular victim in mind, and copious quantities of Alka-Seltzer are gulped down. Finally, in a last ditch attempt to stave off the inevitable, a frantic and futile effort is made to find something on TV that is the entertainment counterpart of what they’ve been eating all day. Around 10:30 p.m. defeat is begrudgingly declared. Teeth are brushed, spouses and children are kissed goodnight and the day ends, much as it began, with a creeping and haunting fear that this is as good as it may ever get.

An Opportunity Of A Lifetime

Even a casual study of the writ-ings of those who framed our govern-ment persuades one to believe that the Founders, without question, viewed the people as the ultimate and most reliable restraint upon it. It was their hope that the American people would appreciate and cherish their rare form of government enough to nurture it, watch over it and, most of all, to protect it from the corrosive affects of mischievous and self-serving office holders who for one reason or another might decide to ignore and circumvent the Constitution--the sacred agreement that binds us together as a nation, and which our elected officials are sworn to uphold.

But alas, the Founders’ hopes were not fully realized. It turns out that their confidence in us was largely misplaced. Decades ago, Americans began forsaking their birthright and going off this way and that way in search of the “good life.” We have had neither the time nor the inclination to look after our government. Indeed, many of us don’t even know how it is supposed to work or what is so extraordinary about it. We all have been too deeply engaged in the highly addictive activity of acquiring things, things we thought we needed to have in order to be happy.

But the sad irony of it is, we may soon lose all those things we’ve accumulated through hard work and easy credit, and become downright unhappy. For while our eyes were directed elsewhere, our once limited government expanded itself well beyond its intended boundaries. And now the unwieldy monster wants to control everything and everybody in its sight. We allowed the camel to get its nose under the tent and now it’s trying to do what the Founders feared--push us out.

So is it too late to do anything about it? Perhaps. But personally I don’t think we should go down without a fight. We are, after all, the sons and daughters of patriots. We may have temporarily forgotten that, but we are blood-kin to daring men and women, bold risk takers who came to this country with little or nothing and created the best damn nation in the history of the world. All we have to do is get that noble blood pumping in our veins again.

Let’s face it, most of us know deep in our hearts that what our government is doing in the name of social and economic “reform” is wrong. Dead wrong! The government’s policies, whether calculated to do so or not, are backing all of us into a corner. Our government, let me repeat that, our government is gradually and methodically enslaving us. There’s no other way of putting it.

Daniel Webster once wrote: “It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”

Dear friends, that is precisely where we’re at. We have in the highest levels of our government men and woman who are promising, in effect, to be good masters. They say they want us to have affordable health care, better schools, cleaner air and safer cities. But there’s just one catch, they want to take away our liberties in exchange for those things, things they won’t even be able to deliver.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not going to be able to accept their terms. So, like a prodigal son, I’m going to return to my civic responsibilities. I’m going to begin taking less interest in my stuff and a lot more interest in my government, the government that was created and bequeathed to me at great cost by my forefathers. And I’m going to fight tyranny, just as they did, with every legitimate means and tool at my disposal.

And I invite any who may read this to join with me in what is certain to be an exciting and glorious adventure, an opportunity of a lifetime.

“Our union is now complete; our constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties. --Samuel Adams

Life's Journey

It has been said that life is a jour-ney. But in most cases when we set off on a journey, it is presumed that we have select-ed a destina-tion and plotted a course. Yet man’s fundamental and most critical journey, life’s journey, is often left to luck and happenstance.

All of us, young and old alike, are at some point along a path. The end of that path may be near or far; but whatever the case may be, we need to determine whether our present location is where we truly want to be. And if it isn’t, we need to change course.

At birth each of us was given an allotment of time, energy and natural talent. Our success and happiness in life rests largely upon how we use those finite and precious resources.

Benjamin Franklin once said: “Doest thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that’s the stuff life is made of.”

Most people my age have some regrets, regrets that for the most part are the result of poor choices and an unwise use of time.

If you’re young and single, I have some advice for you. Don’t get old and don’t get married.

But if that advice doesn’t suit you, I will offer this alternative: Prepare yourself--emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually--so that you may have some hope of dealing successfully with life’s inevitable challenges. And one other thing, choose a mate who has the same destination in mind you have and who fully understands and appreciates the amount of mutual effort it will take to get there.

If you do, you’ll be reasonably happy. If you don’t, I can assure you you’ll live to have some regrets.

Another Look At Global Warming

Perhaps the globe is, as Al Gore insists, warming; but to what degree man is respon-sible for it, and to what extent he can reverse it, is largely unknown.

What is known, however, is that most of the world's politicians are greedy and power-hungry fools. So you can be certain of one thing--they wouldn’t be leaping on the global-warming bandwagon if they didn’t expect to reap some pretty substantial dividends.

And who will be paying those dividends? Who do you think?

The wealth and power that currently resides in our hands gradually, or perhaps speedily, will be shifted over to them, for you can be assured that the politicians will see to it that the job of keeping the world from overheating will be big, expensive and quite possibly endless.

Furthermore, as the global-warming locomotive gathers momentum, expect to see individual freedoms greatly curtailed and government power vastly expanded. In due time, don’t be surprised if you begin hearing more and more talk of the need to establish a global government. (Well you didn’t think an ugly bogeyman like global warming could be subdued by anything less than a global government, did you?)

What Americans have to get through their heads--and quickly--is that the global-warming mania is simply an excuse to steal power away from the people and transfer it to government officials around the world. It’s not about controlling climate, at all. Even selfish and power-grabbing politicians, dumb as they are, know that’s impossible.

Some of you may be asking yourselves, why are scientists on board? Well, a great many aren’t. But those who are see gobs of grant money and possibly a Nobel prize coming their way. Remember, even scientists have egos. They hunger for recognition, just like the rest of us.

But know this, if we allow the world’s politicians to push this scam through, we’re going to find out the hard way that going “green” doesn’t lead to utopia. Instead, it will open the door to the worst and most pervasive tyranny imaginable.

A great American patriot, Patrick Henry, once proclaimed: “Give me liberty or give me death!” And you know, he had a point there. What good is life, after all, if you don’t have the freedom to live it as you wish? Are we going to permit ourselves to be pushed, frightened and stampeded into bondage in order to escape the largely unknown consequences of global warming?

To abandon the best system of government in the world, with its guaranteed rights and freedoms, to pursue a dubious undertaking like climate control is both absurd and dangerous.

Don’t buy into it!

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
--H.L. Mencken

A Competitive and Dangerous Place

Even when the world is experi-encing a period of relative peace, there is restless-ness, tension and discontent among the nations. Countries are jockeying unceasingly to acquire more favorable conditions for themselves. At this very moment, nations that consider themselves disadvantaged, and most do, are doggedly looking for ways and means of getting ahead.

Historically, the primary reason similarly minded people have banded together is to enhance their chances of survival, survival being something that must be attended to constantly. Therefore, there never is a time when a nation can safely set aside the basic and demanding task of surviving.

But it is not enough that a nation possesses a well trained and well equipped military. Each individual within a nation, whatever his or her vocation or station in life, must be steadfastly using all their natural gifts and acquired skills to the fullest extent possible, because that is what the leaders of competitor nations are urging their citizens to do.

Make no mistake about it. If we as a people fail to fully utilize all our talents and resources, a nation that is fully exploiting all of theirs eventually will overtake us.

And why will they overtake us? Because we forgot that the world is inherently a highly competitive and dangerous place, and we foolishly permitted ourselves to become preoccupied and distracted with things that don’t matter.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Today marks the two-hundred and thirty-third anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since those fifty-six brave signers pledged to one another their lives, fortunes and sacred honor.

The Declaration of Independence is, among other things, a proclamation of man’s inherent rights, rights that predate government, rights that our Creator endowed us with and wants us to keep.

Thomas Jefferson called these rights “unalienable rights” because they are an elemental and integral part of man. When he is arbitrarily deprived of them, he is no longer complete, and lacks the capacity to pursue his dreams and aspirations. Therefore, he becomes something less than a man.

A good government, Thomas Jefferson believed, should not only acknowledge these special rights but it should “secure” them as well. To him, that was the prime purpose of government.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence were confident men. They did not lack courage or initiative. They wanted to control their own destinies, but they knew that in order to realistically do that they would need full possession of all their unalienable rights. And that holds true to this day.

Admittedly, not everyone who is granted life and liberty will find true happiness. It may still elude many of us. But without life and liberty, real happiness is virtually unattainable.

The signers knew this, and we need to know it too.