Just added a new tab, Confessions of mhere, at the top of my home page. This will be an ongoing page of “revelations” from my life. I’ll be adding information to both my Messages of mhere and Confessions of mhere pages to help keep the information somewhat organized. Due to their being many threads to follow, this is my small attempt to help the reader make sense out of the events in my life since the Clinton impeachment and my stepping foot onto the Excite politics message boards.
Category Archives: American Character
A “revolutionary” idea for America
The following is a repost of a LB blog post from February 5, 2013. When a government is corrupt at the top, it permeates all levels of the government. No area, not even the police and US Armed Forces, that serve on the front lines of preserving the rule of law, is immune. So, if there’s Wholesale Public Corruption at the highest levels of our government, it assuredly permeates down through the other levels.
I’ve expended a great deal of ink to writing about what happened to me in the Fall of 1998 during the Clinton impeachment. The events I related, while sounding impossible, are the TRUTH.
It’s not just personal justice I have been seeking, it’s exposure of the grave danger this corrupting of the chain of command in the US Armed Forces poses to the national security of the United States of America. If the US military can be used as a partisan-political tool, to silence one citizen who spoke out, it can be illegally used to crush other citizens too. Even more ominous, a corrupted chain of command leaves a military that cannot unite and fight effectively. Corruption demolishes military effectiveness.
A great deal of effort has gone into setting me up, but also to set-up the few people who have listened to me. I believe that family and friends have been approached by law enforcement or government officials and told I am some sort of “radical” or mentally-ill. This happened in 1998, when my husband was being manipulated into agreeing to having me committed to a state mental hospital permanently too. Well, since so much effort has been exerted to silence me and this blog, we shall see who is telling the truth.
Do not judge people by their looks, judge them by whether they are telling the TRUTH. Do not place your trust in fancy titles or high rank – at least two of the “generals” they have recruited have dishonored their oaths.
Trust in the TRUTH:-)
#DefendTheConstitutionAlways
Getting To Know You
How well do you know anyone else or even yourself? Most people automatically assume they know themselves perfectly and from that little self-conceit they believe they know most of the people around them extremely well too. I’ve decided to challenge you to step out of your comfort zone and really think about what things you believe to be true about yourself and what things really are true based on how you conduct your life. All it takes is a short list of the things you say you believe and a quick honest appraisal of how in practice you live up to your own value system to see that you, like just about everyone else (since we’re none of us saints) , falls short on just about every metric we deem as a worthy value to uphold. This can be a humbling experience when you first start doing it, but after time it can help you learn to work on your areas of particular weakness and also help you build on your areas of strength.
Long ago, these types of character-building exercises permeated society from religious institutions all the way through our political institutions and down through our civic organizations and educational system. Teaching “good citizenship” rested upon teaching the building of a good character. These days “good character” got kicked to the curb, replaced by being green, being a diversity advocate, being non-judgmental, and being value neutral. In other words nothing is right or wrong and if you believe there are moral absolutes, well, you need to be re-indoctrinated to get with the new regime. The only institution that still pays lip service to values constantly is in the military and that leadership has been hijacked by political sycophants for the most part.
To avoid making this too deep of a theological exercise, let’s just focus on the difference between actually “knowing people” and “knowing about people”. The first one takes more personal effort, because it involves actually making a personal connection with individual people and listening to them. It takes time to get to “know people”. To “know about people” ranks as a shallow second and third hand exercise where what you know usually comes from other people, in other words, much of it is little more than gossip that you accept as fact. In our personal, everyday life this distinction might not have a huge impact other than to create unnecessary conflicts with neighbors, co-workers and within our own families. And believe me, it’s hard to resolve some of these deep-seated misunderstandings based on not knowing what’s truly in the hearts of others. It’s hard work listening to others and really trying to understand what other people think, believe, dream.
While believing incorrect or absolute lies about other people isn’t usually too earth-shattering in our everyday lives, having our media and political institutions reduced to consumers of “knowing about” people rather than taking the time to “know people” leads to many very unsettling results. For instance reporters often zoom in on neighbors when seeking to add context to stories, yet do they ever bother to think that perhaps the neighbor hated the person whom the story is about? Do they bother to seek a broader understanding of the situation? In this Newtown massacre within the first 48 hours, the press reported so many false stories that by the time they started coming up with a few facts, their credibility was nil and the damage had already been done.
Long ago, most news organizations prided themselves of being reporters of the facts (true pieces of information), with reporters trained to seek out who, what, when,where, why and how. Now we have live “reporting” where reporters fill the long segments with rambling gossip, innuendo, pop psychology detours, and plain emotional outbursts that should have no place in real journalism.
When this trend of accepting lies without question captures our political system, our Republic may be doomed.
Our founding fathers told us that the system they devised will only stand for a moral people. Our electorate now falls mainly on shallow emotional hot-button issues, which both political parties shamelessly play. The key factor in every election should be the character of the individual running for office, but we know that standard fell to the wayside long, long ago. In the past 20 years, our moral compass as a nation died and we now have a media that helps promulgate lies for political advantage. This mostly benefits the left, because the vast majority of journalists fall to the left politically.
During the Clinton years this dangerous threat to our Republic came to be known by the rather innocuous term “spin”.
SPIN is the deliberate, concerted effort of your elected officials to lie and deceive you.
If you accept “spin” as truth or excuse it as just part of politics, then seriously there is little hope of rescuing our society from the moral sewer where these Clinton spinmeisters left us decaying. George Bush did spin some facts on the “war on terror” (a term that is in and of itself a fallacy), but they avoided the cheap character assassinations that the Clinton crowd excelled at.
Now we have reached a new level of lying where cheap race-baiting tactics get used at every turn to keep the most shallow, intellectually vapid person ever to reach the Oval Office in power. For rational people to accept flimsy “composite” white people as representative of the white mentality and to listen to his constant vile stereotyping of white people, conservatives, rural Pennsylvanians (having grown up as one – well I took offense), well we are on a dangerous course here. Now, the left is embracing junk science to promote the idea that conservatives are “genetically’ intellectually inferior beings compared to the liberals.
These dangerous paths always lead to governments running way off course to extremes, where an idiot like Roseanne Barr, seriously suggested re-education camps for conservatives. Where was the outrage from the left about that insanity???
Americans need to wake up and realize, that before they side up against other Americans, they had better take the time to walk up to those who hold different views and sit down and talk first. Perhaps, by actually getting “to know” other people, we might be able to bridge the gaps and build a stronger nation, where all views from all people get heard at our political kitchen table. And just maybe communities might get back to holding potluck dinners where everyone comes and shares a meal and gets to know his/her neighbors.
What an amazing concept that is – getting to know other people, up close and personal.
It just might revolutionize America;-)
Time to rebuild the American Team
Our American principles are enshrined in The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution. We are only strong when we are a nation committed to these firm American principles.
In the Army, they build a strong team by fostering Core Values, and it’s these beliefs that unite us into a cohesive team dedicated to one simple mission:
“To defend The Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.”
The founding fathers knew that slavery would be a looming question, that would need to be addressed at some point in the future. They put it off, in order to get southern states on board with ratification. George Washington even left it in his will to free his own slaves.
America is not falling apart because of illegal immigration, which is just one symptom of a dedication to “worship of diversity” over dedication to common civic values and a society complacent with Wholesale Public Corruption, where the collapse of civil order and rule of law attack the very pillars of our Republic.
America sits a divided nation – where every public institution lumbers under the weight of highly-charged factionalized-fighting. One can only wonder what event or chain reaction will set the final collapse in motion. If our Republic is going to survive, the last thing to believe is that “diversity makes us stronger”.
What made America great was not “diversity”, it was diverse people UNITED by a belief in a set of common civic values.
Having common civic values and a common belief in The Constitution would help gird up our once great nation’s crumbling pillars.
Allowing our educational system to be hijacked by those promoting the diversity doctrine, in my opinion, is more of a threat than even illegal immigration. Just look at the craziness going on in American colleges and these are America’s future leaders. Frankly, many of the millions of illegals, who really like living here can be taught American values, as can people anywhere and that’s been what has drawn immigrants to our shores for centuries.
The US military has taken immigrants, who aren’t American citizens, and successfully integrated them into loyal American fighting men, who embrace our values. Obama of course, has busily been destroying the military, because it’s the last bastion in America where American values still ring loud and true – because the military insists on teaching core values and dedication to our mission every day. Every soldier knows what he is fighting for and it isn’t “diversity”.
The thing that should alarm Americans even more than illegal immigration, is that Americans have stopped insisting their own children become American citizens…..
American children are citizens of leftist nostrums and ideas promoted by anarchists and intellectuals dedicated to “fundamental transformation” of America. American children are indoctrinated from K-12 in the diversity doctrine, along with a whole host of other programs geared to destroy children’s TRUST in their parents, traditional values and The Constitution.
This is a decades long endeavor to erode American society.
So, Trump might seem like a quick fix, yet in reality he’s a mercurial huckster, without the firm principles to guide a nation torn asunder with factional divides. And at best, he would serve 8 years and judging by his “divide and conquer” mentality, he will just further fuel the partisan divides, that weaken us. At worst, “The Trump Unpredictable Doctrine” could lead to dangerous and rash actions at home and abroad, leading America into a rapid tailspin, that we can’t recover from. Of course, Hillary offers the same flaming crash.
We need a “revolution” dedicated to promoting Good Citizenship, where we dedicate ourselves to inspiring every American to embrace American ideals and principles.
And we desperately need good leaders, dedicated to uniting us and to rebuilding the American team…
#DefendTheConstitutionAlways
A really great commencement address
Here’s one from the LB archives, a terrific commencement address from a couple of years ago:
Don’t Back Down From The Sharks!
Filed under American Character, Culture Wars, General Interest, Military
Sweet land of liberty….. (or land of the gullible?) -repost from 2013
As a child, I was scared of my own shadow and a total wimp. The only thing that made me so angry that I would charge ahead, without a second thought, was a bully picking on weaker people. To this day, I’m pretty much the same way. In most things, I back away from a fight and turn the other cheek, but bullies make me see red. Something about a con man exploiting a lot of innocent people makes me want to do battle and there you have why I argue so determinedly to expose the con man, Trump, but back in 2013, I was noticing another con man, Glenn Beck. Although I wanted to believe his patriotic spiel, a lot of red flags popped up, so I’m going to repost a piece I wrote about a Glenn Beck show, where he was giving credibility to an obvious con man, yet the audience, angry at Obama and the Washington pols, were buying into this fraud. Trump with his “great wall” reminds me of the deluxe version of this Beck, con man, selling a fortress community in Idaho called “The Citadel.” So, here’s my June 22, 2013 – “Sweet land of liberty….. (or land of the gullible)?”:
Sweet land of liberty….. (or land of the gullible)?
Glenn Beck had guests on his show who talked about a new gated community they’re putting together called The Citadel. Through a careful, highly selective application process they hope to find people united by their belief in patriotism, liberty, pride in American exceptionalism and preparedness. This community will require everyone to be self-supporting and these organizers, about as efficiently as the central planners in the old USSR, decided to start a firearms manufacturing factory as a means for the first wave of it’s “pioneers” to support themselves. Guess, they miss the humor in a community touting “liberty” as it’s keystone, building a community with central planners setting up all the rules to become part of the neighborhood, to include what you must believe.
So far, this new community exists only on a webpage and the developers don’t even own the real land to build this oasis of liberty. Not to worry about this being a ponzi scheme, they assure you this beacon of liberty will be located somewhere in Idaho, where they’ve thus far acquired land for the weapons factory. Don’t worry that one of the developers has a criminal record for extortion, which he explained away as his being naive about speaking out. Not to worry that if you fill out the application (with it’s $33 application fee) and if you make it through the Skype interview as a worthy new neighbor for the Citadel community, you must begin paying $50 per month to help secure enough money for these developers to actually buy real property to build this proposed community.
What would living be, where liberty reigns supreme, without the central planners specifying, “All homes will be built of poured concrete for exceptional strength and durability” (even the Three Little Pigs had more freedom). Rest assured, you will be free to build your home to whatever specifications you choose. You’ve also got to be part of the community militia and own a firearm to be able to defend the community. So, you’ll be providing business for the community factory, as well as the work force for it.
I’m going to talk about neighbors and the neighborhood I love best, being part of the United States Army neighborhood. We, as all Army families do, moved frequently and lived overseas as well as all over the US. From my very first days around the Army decades ago, one of the most amazing opportunities to me was to actually be able to meet people, up close and personal, from all over the United States. Due to the traveling and also soldiers’ propensity to marry women in far-flung locales, I even met many people from all over the globe. My husband retired from the Army more than a decade ago and we live in a typical southern town next to a large US Army installation with a population like an international smorgasbord. Just a few days ago, my primary care doctor, who is Syrian, was talking about the situation in Syria and he pulled out his cell phone to show me pictures of his parents home, where the next-door neighbor’s house had recently been bombed. His parents are here living with him, so thankfully they are safe.
From a post I wrote in January titled, “Multiculturism My Way”, you can glean that I consider the world “my neighborhood” too and even growing up in the backwoods of rural PA, I longed to meet people from all over the world. Luck definitely lit my way in life, because it’s been a privilege to have a retired solider hand me a slip of paper that opened the door to first meeting people all over the globe and then to spend decades as part of the US Army neighborhood, where patriotism shines bright. It’s been an opportunity to meet wonderful neighbors and hopefully to be a good neighbor too. So, I want to talk about my neighborhood, where all the values this proposed phony Citadel scheme purports to value is part of the very fabric of the US Army community.
Soldiers believe in a strong national defense, almost down to the last man and woman. Soldiers believe in patriotism too and a cloak of values shields our neighborhood: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service , honor, integrity, personal courage (Army values here) As the standard-bearers of General George Washington’s army, we certainly take very seriously the trust invested in us to bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. Unlike these, hummm, I’m searching for a word that isn’t a cuss word, because ‘jackasses” came to mind. Here, I’ll settle on calling them deluded people, unlike them, the Army community is strong enough to welcome people from all over the US and the world and still be a place where our values flourish. In basic training at Fort Dix, NJ, I learned about how a foreigner seeking citizenship, could acquire it by serving in the US Army. So, we’re strong enough to welcome diverse people into our ranks and still stay true to our values.
I had all kinds of neighbors living in the barracks as a young private and once I married we found wonderful neighbors everywhere we lived – on Army posts, in German villages and in civilian communities in America. I’ve managed to make friends and learn a heck of a lot by embracing people who are different than me. I’ve learned to make some darned good egg rolls from an Army wife from Thailand, who came to my home and spent the afternoon showing me. I’ve acquired recipes galore and much more. I had an Army wife from Korea (who married a Cuban guy) show me how to make sushi (yes, I know Japanese, right) in her kitchen. She was trying to learn how to make Cuban dishes. I learned to prepare many German dishes from numerous German friends. I had a Cuban neighbor in one neighborhood, who loved to cook and she was constantly bringing food to me and telling me, “here try this, you’ll love it!” and I did. That Cuban lady was friends with my next-door neighbor who was Puerto-Rican, so I often got a combination of foods to try. When my oldest daughter was in kindergarten, I met a Lebanese neighbor down the street and she asked me to bring my kids down to her house to play with her son, who was my daughter’s classmate. We became friends and I learned about Lebanese food, because this family ran a Lebanese restaurant. Lebanese food ranks as some of the best food in the world.
In my food from around the world saga, I can’t leave out this wonderful Southern lady, who was married to a retired Special Forces soldier, who lived down the street from me when we lived off-post at Fort Bragg. This wonderful lady and her husband had adopted two special needs children and this lady struck up a friendship with me, because her little daughter was the same age as my oldest daughter. This lady taught me about Southern cooking and boy, she loved to cook. She often would call in the morning and tell me to bring my daughter down to her house and she’d list the lunch menu and many times she’d say, “come early and we can chat and I’ll show you how to cook”….- fill-in-the-blank with a Southern dish.
Now, some of my forays into international cooking do go awry and I provided a good laugh for my youngest daughter’s friend several years ago when she was in my kitchen watching me roll up burritos. This neighbor has a Mexican mother and she had this dismayed look on her face and said, “What are you doing!” She told me how to properly roll up burritos and I am sure her mother got a good laugh out of her story about my pathetic burrito-rolling skills, but hey, this girl loves my potato salad, so we all have our strong suits:-)
I must confess that my favorite cuisine is authentic Chinese. Unfortunately, I never met a Chinese woman to come teach me how to cook Chinese food. I do have a friend who is half-Japanese who offered lots of advice on Japanese cooking, but I’ve been winging it on Chinese cooking with cookbooks and experimenting over the years. When I did volunteer work at the American Red Cross doing Red Cross messages, a lovely Puerto-Rican friend frequently brought in food. I learned that the Caribbean is sort of an international mishmash of cultures and thus I still use this handwritten recipe from this friend called , “Puertorican Chinese Arroz”, where she helpfully put “rice” in parentheses.
What’s magical about Chinese cuisine, as well as their culture, is how they take what little they have and through a long, long history, as one of the oldest cultures on earth, developed ways to adjust and thrive, through good times and bad. Chinese people demonstrate amazing resilience. Their cooking encapsulates this, how with a few varied cooking techniques or a few spices, they can take a few simple ingredients and turn it into something unique and flavorful. The Chinese spirit to adapt and persevere always amazes me. Of course, they offer Sun Tzu too, which I just love- all that ancient wisdom on military strategy that still resonates today;-)
This is a true story about a neighbor I had one time – a lovely, good neighbor with a very kind heart and the kind of trusting soul – like the type of people who will start sending money to some schemers like these Citadel planners (yes, this liberty-based community is a “scheme” – it exists only on their webpage). We were living in military quarters in Germany at the time and my neighbor (a lovely German lady) was preparing to move back to the States with her soldier husband. My neighbor had an extensive David Winter cottage collection, which she decided to sell. She sold them to a soldier who didn’t have the money up front, so she accepted a stack of postdated checks, which she agreed to deposit each month and he assured her that he would have money in this checking account to cover them. I urged her to hold on to her collection until she found a buyer with cash in hand.
That same neighbor was planning to buy some lovely lakefront property in the US, dirt cheap and sight unseen, but she needed to send money fast before someone else snatched up this almost too good to be true deal. I forget where she heard about this property, but I begged her to hold on to her money until she got back to the US and could actually walk around this property and see what she was buying. When I thought her naive trust had reached its limit, she told me about this puppy her dog had. Her close friend down the street headed back to the States and my neighbor said her friend was going to send money to her to fly that puppy back to the States as soon as they were settled at their next duty station. The friend had said she wanted the puppy, but then had endless excuses why she couldn’t take the puppy with them. I gently tried to tell my neighbor that if her friend had really wanted that puppy, she would have taken it with them when they left. Naturally, my neighbor was stuck keeping that puppy.
My neighbor would help anyone and she had a wonderful sense of humor. She was the type of neighbor I loved having and you know I couldn’t tell you exactly what her politics were, nor did I ever think about her patriotism. What I did value was that if I needed a helping hand or help in an emergency, I knew she would do whatever she could to help me. I judged her on her character and she had a sterling character, albeit a bit too trusting of a soul. It might be better to teach your kids to respect and value people with differing views rather than enclosing your family behind a fortress to shield them from people with different views.
Filed under American Character, Culture Wars, General Interest, Military
The American Spirit
Here are a few more links about that “American spirit”:
“My Bondage and My Freedom” – one of the finest autobiographies in American history, as Frederick Douglass describes his journey from slave to a free man in America
Looking Back at Lewis and Clark – an essay by David M. Lenard, published at The American Thinker, September 2, 2012
The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition -By the University of Nebraska, where the intro states, “This website makes available the text of the celebrated Nebraska edition of the Lewis and Clark journals, edited by Gary E. Moulton. Moulton’s edition — the most accurate and inclusive edition ever published — is one of the major scholarly achievements of the late twentieth century.”
Survival: The Mind-set – a LB post from December 26, 2012
Self-help projects: an American tradition – a LB post I wrote January 3, 2016
To mark my first year of U.S. citizenship, I read Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.” Turns out, it explains everything” – a Washington Post article by Carlos Lozada, December 20, 2015
Democracy in America – Alexis deTocqueville, classic on what being American is all about, the Lozada article above contain a link to amazon.com to purchase a copy, but save yourself the money, because you can find Vol 1 and Vol 2 free at gutenberg.org. Here’s another pointer, as a frequent amazon.com shopper, scroll through the entire listing for old books – often a free version is way down the list;-)
Gimme A Knife (Written By Gladius Maximus)
On December 16, 2012, I entered the world of blogging online and posted my first liberybelle diaries post. It sure seems like an eternity ago, so I am going to repost some LB oldies in coming days, to give new readers an idea of who I am and what I believe. I’ve used some material from others at times, with their permission to print in its entirety, so Gladius Maximus’ wonderful essay, “Gimme A Knife” sure hearkens to that American spirit Ian Tuttle touched upon. Gladius is a Texan, a former US Army officer and a state judge. He is also my son-in-law’s uncle and he performed my daughter and son-in-law’s marriage ceremony one fine Spring day in 2008. The bluebonnets were blooming all along the country road heading to the small country church in Texas, putting kind thoughts about Ladybird Johnson and her “beautify America” campaign into my mind that morning , lol. Surely, that was a miracle of sorts for conservative ol’ me.
Without further ado, from December 22, 2012, here is Gladius Maximus:
Last Sunday the Pastor posed the question of what we would consider to be necessities in today’s life. He gave some statistics from an earlier, time, maybe 50 or so years ago, wherein there were only about 19 things listed whereas in the current time were listed about 98 items. I’m not sure of the exact numbers, but those are close. Wow, 98 items considered necessities for an American.
Well, me being me, when he said “necessities” I immediately began thinking of survival, as opposed to microwave ovens and hand-held devices. The first item on my list was a good knife as I figured with a good knife I could either build or kill my way into most everything else. With some effort, after reaching only about five essential items on my list, I quit the inventory and got back to the sermon. Since then, though, I’ve had a chance to reflect on that question and the meaning of it to our society.
It came to me that our inability as Americans to survive in meager circumstances, or put another way, our dependence on technology, gadgets and the government, is evidence of the decay of character in our society. By that, I mean, our inability to be independent, innovative and willing to put up with hardship reflects how truly weak we have become. Our lack of perseverance in the face of adversity is evidence of our impotence. Unless we are surrounded by what many in the world would consider sumptuousness, we don’t believe we can make it.
If we don’t get our water out of a tap from a government approved water system, where will we get it? If we don’t get our protein from the local mega-store, sliced, diced, shrink-wrapped and priced, how do we get it and process it? If the burners on the range don’t work, or if we at least can’t get charcoal for the grill, how do we cook it? Need vegetables? How do they grow? Where do we get seed? When our shoes wear out, what do we do? When it’s cold outside, how do we stay warm?
I understand that folks growing up in the cities don’t have some of the outdoor opportunities that some of us have, but I am convinced that there are opportunities to develop individuality, independence, self-confidence and other survival skills without having to spend a year in the Rockies on some kind of sabbatical. Survival is more a mind-set than a setting. Attitude is everything.
Being innovative and imaginative is essential whether you’re in downtown Houston or central Nebraska. Skills of observation and patience are not natural talents, but acquired skills; both are essential and both can be acquired through discipline. The ability to reason and employ a rational, decision making process is needed in order to survive and thrive. Again, that is an acquired skill. Determination, grit if you will, is a trait to be cherished, not erased.
Why do I address this idea of necessities and survival in this column? What, you may ask, does that have to do with Taking Back America?
Our nation was founded by independent free-thinkers who were able to craft in their collective imaginations the essence of liberty. That imagination did not come from a dependence on the Crown of England to provide for their every need, but a willingness to be innovative; a willingness to persevere in the face of scarcity; a willingness to survive. The lack of that spirit is at the heart of the troubles we now face in America.
Health care issues; let the government fix them. Poor education in our schools, the government will fix it. Lack of discipline in the schools, we will regulate that by the government, too. Economy is weak; the government will provide for us. Coffee too hot at McDonald’s, let’s file a lawsuit. Offended by someone’s callous comments, get legislation to make that a hate crime. Don’t want to pray in public, make sure nobody else can either through lawsuits and legislation. Too lazy to work, go on welfare. Too lazy to get job training, get welfare. Want to make the stupid decision to quit school; that’s ok, there’s welfare for that, too. Have babies out of wedlock because of dumb decisions; that’s ok, we will give you money, medical care, food stamps and tell you it is a personal decision (even though tax money from productive citizens supports your dumb choices).
Whatever the problems we may face, the government will take care of us; cradle to grave. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem.
We have lost our independent spirit. We have lost the ability to innovate. We have lost the desire to stand on our own. We no longer want to be self-sufficient. We no longer teach our children what discipline is and why it is important. In short, we have become a nation of parasites.
Fortunately, not all of us are parasites as there are still enough productive tax payers out there to support the rest who are, but the numbers are dwindling. The decisions being made in congress will continue the crippling of our society until finally, the parasites will be the majority. And, when the parasites are the majority, we will be finished.
As for me, though, I’ll take a good knife.
Filed under American Character, Culture Wars, General Interest, Gladius Maximus
Hitch America’s wagon to a star again
“Hitch your wagon to a star” – Emerson
I’m backkk, lol. Lately, I’ve been spending a good bit of time reading the articles at National Review Online as The Trump Divide within the GOP deepens and hardens. So many of the writers there keep making the compelling case for why Donald Trump should NEVER be the GOP candidate, but along with those arguments, some of their writers went beyond that to highlight what America is and isn’t.
Kevin Williamson penned an excellent piece today, “What John Adams Knew,” highlighting that America is a republic, not a democracy:
“John Adams hated democracy and he feared what was known in the language of the time as “passion.” Adams’s famous assessment: “I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either.” Democracy, he wrote, “never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432941/donald-trump-populist-demagogue-john-adams-anticipated
Regular LB readers will be familiar with my republic vs. democracy concern too, which I expressed in a January blog post, “On America’s side”:
“A couple weeks ago my 10 year old granddaughter, a very bright student enrolled in the gifted program at her public school, mentioned something she learned at school, which I told her is not correct and what she learned really plays into the problems plaguing America and it also speaks to our future. My granddaughter said, “America is a democracy.” Reflexively, I corrected her and said, “No, America is a republic!” Thus began a stream of back and forth, because as of yesterday she told me that her teacher still says, “America is a democracy.” I told her again that her teacher is mistaken, because assuredly, America is a republic, set up as a constitutional federal republic. However, watching the demise of federalism and the reliance on pop culture and public opinion polls to silence dissenting opinion, I’m wondering if America has descended into that hellish, brutish state where on the whims of ginning up anger and use of slick mass media manipulation (propaganda) to sway the mob, the only thing that matters is the “majority rules”.”
Kevin D. Williamson has been joined in expanding on what “America” is, with an excellent post by Ian Tuttle, “Go-Getters, Gone?” Tuttle showcases the American spirit through the words of a pioneer woman, Lodisa Frizzell, making the journey from Illinois to California in 1852:
“That this journey is tiresome, no one will doubt, that it is perilous, the deaths of many testify, and the heart has a thousand missgivings, & the mind is tortured with anxiety, & often as I passed the fresh made graves, I have glanced at the side boards of the waggon, not knowing how soon it might serve as a coffin for some one of us.”
Mr. Tuttle’s piece carries a Marco Rubio quote that really deserves wide-reading, because “Little Marco,” as the vile Donald Trump (you know the vulgar jerk, whom Rudy Giuliani last night on Hannity described as “gentlemanly), explained this American spirit so eloquently, that I apologize for using so much of Mr. Tuttle’s article here, but I’m still going to post Marco Rubio’s words and at the same time urge you to go to NRO and read Tuttle’s wonderful piece:
“We are a hopeful people, and we have every right to be hopeful. For we in this nation are the descendants of go-getters. In our veins runs the blood of people who gave it all up so we would have the chances they never did. We are all the descendants of someone who made our future the purpose of their lives. We are the descendants of pilgrims. We are the descendants of settlers. We are the descendants of men and women that headed westward in the Great Plains not knowing what awaited them. We are the descendants of slaves who overcame that horrible institution to stake their claim in the American Dream. We are the descendants of immigrants and exiles who knew and believed that they were destined for more, and that there was only one place on earth where that was possible.”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432928/americas-pioneer-spirit-dead-gone
Amen, Mr. Tuttle and thank-you Senator Marco Rubio for once again trying to hitch America’s wagon to a star.
Aquamarine vs. turquoise [repost from May 2015]
With too much going on in the news to keep adequate track of, I’m waiting to filter it into a coherent blog post. So, with all the anger and hate swirling, until I have something original composed, here’s a repost of an old LB blog post from May 15, 2015:
Finally, here is a post on factions, that’s so simple even a 5 year-old can understand the problem. Adults might get stuck in their rigid ideological beliefs. All beliefs are not morally equal – some when carried to extremes have horrific consequences for millions of innocent people, while others can do remarkable good for the entire world. That is the TRUTH.
Let’s say you believe very strongly that a color is aquamarine and I believe equally as strongly that that color is turquoise. Being that we both believe a different thing, many avenues are there for us to choose. We could argue and get so angry that we end up hating each other and never speak to each other again. I could feel so strongly about my belief that I kill you. We might even kill each other fighting over who is right. I could even decide that it’s not enough to just kill you, but because you’ve convinced your whole town that the color is aquamarine, it’s necessary to kill all of them too.
Of course, on the less extreme side we might agree to consult an outside expert on color to settle the matter, perhaps, we could call the Crayola Company, after all they’ve been naming colors since 1885 in Easton, PA, near where I grew up.
We might argue, passionately and often, clinging to our beliefs (as President Obama accused those rural people in PA), but in the American tradition, we could agree to disagree and at some point, shake hands and say, “Let’s go have pizza!” Presented to most 5 year-olds, the vast majority will agree that it’s stupid to kill other people just because we disagree, on the other hand most adults refuse to even listen to differing opinions. Maya Angleou, renowned poet, expressed it exactly right:
“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.” –
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/26244-hate-it-has-caused-a-lot-of-problems-in-the
So, in America, being a country forged together by a people committed to INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM, we have The Declaration of Independence to ensure our God-given, unalienable rights are not infringed upon:
Sadly, in America our political partisanship swirls dangerously to extremes – where hate has swelled to such a level that many Americans choose to receive all of their news from sources that align with their political views. The hate and extremism goes so far that even the President of the United States works to divide Americans into hostile camps. Distrust turns Americans into furtive enemies, partisans avoiding those who hold an opposing view, with ideological walls being girded to lock out all who dare to disagree. Even codes are enacted in our universities to silence opposition.
We must tear down these partisan walls! We must work to find common ground, or we can not face the threats beyond our borders. President George Washington warned about the dangers of extreme partisanship in his Farewell Address:
“I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
So, beyond my stating it is a parental duty in a civil society to train your children to respect the rule of law. George Washington tells you that it’s a duty to discourage extremist politics – the duties are required to be a good citizen. I wrote a post in 2013 titled, “The duty of a wise people”. on this subject.
There was a time, not so long ago, when American school children were routinely taught about this speech and American principles. Sadly, today I suspect many school children don’t even know who George Washington was. And mentioning The Constitution, too often and too loudly, will get your name on a Homeland Security watch list as a right-wing extremist…
libertybelle diaries 