The Audacity of Misdirected Lying

I grew up in the time America was changing. In those days Democrats were trying to be the party of the little guy, unions and those who wanted to promote social issues with as little government interference as possible. Republicans were the party of the fat-cat bankers, big business leaders and pushing Capitalism to the extreme making as much money as possible in the most creative ways on the planet. Times have changed.

I remember when our current political leaders were young, had long hair, beards, ran around naked, took more drugs than they will ever remember and had free sex with anyone who came along – the music of the time even celebrated loving "the one you're with" when you can't be with your mate. They regularly protested the Vietnam War, the industrial-banking-consumer establishment and the American government. Their mantra was to trust no one over the age of thirty.

Now, those same hippies who are well over the age of thirty have cut their hair (some have added implants to try covering their baldness), put away their frayed jeans, quit running around naked where the rest of us have to look at them (thankfully) and they changed their mantra to trust no one UNDER the age of thirty. The drugs and sex we’d have to take on a case-by-case analysis. I thought I knew who these people were way back in the Sixties, but over the years they morphed into something totally different.

Seemingly, the most confusing part of this change is their move from radical anti-American Government-ism into radical BIG government freaks. They want to change into this huge totalitarian government on steroids that oppresses The People with crushing regulations and overreaching agencies. There seems to be NO agency or regulation they find distasteful – unless it is the military or in some way keeps the people of this country safe. In their protest days they were all about tearing down the American government – today they are about building it up into a bloated version of government two-thirds of the citizens are against. They are building a monstrous bastardization of what they were protesting AGAINST. Those same people are all in favor of building a more massive government than has ever existed on these shores – one that reaches into lives for control in ways far beyond what the Founders fought agaisnt. They still hate the industrial-banking-consumer driven establishment which their followers took over, but they no longer hate the government. It is now their Deity.

There’s no REAL confusion on my part. As the days pass we see more and more clearly where these people who masquerade as American leaders are headed and what they’re all about. Those who have hijacked the Democrat Party are exactly what THEY have been since the sixties. I remember them on campus when I was in school. They were the radicals in the army garb who always passed out leaflets decrying the awfulness of American Freedom and how they had they answers that would set us all free. They were the socialist radicals. They were on every campus in the country, but most of us ignored them. They were idiots not worth the time to read their pamphlets. Nothing has changed. The people we have as leaders now are those same socialists that wanted to tear down what we have in the United States and replace it with the totalitarian socialism of the Soviet Union or China. They LOVE what those countries had – and eventually dide away with – BUT, they failed because they didn’t have our current crop of BRILLIANT American leaders. If they had OUR leaders they’d still be Workers’ Paradises. Or NOT. They probably would have failed much sooner than they did. These socialists wanted a communist state in the United States then and they are trying to bring it about now. Totalitarian dictatorships are the government style they have idolized their entire lives and they think they can bring it about here today. The real audacity of the whole situation comes from the misdirection they are throwing at the American people – that can easily be read as “lying” instead of “misdirection.” The Democrat party is no longer the party of the people. They are stepping up and becoming dictators and in order to make socialism work here they will have to do it the same way it has worked all over the world – at the point of a gun.

It’s not their slavish devotion to the Deity government that is confusing – that’s who they are and what they have done for fifty years – it’s their attempt to make government huge as if they will never lose power again that has me scratching my head. Logic is right out the window with this group. And that’s what has me worried. No one puts that kind of effort into building up power to hand it off to their opposition. There has to be more to the plan.

Americans deserve better.

De-Hyphenating America

Hyphenated-America is as outdated as the horse and buggy, and not nearly as quaint. The time has come for Americans to let go of the politically incorrect “sacred hyphen” our politicians and media have been desperately clinging to as a divider and let us get on with being equal partners in solving the problems of Our Land as one people.

The hyphen in our social lexicon is a throwback to the 1960’s when people were trying to define themselves, which I’m sure, is a heartwarming reminiscence for a lot of Baby Boomers, but it is demeaning to all the People who have contributed to the tapestry of American society. The dirty little secret about the hyphen is it’s also a throwback to the original wording of the Constitution where Americans were counted as “Three-Fifths” of a person. That same pesky hyphen in the Constitution had the same diminishing effect then as now – it denied our People full equality.

We have had several stories with “hyphens” in them lately. Pakistani-American is a recent hyphenated label that has worked into the news cycle thanks to a lunatic trying to kill hundreds of Americans in Times Square, but we’ve seen the hyphen in African-American, Irish-American, Mexican-American, Native-American, Canadian-American and an endless list of countries, ethnic groups, territories, geographical areas, religions and continents that can be used to label Americans by their ancestors. The hyphen serves as a form of shorthand making it easier to manipulate groups by the media and those with political agendas without having to look at them as individuals with individual needs.

There is only one appropriate application of the hyphen in American society: First-generation Americans who have been naturalized. They actually are of another land and are joining the American experience. From the children of those naturalized first-generation Americans’ on there should be no need for a hyphen. Americans are Americans are Americans… are Americans. They came here to be Americans and should be allowed to be part of the culture.

There is no such thing as African-French or Chinese-British in distinguishing people of those countries. What about French-Germans or Turkish-Italians? Of course not… Their African-ness or German-ness or whatever-ness is obviously not part of their identity once they are part of their new country. They are never referred to as anything other than French or Brits or Germans or whatever land they live in once they become part of that society. The same should apply to Americans.

Forcing Americans into hyphenated groups is stereotypical labeling that borders on racism and bigotry. It allows politicians and their related anger-mongers to propagate grievances, widen separations, create anger, break down justices and ultimately build manufactured stereotypical hatreds the destroy the shared similarities of our people. Politicians and the media love hyphens – it makes their jobs easier. The hyphen allows them to put us into cubbyholes for them to label us as groups with needs particular to a specific group. Politicians can then throw themselves up as some kind of champion of causes for one group or another and pander to that group for their votes – rather than as leaders for all the people. Hyphenating allows “haters” to use the differences between groups to drive wedges between us rather than fixing actual problems of society and in the process they are weakening the Republic and the Dream that is America.

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were ratified to remove the hyphen the “Three-Fifths” created. Here we are some 140 years after the passage of those amendments and some in our society – the bottom-feeding Political Class and the Media Underclass – are still trying to force the hyphen back into our names and separate our People in the name of ‘political correctness’ – a phrase that has become synonymous with undermining America. This is the Land of Opportunity for all of our People. Those wishing to diminish that creed need to step aside and allow people of vision to take over.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had a dream that all our people would be equal, that we would all be able to walk down the streets together and see the American Dream the same way. He did not dream of equality of outcomes – he was a realist and understood each of us will achieve what we can in our own ways – only that everyone have the same chance to take part in the American Experience as Americans. We are still being denied that Right by the leaders forcing “hyphens” down our throats.

Our political leaders and the media need to learn from Dr. King and the echo in America that we are ALL the American People and want Washington to lead as Americans rather than pander as Dividers – that’s what We The People demand of our future leaders.

Remembering The Golden Age Of Democracy

I wonder if in a few hundred years when people look back on these times anyone will believe there ever was such a place as ‘the United States of America?’ If you think about us we sound too impossible to be true. Freedom. Liberty. Democracy. A society where there are no limits, no bounds to what a person can achieve except those we put on ourselves. Imagine how that must sound… ‘America’ sounds like a fairy tale about a place made up of lore.

How will storytellers of future generations tell the story of ‘America,’ what we did, how we got there and the trials we went through against all odds that made us the leaders of the world for a short while after WWII?

I can see the weathered fifty-year-old storyteller – an elder in the community who has survived the grueling coalmines where he worked eighteen hour days for the ‘Masters’ who repossessed what was the United States to repay debts. They use the coal to fuel their dirty-coal generators in China and India to drive their juggernaut industrial complexes. He speaks to a circle of kids keeping warm in front of a pot of flaming animal dung. They’re spread in front of him as he spins the tale of how it ‘used to be.’

“America was a magical place,” he’ll tell them. “It was a country of dreams… peoples around the world could only imagine getting to a place so wondrous... Millions fled no opportunity and the tyranny of their homelands to get to this place that was so... magical. They came in boats, they came on planes, they swam if they had to… they risked their lives escaping murderous dictators or the lives they had that they wanted to make better for their kids. It was THAT good… It was SO great that people were willing to risk dying to get there. Immigrants were able to start with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and a dream in their hearts and build a life like nowhere else in the world.”

You can almost hear the kids oo-ing and ah-ing as if they’re listening to a story of Neverland. After all, who ever heard of such a magnificent place on Earth? Well… maybe Camelot, but that was a place of fable… maybe the United States of America was, too…

“They had a rich history by throwing off the bonds of a powerful king and establishing a government like none other – ever,” his rasping voice says between hacking cough spasms from the black lung. At least The Leaders gave him pain pills, many others were not so lucky – they were not going to waste money on the underlings. “The people chose their leaders and ruled themselves through those leader. Those fortunate enough to be born there lived in a society that was open and free,” Others around the globe who were oppressed by their leaders were liberated by these Americans. Americans were a people of great generosity and virtue. And that made them hated.”

Yet that Golden Land disappeared…

And that is where the elder will tell the children the ‘cautions’ they had to learn should there ever be another land of that caliber again.

“The system broke down because those charged with listening to the people and acting in their best interest grew too full of themselves and took matters into their own hands.” You can hear the children gasp again. Little hands shot up all around the group asking how they could let that happen. It seems so obvious to the little ones that mistakes should not have been made… steps should have been taken to protect the way of life… to prevent them from lives in the coal mines as slaves for The True Leaders.

The elder tried to explain… “Those who were supposed to question the leaders for the people… the media they were called… fell in love with the leaders and failed to do their job. The judiciary… those who were supposed to protect their Constitution… thought they knew better than the people and their representatives and rewrote the Founding Document to fit THEIR views rather than the views of The People.”

More gasps.

“The structure of the country was sound, but through a couple hundred years there were those who thought they could make it better by changing it piecemeal.”

“Where can we go to find a place like that today…” one of the children asked. “How can we escape the mines mommy and daddy are dying in?” the little one asked with tears in her eyes.

“There is no place like that anymore,” the elder admitted, the tears in his eyes, too. “America was the last, best hope for mankind… They were the shining country on the hill…” Gasps and more tears…