Divided? Not!

The media has reveled in proclaiming and stoking the fires of a divided America, where racists and the racial divide has never been wider.  Really?  Take a look at what really happened when hurricane Harvey hit Texas.  While CNN and MSNBC found political foils, the rest of the country, beyond the costal elites, did what Americans do – helped their neighbors.

Let me share a story.  My dad and I had left California to drive to Boston on Monday, August 28th.  Our trip took us through Missouri where we would stop at a Cracker Barrel restaurant just off the freeway for breakfast.  There, our waitress, Marilyn, came over to take our order.  It was early in the morning and Marilyn, with her dark grey hair and weathered skin, looked tired as she approached us.  We would greet her with our warm smiles and, with cheer in our voices, a hearty good morning and asked her how she was.

Marilyn’s demeanor immediately changed to a grin and a glow of thanks for bringing sunshine in what is routine.  She asked us if we were local.  We said that we were traveling through when she interrupted to ask if we were heading to Texas. Marilyn said that most folk that were stopping at the restaurant that were traveling through were heading to Texas to help the people affected by the hurricane.  She continued that she and her daughter were gathering all the clothes and food they could find to send to Texas.  We spoke a bit more, then Marilyn hurried off to get us coffee.

Marilyn and all the people “traveling through” are America.  No talk of any divide, just compassion.  No care who is in trouble, just ready to help.  Marilyn struggles to make a living yet will, literally, give you the shirt off her back.

It appears we’re all Americans!

Tell Them What to Think

It was last Tuesday on MSNBC political commentary show, Hardball, left leaning host, Chris Matthews, opined that leaders should tell people what to think.

Politics on the Left (and Right is not without guilt) has this aversion to individual thought because it is not conducive for reelection.  This says it all about liberal dialogue, there is none.  Take what we tell you or face the consequence.  Leaders like Kim Jung Un tell their people what to think.  In America our politicians are not our leaders because we are self-governing.  In America political thought is developed not dictated.

We cannot let dialogue be ordered to conformity.  The Left is increasingly frustrated that too many American’s are not abiding by “their” ways.  It is not a matter for debate, it is a matter of obedience.  They believe they are uniquely qualified to judge what the moral right is and have the intellectual honesty to know what is best.  Therefore, without further discussion, it is time for the rest of us to listen, learn, and fall in line….OR become vigilant, think independently, have reasoned debate, and actively engage in self-governance.

Be Vigilant. Be Free.

Demanding Better Discourse

We are a country obsessed with drama and can't seem to stand for a slow news day. If it is not what President Donald Trump has said, it is what he didn’t say. If it is not what the current administration did, it is what they didn’t do. And the same patterns run through each political party, each decision made, each action taken.

Politics is about power.  For one side to “win” the other must “lose”.  It is all about scoring political points as tallied by the media.  Speaker Paul Ryan said his first job is the reelection of his members and the control of the House.  That is his first job?  Not good public policy within good constitutional order?

We demand that our political bodies come together to agree on some compromise to better the country, yet we stand outside the walls of Congress and partake in the same argumentative manner which is then inflated and furthered by the overly dramatic and terribly partisan media coverage.

How can we demand better from our government if we are acting no better ourselves? We should strive to embody the character and manner that we ask for in our government representatives.  And they should strive to do better for the public good.

Republicans with One Foot in the Grave

For the past eight years Republicans have howled that if they only could control the House, Senate, and Executive branches, they could repeal Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, overhaul the tax code, reduce the regulatory state, restore order to the Middle East, confront China and North Korea, and get the budget deficits under control.  Well that “dog caught the car” and for the first six months Republican are far afield from their promises.

Differences of policy thought within the party are healthy but, in the end, policy has to be enacted and promises kept.  Obamacare repeal/replace has been a disaster, Dodd-Frank some tooling at the edges, regulatory reform some, tax reform not started, Middle East and China good start then stalled, North Korea no start, and budget control a non-starter.

The Republican Party has no appearance of a single party, rather it seems to be filled with representatives that are (now called) moderates who seem to embrace some Democrat policies and conservatives who refuse to make incremental gains in policy.

With the second failure to repeal and replace Obamacare and incessant inability to agree on legislation, the Republican base will be demotivated to turn-out in 2018, regardless of the state of the economy.  However, the Democrat voting base is highly motivated.  What will be left is one, if not both, houses of Congress in the hands of the Democrats and a Republican President with no allies in either.  If the second half of this year proves no better legislatively for Republicans than the first half, Republicans will have found themselves with one foot in the political grave come 2018 election time.

Al Gore...He's Back!

With the release of Al Gore’s sequel to, An Inconvenient Truth, we thought it noteworthy to discuss, well, science.  According to far left MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes, on his show, All In With Chris Hayes, the debate is “over” on climate change as 97% of scientists agree on man-made climate change.  Hayes leaves no doubt that this is 97% of all “credible” scientists; i.e. any disagreement is for those not credible.

Now, there may very well be a material and measurable influence of man’s activities on global warming and climate, but real science requires proof of this hypothesis, not name calling or legal action to prevent those who disagree from speaking.

Proving Einstein’s theories required brilliant and extremely accurate experiments to measure the predictions that Einstein’s equations proposed.  Only when there was independent verification of the accuracy of predictions did we believe the science behind the theories.  We do not have this when it comes to climate change.

Chart 1 below shows temperature fluctuation over the past million years.  For the particular latitude indicated on the chart, there are wide swings.  The last uptick began about 10,000 years ago when the best man could muster was barely a camp fire.  However, we are now asked to believe that the only cause of global warming is man. Yet, if all these dramatic swings occurred without man, then to what degree is man causing them now?

Climate debate is welcomed, as we are the stewards of the planet and should keep it in good stead.  Our course must be with reasoned and fact based discussions remembering that when we ask for public policy, that it must be well defined and limited.

Freedom: Our Most Precious National Treasure

We have spoken on the idea of freedom time and time again. In the research of our book, Vigilance The Price of Liberty, among the questions asked to people of different backgrounds, gender and socio-economic levels, was "what is liberty?". All had a common definition that liberty was the freedom to choose. This concept of liberty and freedom is abstract, but not for Vice Admiral James Stockdale.  He was a prisoner of war for eight years in Hanoi, Vietnam after being shot down in September of 1965.

In the years following his release, Vice Admiral Stockdale did much writing and speeches in regards to his experience as a POW.  An article titled Freedom: Our Most Precious National Treasure (the title used for this blog), was published by Parade Publications, Inc. on June 29, 1980. Vice Admiral Stockdale reflects on the average American who experiences freedom as an abstraction, while he, after spending time in a prison without such freedom, grew to understand freedom having a "delicious and tangible" meaning.

Below is an excerpt of the article that we hope will bring light to freedom to make its value more an appreciated and dear gift, rather than an unchallenged entitlement.

[M]y appreciation of its [freedoms] preciousness stems from a first-hand understanding of its rarity. The void of freedom in other parts of the world - and particularly the passivity with which this lack is accepted - is staggering to a man who is born and raised free. In my Hanoi cell, I found myself daily picking up shocking signals in that milieu of deadened sensitivities. Like these:

-The routine feedlot attitude of the simple peasant guards who delivered daily food rations down the line to cooped-up humans, fowl and livestock, with expressionless unconcern for the continual darkness, suffocating closeness, and isolation in which the chickens, pigs and men were confined.

-The continuous barking of loudspeakers on the street telling the people of Hanoi what to think. 

-The pathetic ignorance behind outburst of a prominent political cadre who shouted to me in a moment of exasperation: "We may not have freedom, but after 4000 years we have order, and we will settle for that."

We, as Americans, should not settle for ‘order’. We, as Americans, must fight to keep our freedom and ensure that sweet liberty for our posterity.

I the Politician

"We the People" are the words that begin our Constitution and signifies the government deriving its limited power from that granted by the People. So how has it become “we the people" who seem serving of the politicians?  The wording of the Constitution has not changed, yet the twisting of its words have left our political system revolving about power-hungry politicians.

We were a country born of great men. Men that put the will of the people and the good of the newborn nation before their own. Debate was for the purpose of finding resolve and extracting the best possible solution.  Leadership was not a prize to be won, but a duty if so conferred by the people. So how did we become a nation led by self-serving politicians whose goal is gaining and retaining power?  Where public policy is merely a pawn to score political points in the battle to be elected?

We elect what we deserve, thus, as we have said many times before, we must demand better of our elected officials. Our taxes should not fill hollow promises and programs of generational theft, but rather put towards effective and efficient policies that promote the public good and not a politician’s election.