Where has all the common sense gone?

    Does common sense and logical thinking evaporate? Sublimate? Hibernate? If not, why is it so hard to find these days? And while we're out with our flashlights in the night looking for common sense maybe we can locate that elusive critter called dialogue and civil discussion. Heck, I'd settle for any discussion, civil or otherwise. Do we take our positions so personally that we can't risk actually listening to the other side? Or have we prejudged the "other side" so negatively that we can't even stand to hear it?
    Newsflash. There are thoughtful, compassionate individuals who don't think "gun free" schools is the way to go in a country saturated with guns. Not offering an opinion on gun ownership here, just making an observation. We surround celebrities, public servants, politicians of every stripe with people trained in the use of firearms to protect their subjects from harm. Somehow, we have decided a cool-looking international symbol printed on a sign at the entrance of our children's schools is supposed to protect them. How could any gun-inflicted harm come to our children with such a solid line of defense right there at the school's entrance? If I may say, it doesn't seem to be working too well so far.
    Given the reality that gun confiscation would be messy at best and against our Constitution , and would take years to try to enforce, (likely with little success), it does not offer us an effective solution to this rising problem. Left-leaning ideological thinkers pretending to state their more conservative counterpart's positions by these vague and far reaching "silly" statements isn't exactly interpretable as offering a meaningful solution either. It seems like with such an important subject we need to have a discussion, not a verbal bumper sticker convention.
    By the way, if our children are the priority of our society (as they should be), maybe we should consider another shot at prohibition since drunk driving is one of the leading causes of death among young children. And don't forget that swimming pools claim far more innocent children's lives than guns. Guns are very powerful and need to be handled with the respect they deserve but honestly, fatal accidents involving guns are rare and these school shootings are not revealing a gun problem, they are revealing a society and culture problem.
    "There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws; or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality."
                                                          Alexis de Tocqueville

SOMETHING IS AMISS`

Have you ever had that gut feeling that things were not as they seem? That the alleged facts of a situation didn't seem to jive with the attitudes being exhibited? Or there was a feeling that you were missing the punch line of a joke you didn't know was playing out? Can it be that so many very intelligent people are being sucked into the AGW idea. Do we actually have to believe that the best argument for gun control is the horrible, recorded murder of a TV news personality and her cameraman? Are there really a significant number of leaders in our country that believe the 14th amendment bestows citizenship on a baby born to alien parents who are here in defiance of our laws? Really? REALLY? I'm a proud C student of both high school and college and I'm looking around at ostensibly the best and the brightest to whom we have entrusted the leadership of our country and am increasingly struck with the idea that we are a great country in decline being led by a bunch of idiots. Or are they? Climate change. Gun control. Open borders. Arguing these positions if one is inclined to believe in them is fine, but do we have to enter the twilight zone of dialogue to approach them? If you want to argue gun control why pick and choose an event every several months and milk it for all the emotional energy you can while ignoring the fact that in Chicago alone we have already had over 200 murders this year? Most of which are carried out with guns. Isn't this worth mentioning in a discussion? I guess not. We have to wait for a nut to kill a bunch of people at a school or in a movie theater. What gives? And climate change. Wow, you mean to tell me the climate is changing. What genius figured that out? Not only are we prohibited from questioning the computer models and the incomplete and shaky data that the models are using but the only way to fix this earth-ending cycle is to end the world as we know it. Nothing less will do. News flash. The Civil War didn't end discrimination as if you'd flipped a switch. The South and North did not immediately shake hands and say, "good game" after the war. The union was spared, and I'm so glad it was, but several amendments were introduced to help lay the foundation for the freedmen. A legal tool to try and encourage the assimilation of the blacks into the fabric of society. This is the spirit and intention behind the 14th amendment. Trying to expressly declare citizenship on the freed slaves. 
    Back to my original contention that something is amiss. The only way really smart people might say the things they are saying and do the things they are doing. The only way the media would use the template they are using to decide what stories to cover and what not to cover, is this. There is a class of people, many of whom darken the halls of Congress, and many who reside at influential positions in media or on university campi, (thank you Rush), who feel like a Utopia is coming within their reach and they are trying to move us away from our Constitution and Democratic Republic form of government. They are already acting like a ruling class and are working together, Republican and Democrat alike, to continue seizing power so that they can implement what they know to be best for us. While you may find fault in my theory, you can not deny that smart people are acting like idiots. And I think the safest way to deal with them, regardless of their grand scheme, is to kick the bums out.
    If you've been waiting for a sign, here it is.
LET'S WAKE UP AND TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!