Wanted to explore an idea with you. That is, if you would be kind enough to travel with me for a bit. As we look around this world we live in, it is easy to find those in very difficult, if not utterly desperate, situations. As the internet has matured and spread to many many countries more and more people are exposed to this great need. If I live in Cuba and am a doctor receiving $35 a month I can do little but pray for those in these various hopeless places. If I live in India and make just enough to buy food for one meal a day for my family and me then, again, I am able only to "feel sorry" for the hurting and the hungry around the world.
A few days ago I was fixing a problem in a toll booth at one of the Turnpike plazas in my area. While visiting with the collector he mentioned that he was only working part-time and was retired from another job. He went on to say that his son ran an orphanage in Haiti and they didn't have enough money coming in to cover all of their needs. So this gentleman decided to take on this part-time job which allows him to send more money to his son and the orphans he was trying to help. Another co-worker has spent untold thousands of dollars and thousands of hours setting up medical and teaching facilities in Guatemala. Several people from work went to the Mississippi coast to help clean up and rebuild after Katrina a few years back. I could spend hours talking about people I personally know who spend time and treasure serving others whether here or in other countries.
My great fear is that in another 50 years, if we continue down this Progressive road we are on, we will land in a place where our freedoms will not afford us the opportunity to serve others, individually, like we do now. Our movement toward centralized government and the necessary loss of individual freedoms that accompanies such a movement, will leave us with the shared poverty, administered in the name of fairness, that will impede, or stop, our ability to act on our compassion with generosity. On the other hand, it's a lot easier to do nothing, when you haven't the resources to help, which allows for a selfish, and lazy citizenry to be cared for by an all powerful, ostensibly benevolent ruling class. A country full of people living in the government's basement with a lifetime supply of condoms and cannabis. WOW! That's a lot better than having the responsibility of trying to use your resources to help others.
" ......Until every nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
Alexis de Tocqueville
One of my recent endeavors has been to try to understand the attraction between ostensibly conservative leaders and Donald Trump. The journey continues. It is easy to see the general attractiveness of a successful business man, (that would be wildly successful), who is willing to jump into the political arena to try and influence a "come-back" of sorts for our floundering country. In fact, if he were sitting in the room here with me I would shake his hand and offer a sincere "Thank You". A man who could buy several islands to retire to and just take life easy is opening himself up to the slime and mire of the American political system. I think this is commendable and is very much worth noting. My frustration is not in the person of Donald Trump, though he has shown an unfortunate bent toward political games, but with the endless line of alleged conservative leaders who have endorsed him. Those who I had understood to be intensely interested in furthering conservative principles and policies. Are they all just hoping he will turn out to be a conservative? Are they hoping he can be steered in a conservative direction once he is president? Is he the Republicans' version of the empty suit? (Just add your hopes and dreams to this suit and stir) There are unflattering comparisons to be made with Barack Obama if you consider the fact that Trump has promised to change the State-based nominating process to be more fair. Which I guess means he would give the front runner even more of an advantage than he has enjoyed.
There is not a solid conservative record in his past nor are his vague, redundant and sometimes contradictory comments easily interpreted in a conservative light. In fact, he seems to have thought little about important issues and seems, too, to be lacking a principled anchor to which he is committed. He constantly bemoans the primary process as unfair and weighted against him all the while amassing a delegate count that exceeds the percentage of the popular vote he is getting. He's counting on us all forgetting that this all started with 16 candidates and has left many an establishment, and outsider, in the dust. I will vote for Donald Trump if he is the Republican nominee. But if he wants me to be a Trump supporter now he needs to debate Ted Cruz one-on-one so I can compare policy concerns as expressed by both candidates.
For now, as a conservative, I have no choice but to vote for Ted Cruz.
Testing, one, two three. Is this thing on?I guess it is, it just seems rather hard to hear compared to the big Megaphones so many others have at their disposal. I feel like I'm living in an alternate universe sometimes. So we point at the rich,(one-percenters), or whatever category you wish to invent, and scream that the love of money is the root of all evil. It's very easy to point at various elements of our society and exclaim how very selfish and uncompassionate we have become. It's equally easy to look at a data set of financial information and conclude that our economic system is wholly unfair and that something sinister must be afoot. Easy, too, is the game of fixing society's ills by using other people's money. Easy, that is, if we have determined that these "other people" have come by their wealth immorally. Otherwise, we might feel like the ones stealing other people's money. It seems to me we are missing some important facts here. Or maybe we are missing an important perspective. When we look at data over time. That is, looking at certain analysis of financial concerns throughout our country, we see trends in data. We miss reality because we are focused on numbers on a page which seem to bring us to similar conclusions from one year to the next. Those stingy top one, or ten percenters just won't go away. And they are getting richer and richer by the day. What the data doesn't show, without going to look for it, is the fact that there is substantial movement from within these different categories of income earners from year to year. It's the same set of 10 digits representing the high earners so we assume it's the same people as well. This is simply not true. There are many people earning more this year than last and many earning less. The exception would be the "super-rich" whose wealth well-insulates them from short-term financial set-backs. If you listen to Dave Ramsey's program when he invites millionaires to call in it's a very educational time indeed. These millionaires have simply made smart decisions and most have built their wealth, over time, on incomes very similar to mine. These middle income jobs may be fading but they are still available and I'm not sure punishing these people's wise decision-making by taxing them more and more is a good, or even ethical, position to take. Our free-market system, when allowed to work, for instance allowing failing businesses to actually fail so that new opportunities can be leveraged and turned into profits for the remaining companies is all part of a healthy economy.
So the love of money is the root of all evil when someone else is accumulating more of it than I think they should have but my desire to have the government take their money and give it to me is somehow virtuous? I just don't get it.
If salvation were a thing that money could buy, the rich would live and the poor would die.
In case you missed the announcement, I'm patiently waiting for our country to take another shot at prohibition. See my earlier blog for details. But let me offer a friendly warning to my friends who choose to consume adult beverages. Beware of the socialists amongst us. There was a report on the news today about how many more health problems drinkers have and how, because of Obamacare, those costs burden us all. Socialised medicine, or single payer, or Obamacare, provides an end run to the sluggish and painfully slow process of passing legislation. With the government in control of health-care they will seize control of your behavior and force you into life-style choices you are opposed to. Instead of the predictable and non-discriminatory actuary table determining your premiums and thereby offering a type of incentive to alter your behavior, or not, depending on your personal choice. Your decisions will be dictated by the benevolent government who will be acting on behalf of the people who will be reacting to the latest pseudo-scientific study showing that YOU are costing us all lots of money so you will be required to change your behavior. After all, it isn't fair to the rest of us that men engage in sexual behavior with other men which increases their risk for contracting AIDS resulting in higher health-care costs for all of us. (Yeah, right, like that's gonna happen). Anyway, you get my point. The government already knows how much water you should need to flush your toilet and take a shower. They already figured out that you need smaller, lighter, more dangerous cars to drive so we don't kill the Earth. Additionally, they see the sacred wisdom in using everyone's money to finance the harvesting of body parts from unborn, and born, children for profit. By using everyone's money then we all have blood on our hands, not just the animals we are employing at these houses of worship. So, as you can see, there are none more qualified to tell you what to eat and drink, how much you can eat and drink, and when you can eat and drink those pre-determined amounts of food and liquid. After all, if the government didn't have your best interest at heart would they have offered you "free" healthcare?
So then, if the three of you haven't figured it our yet, I'm a bit of an odd duck. For further proof please keep reading.
I don't order items off the "Senior Menu" in restaurants, not because I'm pretending not to be old when I am, but because I don't want others subsidizing my purchases. If I get a break, someone else gets a "non-break" as it were. Maybe when I'm on a fixed income and things are truly tight financially, but not now while I'm gainfully employed and can afford to buy my own lunch. While trying to figure out a way to retire ASAP I noticed that, on a retirement income, my wife and I could get insurance for $33 a month. That's thirty three dollars. not $330.00. This would make retirement close to doable but it ain't gonna happen. There is a movement afoot to grab all the freebies you can and just play the system for all it's worth. Why keep fighting when giving up is so easy and so lucrative. Just relax and let the government take care of you like so many of our countrymen have done. The problem is I'm smart enough to see that letting the government take care of me means asking them to take money from others and give it to me. In the case of health care it's pretty much milking the young folks to subsidize the older. A tempting proposition if one isn't particularly concerned about the loss of individual freedoms and liberty in general. As it turns out, I am interested in these things and I refuse to hand the government more power than it already has by playing along with their power grabbing ways. Sure, I could let others pay for my insurance and use that "extra income" to buy nicer cars and bigger TV sets. A kind of personal bait and switch if you will. Get help with the insurance from other hard-working Americans, then shift the money that I would have had to spend on health care over to a miscellaneous fund to buy electronic gadgets and such. What a deal. Except for the ones paying for my insurance. But then they don't really have a choice since the Supreme Court decided the government can force you to play the game. This is a game I refuse to participate in. I can afford health insurance if I sacrifice certain other luxuries. And that will lighten the tax load on the younger generation which, it appears, will be drowning in their elders' debts as they try to build their futures. There are better ways to improve the health care situation than single payer socialized approaches. And for a moment let's pretend there aren't; still, our Constitution is too valuable to the survival of our free and prosperous nation to trample it underfoot for the sake of someone's idea of what's fair. If someone who is driving a beater and only has one 32" flat screen in their house, a house that is sufficient but not exorbitant, and who is not refusing to work when they are capable, needs some help with their insurance premiums then, by all means, society should have a mechanism to help them. But offering someone with sufficient means a subsidized plan for $33 dollars a month by way of taking money from other people is simply stupid and self-destructive. Self-destructive to a free nation, but empowering to the ruling class.
This is my second attempt at this idea and I'm guessing more will be needed. Paul's calling the Gospel a mystery didn't make it so. Paul was simply expressing a nugget of truth he had discovered. One that all who dare to follow Christ will encounter. While I am willing to argue that my faith is a reasonable one, not a foundation-less belief in some fairy tale or vague legend that has been verbally passed down for generations, it nevertheless, leaves me scratching my head a bit. When I apply faith to the compelling evidence of Jesus being who He says He is, I enter a new life. Not a life lived according to a different set of rules and regulations, but a life changed. Not perfect, but being moved to a more Christ-like place. Not through shock treatments and sleep deprived emotional encounters, but through my awareness of God's activity in my life. As I explore this intellectually, I am left with some illogical notions that seem to be, nevertheless, true. Isa. 1:18 says, "Come now, and let us reason together", says the Lord. (then Isaiah goes on to present an UNreasonable offer)
"Though your sins be as scarlet, They will be as white as snow;
Though they be red, like crimson, They will be like wool ......."
While God is unspeakably powerful and beyond our understanding and is Holy, (that is to say fully righteous or perfect, complete, if you will), according to Isaiah God isn't saying get your life in order and come back later to finish our little talk here. He doesn't turn His head away from our lives in disgust but presents us with an offer He calls reasonable. Then Isaiah beautifully exposes God's love and forgiveness with the "reasonable" offer that is presented. An offer that I suggest finds its most satisfying expression in Jesus. This is indeed the mystery. Our Perfect, Holy, God is orchestrating the most scandalous of propositions. The perfect man marrying a prostitute and unconditionally loving her. And just to add to the mysteriousness of it, on the wedding day, we get to wear white.
(If you're a music lover, like me, listen to the 2003 song titled "Wearing White" recorded by Martina McBride. It's a great companion to this idea.)
Thank you and have a nice day.
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!
