The giving of charity, which brings sustenance to a needy individual, is a life-sustaining act – one that effectively allows us to imitate G-d, ‘the animator of the living,’ and provides each person with the noblest direction in life – to ‘walk in His ways.’

-The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson

Things were quite a bit different when I was a kid growing up in the 1970′s. For one, I was raised Baptist. That’s not completely relevant, but for those who were wondering how a Jew could have the last name of Jones, there you have it. As a kid, I saw a lot, heard a lot, and the general lines of society were very different than they are now.

My maternal grandfather, John Bowen (whose name I possess) retired from General Motors, here in Atlanta. But I remember in the middle of all of the scabby knees one singular event that would change much of the conditioning I had during my formative years.

For some reason or another, one summer day I was dropped off to spend the day with my grandparents. My grandfather was hauling cardboard boxes to his blue Caprice, and I was handed a gallon jug of tea to haul to the car. For those unfamiliar with fine Southern living, back in those days my grandmother (like almost everyone I knew) always made sweet iced tea in huge glass gallon jugs, the industrial size that you would use for mustard or mayonnaise. I’m not certain where she got them from, my uncle, I imagine, but she always had a supply of them.

There was an overflowing plate of fried chicken, green beans, and a plate of her biscuits. A watermelon from my grandfather’s garden was in the back floorboard for good measure. I thought we were going to have ourselves the best picnic ever.

I just couldn’t figure out why we were having a picnic.

My grandfather shooed me into the car, and we set off. A few minutes later, we were across town, on the “other side of the railroad tracks.” I was confused.

In the ’70s, especially in rural Georgia, blacks and whites didn’t live in the same area. Ever. It was just the way things were, and nobody really griped about it. For those who haven’t guessed, the other side of the tracks was a demarcation line of sorts. He pulled up to a clapboard house and parked, telling me to stay in the car.

A few children congregated around the stairs, one of them about my age, and they stared at me as if I were a circus freak show act come to town. I heard him talking at the door to a woman who kept grabbing his hand and sporadically crying. The “picnic” went from the car into the house. Off went the chicken, and the biscuits, and the watermelon from the very vine I had already been busted twice trying to crack open with my cousin.

Not only could I simply observe in disbelief what was happening before my very eyes, I couldn’t comprehend it, either. He was giving food away that we reserved for our best occasions!

He finished his conversation with a big smile and a wave to someone inside the house, and said a phrase I would hear over and over in my lifetime, “If you need anything, you call me, y’hear?” One thing you need to understand about old rural redneck Southerners of any race- when you hear that phrase, we aren’t being polite. We mean it.

My grandfather got back in the car, we backed out of the gravel driveway, and headed back towards his house. I finally gathered up the gall to ask, “Who are they? Why did we take them all that food?” I will never forget his response, like a movie clip. He slowed the car, looked at me as if I had grown another head, and said, “Good lord, child, somebody’s got to feed that man!”

It turned out that the man inside had gotten injured on the assembly line at GM and was out of work. Workman’s Compensation wasn’t exactly the big animal it is today. There was no money coming in, and that was a bad thing. He was not going to go “on the dole.” This was a matter of respect, personal pride, and dignity. All things my grandpa knew about and understood.

He was himself a veteran of World War II, serving with the Big Red One (1st Infantry Division), and was a German POW. He considered this man a friend, and as there is honor among thieves, there is greater honor among good, respectable men.

I bring this story up because we have, as a society, been indoctrinated and deceived into accepting the idea of the “welfare state.” Because we assume the government will “handle it” and use the excuse “but I pay my taxes,” common decency has been lost.

It was in this same vein I was raised never to take any kind of government handout unless it was utterly and irrevocably necessary. I have received unemployment benefits, which I paid into. But I have never received food stamps or welfare, even when I needed them, and my family were chiding me for the said decision, and begging me to sign up under the idea that it was my “right”. I had wondered at one point why I was conditioned to this point of view.

But government welfare was intended never to be created. Thomas Jefferson said in his 1801 Inaugural Address the following:

A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.

Cap and Trade? Subsidies? Corporate and personal welfare? Government intrusion into free trade and the business world? Not under Jefferson. In fact, he would write this in a letter to Joseph Milligan 15 years later:

To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

Charity is not the same thing as welfare. In many cases, it is more effective. The Jewish sage Maimonides once wrote, “There are eight rungs in charity. The highest is when you help a man to help himself.” With that said, our welfare institutions are doing no favors. It’s hard to regain the things you lose, and difficult to help oneself when your children are crying from hunger. For roughly 49 million Americans, of which an estimated 16.7 million are children, this is the reality.

Before you scoff, that number was from 2008. In 2007, the number was 36.2 million. A 13 million person jump, if you are doing the math.

Recently, Bill Gates asked other benefactors to sink large amounts of money into charity. Why would that be? Besides the fact that charity is a tax writeoff, and the minor fact that charity gets more done on whole than governmental control ever will? Consider that Venezuela, a country that touts the very system Progressives (and Party-Line Republicans) are  leading us to, is having food riots and governmental thieving of groceries.

I fed my nine month old son dinner tonight. He has a little spoon, and I have the little containers. I look in his eyes as he smiles and opens his mouth like a little baby bird, and I thank G-d with every breath on 3 things:

1. G-d gave me this beautiful child to raise to be better than me
2. G-d gave me the means to feed him, and he does not have to cry hungry
3. G-d has given enough for me to sneak something for those who need food for their little ones

In my morning prayers, there is a piece I’d like to share that sums this up:

“…Provide me with my allotment of bread, and bring forth for me and all the members of my household, my food before I have need for it; in contentment but not in pain, in a permissible but not a forbidden manner, in honor but not in disgrace, for life and for peace… Make me not needful for people’s largesse; and may there be fulfilled in me the verse that states, ‘You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing’ and that states, ‘Cast your burden upon Hashem and He will support you…”

We are the American Dream. We, the people. You and I. It’s not about getting a white picket fence. To hell with the fence! It’s about us, as people, having true liberty, a true market economy, and being able to help those to our left and our right, like warriors of Sparta. Not because we have to, or are mandated to, or regulated to, but simply because we are good American people. As it has been said, “Good deeds are done by good people.”

This wasteful system that swells our politicians and destroys the good fortunes of America will have to be dismantled. A Fair Tax will require it. Those of us in the Tea Party, and those constantly joining our ranks for a return to the vision of the Founding Fathers must know that this is not a simple predicament. We must prepare for it.

We must ignore the white noise and remember that the idea of “paying it forward” is not a Progressive ideology, nor is it new. They may claim it, but I assure you, they have never at any time owned it. The idea is literally as old as Moses.

We have to regain our honor and decency. But more than that, we need to re-learn how to take care of each other and “promote the general welfare.”

It’s not a system, folks. It was never meant to be a system. It’s an attitude and the fruit of a true free market economy, an animal I dare say we haven’t seen in this country since the 1800′s. It’s a way of life, a standard of personal conduct, and no government, church, or rag-tag lot of well wishers can give it or take it away.

It is all up to you.

U.S. Ready to Finance Oil Drilling in Brazil

The people have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge – I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers.

-John Adams

The primary core of life itself is that it is fraught with the most damnable of a union- events, and decisions.

I will begin by stating for the record that I am of no relation to Alex Jones, by blood, nor by conspiracy ideology. What I must relate to you here is for your good, and I pray, the good of those that I love. Of these decisions and events that predicate them, I can only say that while many may be right, some end in failure. In a divine act of Providence, however, mistakes generally can be corrected.

In 2006, I was made aware of the possible candidacy of Senator Barack Obama. As a combat veteran, I had grown deeply concerned of many grievances of my comrades in arms in relation to veteran healthcare, the lack of proper protection in combat, and to a degree, negligence on the part of our then Commander in Chief. I studied many of Senator Obama’s votes and actions, read his preliminary action statements on what he wished to achieve, and after deliberation and what I at the time deemed to be gentlemen’s honor, agreed to be the 46th person from the State of Georgia to support a future Obama Presidential campaign.

I am telling you this, simply so you may have an understanding of my intentions, and how I got to the place I am now. When I agreed to support the Illinois Senator, I sent a letter detailing that I supported his stances, and would also support with loyalty his campaign. However, if he were successful, and he did not fulfill his pledges, I would be a most bitter adversary. I would later state this to many who had aversions to my support for President Obama.

As you see, and I am most ashamed to say, I based my total judgment of character on faulty evidence. And here we are. I must now defend with my electronic pen and whatever intelligent speech and research I can muster the very rights I am due both as a human, and as an American. I must defend them without impunity from the very man I helped install into office. That is my duty as a father, citizen, soldier, and American.

So let’s begin. I have a story to tell you.

Let’s start with you, my reader. Picture yourself here, in a scene that is probably familiar. You wake up, groggy, and in your mind you are automatically calculating the payments you will have to make in the next week, and trying to determine what your budget will look like once you make them. Your throat is scratchy and you’re a little woozy. The sweats start, and you consider calling in to work. Then it hits you that you can’t.

If you stay out of work, you won’t get paid.

You look at your kids and ache a little, because this is not the life you meant for them to lead. They know you’re scared. They know it has to do with money. It affects your demeanor, your health, and kids aren’t stupid… they feel your fear.

Sometimes you think of a vacation. Nothing major, just a chance to get out of the house. But these days, you’re so frightened of losing the house itself that it eclipses any joy you had in the thought of vacation.

Gas prices are up, and now there’s oil in the Gulf of Mexico. If they jump to the currently predicted $7 a gallon, you and your family are dead meat. At some point, you will begin adding up the taxes that you actually pay, day in and day out, and begin wondering where that money goes. You’re about to find out just a few places.

Part of your tax dollars helped Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) buy a professional football team (that failed). They also help pay for her $18,736 a month office in San Fransisco. That is billed to you. Not her credit card. For her two year term as a Representative, you will pay $449,664 for her office space, and if we only count our payment for her rent and her paycheck, she will net $895,664. We haven’t touched transportation costs, meals, lodging or anything else.

There are 435 Representatives. Even if we argue the idea that everyone else spent only half of what she will, we still end up with $195 M. We haven’t addressed the Senators or any staff.

What do they do with their power? Are they battling for you, frustrated and weary, wondering how you will make ends meet? Maxine Waters (D-CA) held investment in OneUnited, a minority owned bank. She sold her shares in 2004, but her husband retained his, which would make sense, as until recently he was a director of the said bank. Ms. Waters used her influence in Congress to protect the bank (and its/her interests). Check this quote from the same Wall Street Journal article:

In January, Ms. Waters acknowledged she made a call to the Treasury on OneUnited’s behalf. The bank’s capital, which was heavily invested in shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was all but wiped out with the federal takeover of the two mortgage giants, and the bank was seeking help from regulators.

OneUnited eventually secured bailout funds under the government’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, which was set up later that month.

In a brief interview in January, Ms. Waters said she was unaware the bank received $12 million of TARP money, which arrived in December. OneUnited was “just a small” bank, she said.

A provision designed to aid OneUnited was written into the federal bailout legislation by Mr. Frank, who is chairman of the financial-services panel. Mr. Frank has said he inserted the provision to help the only African-American owned bank in his home state. He said in an interview that Ms. Waters’s interest “had zero impact on the outcome because I would have done it anyway.”

“Mr. Frank” is Barney Frank (D-MA). Don’t you think for a second that I’m going to let a fellow Jew off the hook if they are not behaving according to the principles of our faith.

President Obama’s $100,000 an hour jet airplane doesn’t help matters. Especially when it is taken on a little old daytrip (like the one you can’t afford to go on) that according to CBS News:

Mr. Obama spoke for just ten minutes and was on the ground in Ohio for just over an hour. And though his appearance was billed as official and not political, he did use his remarks to deliver attaboys to some of the Democratic politicians here including the Governor, who is up for re-election.

“You also got one of the best governors in the country in Ted Strickland,” the president said at the start of his remarks.

Strickland faces a challenge for his job in November from former GOP Congressman John Kasich, who was not at the Recovery Act event. Neither was Boehner.

The trip Columbus probably cost taxpayers between $500,000 and $1 million.

I know. We’re a big country. And we have lots of money, right? And the credit John Adams set up with the Dutch in the 1770′s is still good, right? Don’t we have good credit?

Ask Alan Greenspan. He’ll know. He always knows.

But now the story will begin to get ugly. You thought it already was? Eeek.

In comes George Soros. He is a billionaire investor, and President Obama is the stitching inside his pocket.

Remember during the campaign? Then-Senator Obama stated that the primary drive for his energy policy was one specific substance that he kept repeating over and over like a broken record… ethanol. Well, it just so happens that Mr. Soros is not only the primary funder for the Center for American Progress, but he is a… wait for it… ethanol speculator. That means he invests in ethanol production.

The media is already working to pooh-pooh the connection Fox News has made between Soros and the CAP, but the article I linked to is from Bloomberg in 2008. Yes, Fox is actually correct in their assumption:

Thanks in part to funding from benefactors such as billionaire George Soros, the Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration.

Evo Morales in Bolivia loves to talk about his socialist/communist takeover of the petroleum industry. He makes Greenpeace look conservative. While some of his ideas hold water, the ones that attack capitalism remind us why Bolivia ranks 113th on the Human Development Index. Bolivia leads us to Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Remember him? He sells oil and hates President Bush. But with Obama, he said “Ha-ha, my friend...” Fox News went nuts on Obama, Media Matters went pinkoid on Fox.

Chavez is not happy with a futbol rocking country called Brazil. They sell Soro’s favorite substance, ethanol. Soros invested in Brazil’s major ethanol company, Adeco Agropecuaria Brasil Ltda. But he didn’t stop there. He also invested $811M in Brazil’s premier oil company, Petrobras. Basically, Obama’s puppetmaster is invested in both ethanol and oil, against Hugo Chavez (where Soros has no hope of investing).

About that handshake. Remember that phrase, “If you want to screw me, first you have to kiss me?” Well, since the original news source has been censored, here’s what it said before the White House had it yanked.

EFE News Services 8/5/2009

The U.S. government is prepared to provide up to $10 billion in loans to finance the development of massive hydrocarbon reserves off Brazil’s coast, a Brazilian official said Wednesday.

President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, discussed the matter with officials this week during a visit to the South American country, Brazilian Planning Minister Paulo Bernardo da Silva told reporters.

He said the U.S. Export-Import Bank already has signed a letter of intent in that regard with Brazilian state oil company Petrobras.

The loan is equal in value to a similar credit line agreed to with the China Development Bank, also for exploiting Brazil’s “pre-salt” area, so-named because the estimated 80 billion barrels of high-quality crude in that new oil frontier lie far beneath the ocean floor under layers of rock and an unstable salt formation.

Under the agreement with the Chinese state bank, finalized during Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s visit to Beijing in May, Brazil can repay the loan facility with oil as opposed to cash…

How utterly convenient. Now your tax dollars get to make the Puppetmaster even wealthier. You also get to pay him again when you fill your tank. Because nothing  makes for better business than choking off the competition. It also helps if you hold down the progress for other forms of alternate energy, and keep domestic ethanol at a tiny ebb. He currently makes T. Boone Pickens feel all fuzzy on a very good plan developed by the prominent oilman, while, like Obama did with Chavez, smiling with the knowledge that he is intentionally deceiving Pickens. In that, he is deceiving you as well.

Consider these points:

• Obama seized the banking industry by extension with the bailout
• Obama has the auto makers under his thumb
• Republican John Boehner is heavily invested in BP (not a crime)
• BP heavily invested in the Obama presidential campaign
• Obama needs BP out of the way for the Soros business plan
• The Federal Government told BP where they were allowed to drill, against BP’s inital judgment
• While I would not say the spill is intentional, remember Rahm Emmanuel’s Motto, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” (note: Israelis like this guy as little as I do. Don’t make him your example of a Jew. Try the Rebbe instead.)
• Obama has ignored the oil spill intentionally to destroy BP’s business base and credibility
• Obama has ignored the pleas of Governor Jindal (R-LA) and two other governors
• Obama ignored the greatest Democrat mind in the past 40 years, James Carville, when he begged for help
• The Coast Guard has impeded Louisiana’s attempts to clean the spill
• Oil spill recovery has been deemed a “part-time” job (we need the Sea Shepherds about right now. Don’t know what they would do, but it would be more than Obama.)
• Obama denied help from multiple international sources
• Obama now has the closest gas and oil producer on its heels

This is the highest form of corruption and robbery. But the trail is plain to see. Follow it. We are being set up as an economic society for failure. It’s so plain even the Russians see it.

If the ballot says Incumbent, they must go. Don’t even let them survive the primaries.

A final thought…

Many of us made mistakes in our past election. The other side of the coin wasn’t much brighter. The Tea Party Movement is growing, and it doesn’t give a damn in the least what party you were in before. All it asks is that you love our Constitution and the liberties it provides as much as those who died for it.

I write this to you early in the morning, in the dark of night, during Shabbat, when normally I wouldn’t be near a computer, because I have to look into my baby’s eyes in the morning and know that I am doing everything I can to make it right for him, my older sons, and my wife, who I would not be effective in the least without.

I am the leader in this house. Leaders eat last. Leaders wear the responsibility. The honor of their names rests on my head. The pain of being that leader is not trickle-down economics, as Harry Truman prominently displayed, “The buck stops here.” I have to be that man of honor. But I fear for us all, and Shabbat may be broken at any time there is an inclination life or health is in danger. I count liberty and freedom in that necessity. I count you in that necessity.

As Robert E. Lee once said:

I have been up to see the Congress and they do not seem to be able to do anything except to eat peanuts and chew tobacco, while my army is starving.

May G-d protect us all. If you don’t believe in G-d, then just think a hopeful thought on our behalf as a honest, diligent, faithful and free people. It will certainly mean the same thing.

I have been absent for almost a year from this blog, and that year has come with great learning, adversity, pain, and renewed insight. While I will not go into any of the various ill deeds and events I have waded through, I will admit that I am waking up to realities and possibilities I had chosen to ignore.

Let’s be perfectly clear. I am a 40 year old man. I am a traditional G-d fearing family man who loves his wife and family. I live according to principles I learned as a child and will eternally owe my father a debt of gratitude for, others during my young adulthood in the military as a combat paratrooper, and now in my middle age.

My father used to make me read the Book of Proverbs over and over and over. Now, as a Jew, my family calls it by its Hebrew name, Mishlei Shlomo, but it’s the same book. And I will make my kids learn it as well. Along with all the mandatory readings you see in the sidebar.

I am not a Democrat, a Liberal, a Libertarian, a Conservative, a Republican. These are titles and labels that have been abused, misaligned, and perverted to the extent that they no longer have a meaning. Not much in America’s imagery is of truth or meaning anymore. In these days, nothing is sacred. It is painful to see, and this brings sadness. Then the realization comes that all in our collective nation is a result of what we have become, and this brings deep shame.

In shame, humility extends itself to reach upwards, to a higher power that may have a name in our vocabulary, or may just be a valiant hope for a sense of social salvation.

Desperation and action soon follow.

As John Adams said:

If men through fear, fraud or mistake, should in terms renounce and give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the great end of society, would absolutely vacate such renunciation; the right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave.

But this isn’t going to be a big political diatribe. There are many other things that disturb and confound me, and I would like to get a barometer on whether I’m the only one that sees it. From the little I’ve spoken to others about it, I’m not alone. I’m not the only one that seeks the truth in all matters, good or ill. Our numbers are growing as we wake up to this common state of affairs that concerns us.

We as a society appear to have lost our decency.

I remember as a child that when my family referred to my uncle, who was unmarried, as being a bachelor, it was always a hushed whisper. There seemed to be something askew about that, but what I’m taking from that is not the fact that there was embarrassment in society for those who were bachelors, spinsters, homosexuals, or otherwise not in the “My Three Sons” norm. What I find attractive was the sense of allowing privacy to the matter. It was a blatant attempt not to make that person uncomfortable or embarrassed. Now we just don’t care.

We want the dirt, we want to see how everyone else is in pain or dysfunctional, and mock that publicly, openly, without any remorse or pity. If there is salt available for the wound, we’ll make sure we rub it in as publicly as possible with a Brillo pad. We as a society treat others in a manner that our grandparents would never have allowed. Our press operates the exact same way. Journalistic standards have slipped to trash, which is pitiful considering that even in Thomas Jefferson’s time the press was bad enough for him to say, “advertisements contain the only truth to be relied on in a newspaper…”

We as a society have lost our concept of honor.

We send lawyers (I use this term loosely, not literally) to our government office to contend against lobbyists who are other lawyers that didn’t get the job, to make laws that will be enforced as beneficial to those sworn to uphold them as long as there is a mutual benefit to do so. Those among the rich that lack morals and the self-absorbed fight each other like rabid dogs in a rancid landfill for the opportunity to self indulge themselves and those who were lucky enough to connive the aforementioned to allow them to hang on the coattails.

Truth is an unnecessary currency today, and common courtesy inert. We have allowed this. We are to blame. Former President Harry S. Truman had a business with a close friend, and the plans for the partnership were made over a handshake – no documents. When the business failed, they maintained their close friendship, and over the course of a decade or so paid off every debt they owed. Still based on a handshake and word.

I wish I could be like that. As an older man with a full family, I am trying desperately to get to that kind of a man. As it stands, I know two men on this earth I would actually trust a handshake deal with and not flinch for a second. One brought me on this earth. The other was born on March 4th.

We as a society have lost common patriotic concern, and gained apathy in its place.

America is a moral, ethical entity by design. John Adams said this himself:

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.

It pays to be Progressive if you wish to walk numbingly and ignorantly towards a cliff that you are truly unprepared to fall off of. It pays to be a Conservative if you own an oil company, or are in the wealthy elite.

We are neither. We are people that have good hearts and good beliefs, and in general, I still hold that Americans truly want what’s best for our families, our neighbors, and all mankind. It is in our nation’s design. But we have also gotten so comfortable with not caring that we just want what fills the need at the time.

We no longer give a damn who we hurt, how we hurt them, or what it means as long as we get our placation and what we desire. Who cares, just keep feeding the bears. That’s how an undignified President gets away with babbling about “kicking ass.” Try to find anything like that in a Presidential speech or letter for our first 100 years of existence. We didn’t even flinch.

We are numb. And we have become animals with high technology.

Am I full of it? Name your surrounding neighbors by name, and the members of their families.

I can’t. I could when I was a kid in the 1970′s.

I work at a job that to me has great importance. I work for a company that provides library software, which is a valuable, critical asset. I am trying to become better at it so as not to fully embarrass my employer. My wife stays at home and tends our children. It’s not as easy for her as you’d like to believe. We have a single paycheck. I am thankful every day for that paycheck. I am thankful to my employer for that check and other benefits, and to G-d and my parents for bringing me to this earth to receive it, and my wife for putting up with me and my cranky fits.

We live within our means, we try to follow G-d’s laws as we see and understand them, and thus far things have went well.

But somehow, within extended family ranks I’m the a-hole because we aren’t consumed in a paper chase and trying to screw everyone. We have standards, and we won’t always attack those who wrong us just because we can. Nor will we tolerate dishonest garbage, and choose to disassociate from such. I try to figure how my father would handle the situation, and work according to that.

But what of society in general? Things are radically different than I recall them as a kid. I miss the Cleaver days when you could trust people. When we truly interacted together.

I dare you, look on singles sites, on social networking sites, look at all of the people that admit they are lonely. Look at the drug and alcohol addicted, look at the starving and homeless. Look into their eyes. Where is the American Dream? No Socialist, no people’s party can solve that, no conservative think tank can fix it because the problem belongs to each and every one of us.

Coach John Wooden, who passed away last week kept with him seven rules his father gave him when he graduated grammar school. Here they are:

1. Be true to yourself.
2. Make each day your masterpiece.
3. Help others.
4. Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible.
5. Make friendship a fine art.
6. Build a shelter against a rainy day.
7. Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.

The only part I have down is 7b, and I am working miserably on the rest.

But I care what happens, and I know you do, too. Let’s go back and hit the reset button on everything: Our values, our government, our way of conducting ourselves and everything around us. Let’s discover what this country was truly founded on. It wasn’t Jesus Christ. It wasn’t socialist antiseptic utopia, or a regime. It was freedom, privacy, common sense and decency.

There is a swirling misplacement of power and influence revolving around us that we need to break free of. At this point, we should replace every acting career politician and government official with “inexperienced” citizens that have honor, decency, and enough honesty that we have to drag them kicking and screaming to the post, as we had to do the Founding Fathers. Take the money out of the equation. Take the pensions out of the mix. Fix our education from a system of rhetoric and indoctrination to real education, like we had as children, just more with our times.

It is in our hands, beginning at the local level. We need to have these things within our local grasp, with our cities and counties responsible for the majority of our government, as designed.

My oldest son cannot name any of the Founding Fathers, and only recognized Benjamin Franklin from a list. His slightly younger brother had never heard of Bunker Hill, Nathan Hale, nor could he explain the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights. Luckily he managed to know a few of Georgia’s signers, but not what they signed, or how it applied to him.

Know that the people teaching our children are scraping in every single way we are. If you don’t care, why and how can they? They have their own wars and bureaucracy to fight which distracts them from doing their jobs. We have to stop taking orders as a nation of people from culture, hyperbole, and hidden fanaticism of any form, religious, theoretical, or philosophical, and become independent respecting citizens again. We need to introduce ourselves to each other again.

I’m not saying to refrain from being G-d fearing, I’m saying to keep it at home, at your place of worship, and in your actual living activities. Church and State are set there for a very valid reason, and it applies regardless of the religion or lack thereof. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are the supreme law. If you don’t like that, then leave.

On that note, the DOJ is horribly wrong. There is such a thing as a jihadist, and such a thing as radical Islam. Here in America, we stand on the following that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Anything counter to that does not fit within our shores, and must return from whence it came. That includes Sharia Law, and political correctness that has flowed unto ignorance and insanity.

Like having a War on Terror, then awarding $400 million to a terrorist regime called Hamas, in a country that does not require (or appreciate) our aid. Aid that should go to work here, at home, where it is to be held by right, but is not.

We must wake up. We must act now. We must hope and change. But some self-intentioned opportunistic politician cannot and will not do that for us.

Let’s begin to learn where we came from.

Now.