The Blind, The Naïve, and The Willfully Ignorant

The Blind, The Naïve, and The Willfully Ignorant

 

There is a potentially fatal flaw in the reasoning skills of most people. It’s called the Normalcy Bias. When something is too far outside of what is considered “normal” it is ignored. That’s a great automatic filter if what is being ignored is trivial or just flat wrong, but it can be deadly when there is an actual threat. The perfect example would be those who live on the slopes of an active volcano. From a distance, it’s easy to think those people are nuts. From their perspective though, the mountain just rumbles from time to time, but has never hurt anyone in their lifetime. Their normalcy bias prevents them from leaving even when the volcano erupts until it is too late.

The Blind: For some, this normalcy bias creates a sort of blindness. An example of that is the car driver who doesn’t see the motorcyclist. Even good car drivers who are usually very safe and alert will run over a motorcyclist in a second if they only look for other cars, because in their mind, no car on the road equals safe and safe equals go. So when they pull out into the oncoming traffic of the motorcyclist they always say they didn’t see him. The motorcycle was there. It was clearly visible. Their normalcy bias simply didn’t allow them to see it because they were looking for a car.

The Naïve: Some people just don’t know any better to start with. It’s one thing to try to always think the best of others. That is a noble sentiment. Expecting that common criminals will not harm you just because you yourself mean them no harm though is naïve. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Predators almost always go after the defenseless weaker looking target first. Whether the naïve think they are being high-minded or brave won’t matter a bit to their attacker.

The willfully ignorant: Some are stuck in denial out of fear of what they don’t want to accept. Some reject the truth in favor of their own hubris. They never learned that pride comes before a fall. Of course, some are just plain dumb as a stump too, but so many people consciously chose not to acknowledge danger even when they are presented with solid evidence. They are like the ostrich who sticks his head in the sand pretending the danger isn’t there. Willful ignorance doesn’t make a problem disappear. It just makes you totally unprepared to deal with it when it can no longer be ignored.

It is a sad, but there are people out there who just never will be convinced, understand the importance of, or care enough to act on important information even when it means their very survival. You can’t expect everyone to see things your way, but when that person is a close friend or family member and the issue is of vital importance, it’s just heart breaking to think of a loved one paying the price down the road for their refusal to heed today’s warnings.

That happened to me recently when a friend who generally avoids politics like the plague sent me a link to a website that monitors the US debt in real time and shows how much each person owes. Their email simply said “this is scary”. I replied advising them of just what those runaway near uncountable numbers mean and how important it is that they prepare themselves. I explained what happened during the Great Depression and told them to buy food and to be prepared to defend themselves. My friend glibly retorted that they were “not worried about food and bullets” and were “pretty much anti-gun”. They said, “When the end times come, they come, and it just means that looking to the next life, the one that lasts, is even more important.” I just shuddered when I thought about the prospects of his two little children paying the price for his ability to ignore the realities of this life to live in the next before he gets there.

Why did he bother emailing me about it in the first place? He has done this kind of thing before. Someone asks him a question he isn’t sure about or shows him something that alarms him and he asks me what I think, because he knows I pay attention to important things. Then his eyes glaze over when I try to explain, or like this time, he just totally ignores the warning like the level of seriousness tripped some kind of circuit breaker for his ability to cope.

Please folks. Be aware of more than what is normal. Question why. Think critically and prepare yourselves for what is coming. Jesus did go to prepare a place for us and he is coming back again to take us there, but an awful lot of nastiness is going to hit a gigantic fan before we shuffle off this mortal coil. People who are your friends and family are trying to help you see what is coming. Please prepare.

Happy Depend… “Independence” Day

Happy Depend… “Independence” Day

from the Department of Homeland Security

236 years ago right here in the good ol’ U.S. of A., a few disloyal colonist declared their independence from the crown. It took a couple of centuries, but the people living in the land formerly known as the land of the free and the home of the brave are once again compliant subjects of distant, unelected, unlimited, unrepresentative authority!

Think I’m kidding? Read the government’s own report. Here is a PDF of a DHS study done just this year in January 2012. http://start.umd.edu/start/publications/research_briefs/LaFree_Bersani_HotSpotsOfUSTerrorism.pdf

In case you don’t feel like downloading it right now, just take a few seconds to read a couple of quick quotes from the report here that detail who the DHS considers a suspected terrorist.

“Profiles of Perpetrators of Terrorism-United States report compiled by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism”

“Extreme Right-Wing: groups that believe that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent (for some the threat is from a specific ethnic, racial, or religious group), and believe in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism. Groups may also be fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation), anti-global, suspicious of centralized federal authority, reverent of individual liberty, and believe in conspiracy theories that involve grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty.”

The report also list definitions for “Extreme Left-Wing”, “Religious, Ethno-Nationalist/Separatists”, and “Single Issue” groups. Go check out the report if you think any of those might apply to you.

Here is the real kicker. Look back up at that quote above. The word they used to describe what that group does was “believe”. “Believe”, not “commit” or “act” or any other word that would convey action. A belief is just a thought! You don’t have to do anything now to be considered a terrorist. Bottom line is that the federal government sees you not as a citizen who is innocent until proven guilty, but as a potential terrorist and they treat you like that too. If you doubt that, just try taking a leisurely stroll through an airport terminal without submitting to having your 4th amendment right not to be searched or seized without reasonable cause violated. They don’t care about your constitutional rights.

Can you imagine Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, or George Washington letting a TSA agent grab their crotch and demand that they sit there and take while they are searched without consent even though they did nothing wrong? Hell no! They were the DHS definition of “Extreme Right-Wing Terrorist”.

But wait there’s more! Last week the Supreme Court created an excuse for the federal government to force you to do anything they want and make you pay for it to boot. All they have to do is use the magic word “tax” when they really mean “mandate. So says the great and all powerful Chief Justice Judas Roberts. See my last post below for more on that bit of lawless tyranny.

Today, the federal government does not have to enforce or bother to even give feigning respect for your constitutional rights and they can force you to do pretty much anything they want you to do as long as they call it a “tax”. Are you a little overweight? A new gym tax could be in your future. Like a beer with you pizza? You may just qualify for a new HHS alcohol consumption tax. Want to exercise your first amendment right to freedom of religion or speech? TO BAD! Doing so makes you a suspected terrorist. Oh and smile when you look up next time, all that independent thinking just might require a surveillance drone to keep an eye on you.

This is not your grandpa’s America anymore. Just thinking it is makes you a suspected terrorist. Be careful today. Celebrating Independence Day by doing anything more than watching properly licensed fireworks from an officially regulated safe distance at a state sanctioned event is now a terrorist activity.

Happy Independence Day comrades.

Lawless

Lawless

Lawless: That is what Amerika is now. I usually make sure to use the name “United States of America”, but after this week, any idea that we were a union of sovereign states went up in Supreme Court smoke.  First the Supreme Court “ruled” that Arizona didn’t have enough sovereignty to police its own borders, and now today it upheld federally mandated healthcare that more than half the states were suing to stop. The Supreme Court has decided against state sovereignty twice in one week.

But wait there’s more!

Judas Roberts… sorry, “Justice” Roberts shocked constitutional conservatives today by a stunning betrayal, performing legal wording acrobatics that twisted constitutional logic like a carnival pretzel. He used a lot of words, but the bottom line is that he upheld Obamacare today by substituting the word “tax” for the word “mandate”. His convoluted explanation for this was that while congress does not have the authority to mandate that people buy something, they can make people pay for it so long as they use the word “tax” to do it. Ever seen a street con-man running a shell game with some nut shells and a little ball? That’s what happened at the Supreme Court today. Amerika got conned.

When you get conned you usually lose something. What we lost today was the rule of law. Our most basic law is the Constitution and nowhere in it was the federal government given the authority to do the kinds things it has been doing for the last several years. Originally it was called The Constitution for the United States because it was originally a bunch of states who were trying to figure out how to best unify while keeping their sovereignty intact. It was for the states, not imposed on them. The states empowered the federal government with only a limited amount of power and retained the rest for themselves. It worked great for a couple of hundred years. (The Civil War happened after the South lawfully seceded by unanimous vote of congress).

Today though marks a new day in Amerika. Today the federal government can force individuals and States to do anything or stop us from doing anything it wants regardless of what the old irrelevant constitution has to say about it. There is a Marxist in the Whitehouse, a traitor at the head of the Supreme Court, and a congress that couldn’t keep its own lust for power in check if they were forced to watch the Star Wars clip of Chancellor Palpatine turning Anakin Skywalker to the dark side every day.

A wise man once said “All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”. In November, it is going to take a heck of a lot of good men and women voting for people who want to live in a free Constitutional Republic. Failing that, we are witnessing the end of the Republic. May God have mercy on our souls.

The Moral Solution

The Moral Solution

Why are people so opposed to any solution that involves God or personal morality? Politics, business, and everyday life today is overrun with people clamoring for and offering solutions to problems but virtually every single one is based not on a real solution, but on alleviating the effects of the problems. The root cause is rarely addressed. Symptoms are what get the attention.

Got a problem paying bills because you bought a bunch of stuff you really didn’t need and couldn’t afford? Get a loan and poof!  Your money problem is gone… until the loan is due and then you owe the loan company more than you did before. A lot of cities, states, and even whole nations are facing the same problem right now and they are all following the same model. Get a loan and poof! All our money problems are gone… until the debt is so heavily leveraged that one last little straw brings down the first big domino that flattens everything and everyone in the nation.

Is the crime rate in your town skyrocketing because young men have no fathers at home to teach right from wrong and provide basic direction and correction? Why, those kids just need midnight basketball courts opened up for them to run off all that misdirected energy! More cops and bigger jails come when that fails and the crime problem is simply cuffed and stuffed until they are sprung and flung back out into society. The problem of broken dysfunctional homes and the practically wild kids that grow up to be violent thugs isn’t solved and the cost of it all swamps the city into bankruptcy and drives away businesses and people.

Don’t want to have to be “punished with a baby” (direct quote from Barack Hussein Obama explaining why abortion is a good thing) because you couldn’t control yourself long enough to use protection or *gasp* get a job and get married fist? No worries! The government will not prosecute the selfish murder of your unborn child just to alleviate the symptoms of your problem. Promiscuity and irresponsibility is never given a second thought and the results, like diseases without cures and the deaths of the unborn, just can’t be undone.

There comes a time when treating the symptoms alone, just doesn’t cut it anymore. Too much debt, too much crime, too much disease and death will conspire to destroy a nation from within; all for the want of the moral solution that was rejected. God. We were born into this world with nothing and can’t take a thing with us when we go. None of the stuff we amass, mess up, and chase after holds the solution to our most basic problem. The rejection of God and His basic morality of right and wrong will get us into deeper and deeper trouble the farther we get from God.

We need God. We need a moral direction for the things we do in life. America has forgotten that and we are paying the price. No government program; no amount of bailouts or business incentives are going to fix the mess we have gotten ourselves into because they are only temporary analgesics to the terminal cancer of a society that has traded it’s faith and dependence on the providence of the Almighty for the degenerative spiraling tyranny of government. Return to God America. Return to the moral solution.

A Bridge Too Far

How far away from our core principles are we willing to go to vote for a political candidate? Nobody is perfect and thus no candidate or voter will perfectly match up. We make allowances. We create bridges of acceptance and toleration for minor differences not only to keep the peace with those who share our core principles, but to maintain and advance those beliefs through the minefield of the presidential election process and to arrive on the other side with an elected official who will best represent us and lead the nation the way it should be lead. That said, how far is too far?

Sadly, we have become so accustom to misleading and flat out lying politicians and their self serving ads that their deceptions are shrugged off as politics as usual. That apathy results in much of the mind-numbed public accepting any candidate as long as they are a part of the party for whom they are accustomed to voting. Anybody not going along with the growing list of objectionable missteps, election year conversions, and embarrassing reversals are chided to “take one for the team” in the name of victory at any cost. It’s like our election process has become one big football game. It doesn’t matter how dirty the game is played so long as the home team wins. Well, that is just wrong and I’ve about had enough of it.

From a host of 9 or 10 Republican primary candidates that were running all at the same time last fall, we are now down to two. Regardless of how gracefully or shamefully the others bowed out of the race, we are left with Romney, the guy the press has constantly lavished positive and unending headlines for and Paul, the invisible man. The establishment of the Republican Party wants Romney because he is just like they are; vapid and malleable. Beyond the establishment of the Republican Party, most conservatives in general are scared to death of Paul because of his naivety (or just willful ignorance) of the existential threat of jihadist Islam and the suicidal foreign policy that would result in a Paul administration.

I will not be voting for the Marxist currently occupying the Whitehouse, so I find myself reduced to considering either a candidate whose public persona is eerily similar to a life-like Ken doll (perfect hair and all) that can be dressed up and bent into any form any time or someone whose worldview says that we are the bad guys, that 911 was our own fault, and the bomb vested Islamic jihadists are only blowing themselves up for Allah because of us. Not wanting to be beheaded, dismembered, or generally blown to smithereens by a not-so-friendly Muslim Brotherhood representative, I find myself left with the Ken-doll candidate. Good grief. Boy do I ever miss Ronald Reagan now.

So just what are the bridges of acceptance and tolerance I’m going to have to build to vote for Romney. Well, they are many and they are long.

The 800 pound gorilla in the room is health care of course. He says he would repeal Obamacare. Sounds great! Why wouldn’t he do the same for Massachusetts? You see, despite his insistence that it is wrong on a national level he sees no problem at all forcing a government program like that on people at the state level which means he really has no appreciation at all for the basic freedoms and more importantly restrictions on government on which our nation was founded. He has simply made an economic and political calculation in a federal race. Accepting this would mean accepting a bridge to a place I do not want to go with a candidate I do not agree with or trust.

Romney promotes himself as the businessman extraordinaire and he certainly does have credentials to show for that. However, while he is out talking about how he would cut spending and reduce the size of government in our personal lives, he supports government subsidies for things that the pop culture and junk science says we should have. One very good example is Ethanol. He has publically stated that he supports subsidizing ethanol to help reduce green house gasses and fight allegedly man-made global warming. Bridge number two is up in flames, carbon emissions and all.

Romney is no friend of the gun owner. Oh he has (laughably) said that he was a hunter and tried to court gun owners, but it’s a bit insulting coming from a governor who was proud to have some of the strictest gun laws in the nation for his freedom hampered MA citizens. Ask him about what the second amendment has to say about that and I doubt the words “shall not be infringed” would be on his lips. It’s getting harder to see how I’m going to cross the political river to vote for the Mitt man but until recently I had kept my sights set on that distant shore just knowing I was going to be able to get there on that bridge of justification and sacrifice for the team.

There are other reasons, but a couple of weeks ago something rather quietly came and went without much attention at all. Romney hired someone who is openly homosexual to be his top spokesman for national security and foreign policy and when that … stuff hit the fan, the official spokesman suddenly was not given any opportunity to speak. He resigned because of it and Romney’s response was that he wished he would have stayed. Mr. flip flop who is adamant that marriage is between a man and a woman sees no problem accepting and elevating an openly homosexual person (who is a vocal supporter for same sex marriage of course) to the highest levels of his campaign, muting him when people found out what was not hidden, and then lamenting the loss.

Mr. Romney, this is a bridge too far. You have no principles that extend any further than the nearest popular opinion. However better you would certainly be as an alternative to the Marxist we have now, I can not in good conscience continue to fall on my moral sword. It enables the Republican Party to keep forcing candidates like you down our throats and what is far worse is that it is an abandonment of the moral system on which our nation was founded and blessed to prosper.

God removed his protection on our once-moral nation on 9-11-01. In 2008-2009 a second blow came with the biggest loss of our economic stability since the Great Depression. What did we do with those warnings? Since then our presidents have created tyrannical departments (think TSA and DHS) that get away with violating several of the first ten amendments on a daily basis. We’ve spent more money in the last 3 years than the previous 200+ plunging us into an irreversible dept spiral. If that weren’t enough defiance of God’s clear warnings, the current occupant of the white house calls the Koran “holy”, the Bible unfit for guidance on running a country, and our founding constitution flawed. The bridge for that correction does not cross a river of accepting the loss of our most sacred freedoms, generational government imposed debt, and end-stage moral decay. That bridge leads to perdition and that is not a road I am going to travel any more.

Disillusioned Tea Party Patriots

Disillusionment: loss of false belief, disappointment caused by a frustrated ideal that fails

Almost a year ago in November of 2010, a surge of popular dissent from people who were sick and tired of being lied to and ignored resulted in a historic shift of power in the House of Representatives. Now, one election by itself (even the biggest change in a generation) isn’t enough when you only change about 70 seats in a 535 member congress, but it certainly was enough to apply the brakes in a big way.

Or was it? Even the most conservative of Tennessee’s representatives, Marsha Blackburn, and tea party freshman, Dianne Black, both voted not only to raise the debt limit by more than $2,000,000,000,000, but did so without any cuts at all… and they call that a deal? A cut is a reduction of what you have. 10-1=9. That’s a cut. What they voted for was an increase that may not be quite as large as it otherwise would have been. 10+2=12. That is an increase. What’s worse, they voted to create a new “super congress” of just 12 people, hand-picked by the leaders of each political party, to come up with a plan not to cut anything from the budget, but to increase it by just a tiny bit less. Worse still, the new “super congress” recommendations are not debatable and not amendable. They will only get a straight up or down vote and if their recommendation fails, then automatic “cuts” go into effect in places where the full congress would never agree to. Our representative republic has just been co-opted by an elite group of 12. That’s not a representative republic. That’s not even a democracy. That is an oligarchy. That is the complete opposite of what millions of people voted for in November 2010.

We have been betrayed by politicians in Washington DC again, even the ones we trusted, and if you call their offices and challenge them on it, their excuse is that they had to “do something” and what they finally voted for was “the best they could get”. What is it about that cesspool of corruption and deceit called Washington DC that strips away the principles, honesty, and common sense of the people we send there?

If the good Lord tarries, what will happen next year when we elect a new president and new congressmen? Will they betray us as well? They will if we don’t elect the right people in enough numbers and if we don’t understand the key to how and why our constitutional republic is supposed to work. The Constitution for the United States is a plainly written relatively short document. It was written to be easy to understand and difficult to change. There is just one catch. It was written for a specific group of people that are fast fading into the dust bin of history. Founding father, co-author of the Constitution for the United States, and 2nd President of the United States defined this group of people in one beautifully short statement of warning. “Our constitution was written for a moral and upright people and is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”

Want your country back? Do you want the constitution to matter? Be the person for whom John Adams co-authored the Constitution. Be moral and upright. Pray for God’s providence, and vote for people like that. Anything else is just asking for our nation to continue to devolve into tyranny and chaos.

Why the U.S. of A. will never be the same

... without a miracle

We need a miracle. America’s founders wrote often that it was by God’s grace and providence that our country survived the war for our independence. Indeed, our very founding documents, The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution for the United States of America, credit the divine Creator of all things for the blessings of the unprecedented liberties we have in this country. For all of the bravery and the lives paid to secure our freedoms, it was still God that did the heavy lifting. No other country in the history of the world has experienced such blessing and freedom so fast and as great as the United States of America. He granted us a miracle.


Our Declaration of Independence appealed not to our own might or some legal authority produced by men, money, or contract. It skipped all the earthly trappings and went straight to God for the authority to divorce us from the king of England and the rule of any other. So too our Constitution founded the authority of the people to govern themselves on the rights given to us by God.


For well over 200 years we have enjoyed God’s blessing of self governance and the unalienable rights first listed in our Declaration of Independence. By God’s grace, we have had the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To secure those most basic of rights our Constitution’s limits on government’s power and the enumerated Bill of Rights has stood as guarantor of our freedoms and very way of life.


It has taken a couple of centuries, but government’s predictable lust for power, our complacency, preoccupation with meaningless entertainment, and rejection of God’s natural order have eroded our freedoms and endangered our rights to such an extent that our government now actively denies us the very rights it is supposed to protect. Our government has taken it upon itself to pass unconstitutional laws and run up our debt to inconceivable heights over our expressed objections and in complete defiance of large persistent protests. Our government no longer listens to us or even its own laws. Our republic has failed.


It isn’t about what party is in charge. For over a year leading up to the 2010 elections, people who had simply had enough took to the streets to announce for all who would hear that government’s abuse of power had gone too far and must be reined in. The size and persistence of the growing crowds was undeniable. The hand-made posters were simple and direct. Voices were loud and warnings were clear. The people were about to rise up and change their government and no politician who defied constitutional limits, regardless of party affiliation, was safe.


November 2nd 2010 was a huge night of victory for many and disappointing shock for others. Congress hasn’t seen that many seats change from one side of the isle to the other in a generation. The voter’s revolt of 2010 even rejected party favored candidates from the so-called conservative party on the right. So the hope of the American system of self government continues right? We the people can still right the wrongs that have been done and restore our beloved republic… right?


Were it so simple. Washington’s District of Criminals has become such a political cesspool of corruption that even seemingly good people who go there become infected with its evil disease. We have dug ourselves into a hole that is much deeper than one off-year election, even an historic one, is going to fix. It isn’t just that our national debt is measured in trillions… per year now. It isn’t that we just started a new war against a third country (at the same time the other two are still going on mind you) without any goals or local allies to support. No, these are things that we could fix. Our real problem is that we have abandoned the founding moral and social principles on which our nation was founded. Worse yet, we have abandoned the miracle God granted us, the principles of self government.


We have become so ensnared with the lie that all we need is the right candidate to vote for and a solid new government program. We believe that if we could only get candidate X elected or gain a majority of Y party in government that finally we could get things running right around this place again. It’s a wonder we haven’t yet replaced the motto on our money to “In Man We Trust”.


How does our current representative republic and the freedoms that our Constitution and Bill of Rights are supposed to protect stack up with the governments and freedoms of generations past? Consider the following:


In 2005 the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision in Kelo vs. City of New London, CT that any city or municipality could take your property for no other reason than money. Not money you owe mind you. Money they want to make off of what was your property. Not for roads or schools or general infrastructure, but just because they want more money… your money. The doctrine of eminent domain use to be limited to specific and important needs and included fair payment for what was to be taken. The city of New London simply condemned the property, evicted the former owner, and paid a reduced condemned price and the court said that was A-OK. Does that sound like something our founding fathers would countenance? Not after 1776.


In 2010 the Supreme Court upheld the 1st amendment’s protection of freedom of speech by only a 5-4 decision in striking down the McCain-Fiengold Campaign Finance Reform bill. Don’t let the name fool you. That bill abridged free speech by outlawing any private advertising within 60 days of an election and the Supreme Court’s decision was only 1 vote, one person, short of throwing out the most well known, most popular, and most frequently quoted of all the rights listed in the constitution.


In 2008 and 2010 the Supreme Court upheld the 2nd amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms by only a 5-4 decisions in striking down bans on gun ownership by home owners in Washington DC and Chicago. Again, the margin to uphold a key and original constitutional right was only 1 person; one presidentially appointed person. We should seriously be praying for the health and well being of those 5 that still believe the constitution matters!


Today the TSA can and will virtually strip search you as a requirement for simple travel from one place to another. If you object, you get the hands on treatment. Can you imagine Benjamin Franklin allowing a government official to physically search his crotch without probable cause and a warrant? Well, he actually had something to say about that. “Those that would trade a little freedom and liberty for a little safety and security deserve neither freedom nor liberty.” Sounds like a “no” to me.


In 2008 as Wall Street shrieked and bankers pulled what little hair they had left off their thin comb-overs, our government snapped in line behind… them… instead of the people of the United States. With every public poll running nearly 80% opposed they passed the single largest bill in American History to authorize a $700,000,000,000 (that’s in Billions) blank check to give to one man (Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson) to distribute as he saw fit without any congressional oversight or accountability. Four months later in2009 they did it again with over around $800,000,000,000 (more Billions) with TARP II and gave the money again to one person (Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner) in complete defiance of the overwhelming majority of Americans. Weeks later our government passed an even bigger and completely separate budget that was again the largest in US history over the expressed objection of the people. In 2010 congress passed another record setting bill (2000+ pages at an incalculable cost really) to “provide” health care even though the bill as written was fundamentally unconstitutional, opposed by more than 2/3rds of the population, and promptly followed by lawsuits from no less than 26 state attorneys general. In spite of passing the single largest unpopular power grab in American history, the 2010 congress recessed in the fall without approving or even considering a fiscal budget as required by the constitution. Then, after the biggest election loss for a party in power in a generation (a loss of nearly 70 seats) that same congress with literally days left to “serve” in the jobs they got fired from introduced a 1,094 page $1,200,000,000,000 (that starts with a “T”) omnibus budget that was not only the largest in history, they wanted to vote on it immediately without giving anyone the opportunity to read it. Does that sound like a Representative Republic whose government answers to and is of by and for the people? No. That sounds like an oligarchy. The only thing keeping it from being an outright dictatorship is that it is being perpetrated by a handful of people instead of just one.


The newly elected replacements are already wavering and compromising over what to do with our spending addiction just like their predecessors. Last month, our countries deficit was larger than the entire year of 2007. This year our deficit is projected to run 1,600,000,000,000 (Trillion) and the best that the new congress that we elected to reverse spending can come up with is a “cut” of 4% (roughly 38 billion) of the projected deficit. That leaves 96%... 1,562,000,000,000 (Trillion) of the additional deficit spending untouched!


Why? What good is an election if nothing changes! How did we get this bad off? What happened that we have allowed our government to go so far out of control that we can’t stop them even with a once in a generation landslide election to replace them?


Our constitution was written by people who provided for themselves and praised God for the blessings. Today our government has taken the place of God and forces its will on us in a way the founding fathers never intended. God asks for offerings and commends charity, but no pastor is going to send the deacons to your front door to collect it or to your employer to have it taken from your paychecks against your will to be spent on things you are opposed to. What of the non-believer? They too are being forced into a practice of charity they may oppose as well.


America has lost its founding principles and the respect for and dependence on Almighty God. We have traded a solid foundation for temporary (and false) fixes that result in one self-inflicted crisis after another. We have traded the truth for a lie. If that last line sounds a bit biblical then pat yourself on the back for remembering at least a small part of the book of Romans. Go back to re-read that passage and you’ll find that God gave them over to their own desires and they promptly destroyed themselves with immorality, overspending, and endless conquest. Sound familiar? Well, buckle up because we’re next.


Political correctness, good intentions without any thought to consequences, an abandonment of founding principles, selfishness, and flat out willful ignorance have all conspired to reduce us to despotism and subservience to a corrupt government and a financial debt the likes of which the world has never seen. The founding fathers would rather die than be virtually strip searched by the TSA, or robbed blind by a private Federal Reserve Bank that is neither under any federal control nor has any real money in reserve.


We have become a nation of willfully blind, self centered, agenda driven sheep who wouldn’t know the truth of something if it slapped us in the face. We have given our government so much power and not held our press to any standard of accountability for so long to the point where we allow both to dictate what we do and how we even think.


Whenever the truth is spoken, politicians, political activist, and media pundits retort with diversions, insults, and out-right lies. No sooner has someone managed to blurt out a little truth on camera, than the media cranks up the volume and frequency of lies to counter it. Our burning ears long to hear what we want and our 24 hour a day “news” industry is ready and waiting to entertain us with it regardless of the facts. Having heard the popularized “news” from the ever present media, lemmings and sheep boldly arm themselves with the latest pack of lies to parrot and challenge anyone who would dare to bring back the sullied and forgotten truths of yesterday.


Sadly, even family and friends who have been horribly misled refuse to listen to proper warnings. Many people simply refuse to even discuss things and get glassy-eyed like some hypnotic programming just kicked in telling them that they really should be talking about the latest contestant on American Idol. Try it sometime. Tell a pop culture friend or family member that the projected national debt this year is $1.6 Trillion or that the TSA is violating people’s 4th amendment rights every day. Watch the fog roll in over their eyes. If you are really daring, try just suggesting that homosexuality is wrong or that the Koran is not a “holy” book or that we didn’t evolve from apes. Heck, at that point you might as well go for broke and tell your progressive, “open minded” friend that abortion is murder. If they don’t walk away, it’s likely they will be showering you with insults and denouncing you as a fundamentalist right wing hate monger.


There are such things as right and wrong. We knew that instinctively once. We use to teach our children the difference. We have not only forgotten it now, we refute the very idea. We use to value independence and guard ourselves with great pride against any form of dependence on others. To our shame, we now demand that government provide for our every need. Our depravity calls not on God, but on government to save us from ourselves. We have lost so much integrity and fallen from such a great height of independence and liberty that we have made government our savior. The corrupt government we cling to for protection and sustenance polices not only out actions, but our very thoughts to the point that simply acknowledging the truth of what is right and wrong is demonized and labeled as a hate crime.


Social programs, however well meaning, cost money; more money than we have. Immoral alleged “rights” given by men to specially protected groups, not only trounce all over traditional Judeo-Christian morality, but telling a business or property owner who they must hire or what they must or can’t do on their own property denies them their God-given rights of liberty and their pursuit of happiness. Finally, our disastrous international policies have led to the loss of our wealth in massive trade imbalances and endless and ever growing wars. No new politician, law, or constitutional amendment is going to change the fact that our society as a whole has rejected its founding principles. We have lost the most basic skills of critical thinking and morality. We don’t have the tools to fix this anymore. We need a miracle. We need God.

Sheople, Parrots, Lemmings, and Other Political Animals

     
Sheople

Sheople are persons who act more like sheep than self aware, independently minded, thinking people. Sheople believe and follow whatever popular fashion tells them. They do not think for themselves and left alone, Sheople will haplessly wander into danger for which they are completely unprepared and unable to defend themselves. The nightly news is their guide. Self proclaimed “experts” are unquestioned sages and politicians lead them around by the nose while shaving taxes and freedoms right off their clueless backs. Sheople will happily trot right back out to pasture to graze on propaganda and blissful ignorance until the next election cycles comes and it’s time to be fleeced again.


Parrots

The political parrot repeats whatever sounds good to them without even thinking long enough to use their own words. Often bereft of actual facts or even the basics elements of an issue, parrots are easily tripped up at the first question for which they have not heard an echoing retort. When confronted with undeniable truth, political parrots resort to repeating their mantra no matter what the question is because it is all they know to do. Flip through the alphabet news channels on TV some time for a laugh. They often repeat exactly the same thing, on every channel like they are all literally reading the same memo. Political parrots are sheople who errantly believe they have found their voice. Trouble is, the only voice they use is someone else’s.


Lemmings

The political lemming follows their friends and family, political candidate, and party blindly no matter where the journey takes them. They never stop to look at where they are going or look back on where they have come from. Political lemmings will follow the next one in line right over a cliff without ever noticing their rapid change in altitude or the sudden stop. Devoid of any concept of direction they insist that everything their party does is in the name of “progress” no matter whether they are going forward towards what the want or racing away from it to their destruction. All the political lemming can see is the back side of the next one in line.


Useful Idiots

Whether the term “useful idiot” was first coined by Lenin, Stalin, or is a product of cold war propaganda, the meaning is still the same. The useful idiot is a progressive socialist sympathizer who thinks they are liked and accepted by the Marxist leaders they look up to, when in reality they are held in contempt and would be among the first people shot in the firing line of a totalitarian dictatorship. Useful idiots are unwitting Trojan horses who are easily manipulated into bringing down their homeland from within and are themselves then tossed aside for the traitors they are. Useful idiots think they are working for the “greater good” when in fact they are only helping give more power to the people using them and are providing an avenue for the enemy to enter and destroy.


Use Your Brain

Use the brain God gave you and don’t be a pawn for power hungry deceitful people. Think for yourself. Question the claims of those who make blanket statements without any examples of history or data. Insist on proof from those who throw out baseless accusations. Re-examine even that which makes sense to you from time to time if nothing more than to remind yourself of history and the sold facts on which you stand. Know what you believe and why or you will be lead astray by the first lying politician that tells you they can improve your life.

I Don't Want to Talk About It

   
Few subjects illicit more defensive denials, offensive accusations, and hard-headed animosity than politics and religion. Why is it that the very people who need to learn about politics and religion the most refuse to hear a word about it? The hands fly up in the primal body language of defense, the head turns away in refusal, and your polite conversation has suddenly turned to confrontation. “I don’t want to talk about it” is the opening response from so many people. Even when someone honestly seeks an answer to learn and openly asks, “Why is this?” many people will only listen up to the point that politics or religion is involved; then the wall goes up. Learning time is over.

To be ignorant of relevant facts is one thing, but to reject them out of hand because you are unwilling to even listen; that is either prideful rebellion or arrogance. It is often both. We don’t want to be wrong. We want to be right. It is the insistence of this ignorant defiance that keeps so many from learning.

I don’t wan to talk about it.
I don’t want to hear.
None of the facts you have for me
Will make it through my ear.

I don’t want to talk about it.
So, just be one your way.
Right or wrong it matters not
You may not have your say.

I was ignorant when we met
And that I’ll always be
I will not listen to your words
Even if I might agree

Yes my eyes are blind
And that is how they stay.
I can not see the mess I’m in
And I’m happy that way.

Good will can not convince me
Disposition matters not
I will not let you help me
Denial is my lot.

So if I ever ask you how we lost
Our freedom and our wealth
Just shake your head in wonder
At my lack of mental health.