Column for July 19, 2012

If you are like me, you look around you, watch the news, and wonder why you even bother with some things.  Quite honestly, I have been trying not to be so cynical lately.  Since I only have one column per week in which to express my opinions, I don’t want to take that one opportunity and rail on the same things time after time.  Sure, there are some core messages and values to which I do and always will adhere.  However, I don’t want to make every column about how Obama, Congress, the Supreme Court, our Governor, government, high taxes, and socialism all stink and how far from the vision of the Founding Fathers we have strayed as a nation.

Sometimes, I want to withdraw from my passions about politics and religion.  I would rather not care about church doctrine, good government, and the direction in which our nation is heading.  I would rather spend the time that I invest into writing this column and doing my television show into doing some stock trading, taking a college class, or holding my three-month-old.  My infant son has quite a personality at three months.  He smiles and laughs constantly, is fascinated by the world around him, and even gives me looks with his eyes while he is suckling on a baby bottle that reflect the joy he is already showing at that early age.  I would rather be watching a toddler TV show with my three-year-old, who asks me all the time, “Daddy, will you lay down and watch Caillou with me?”  He loves to lie on my bed and watch his favorite PBS cartoon on my television.  I would even rather be watching some chick flick or TV show with my bride.  As I write this, she is watching “The Bachelorette” without me.  When I am stuck in a hotel room for work on a Monday night and it is Bachelor or Bachelorette season, I even watch the show in my hotel room just so I can talk to my sweetie and feel connected to her.   I don’t mean to exclude my nine-year-old, but he is usually in bed by the time I sit down to compose my rants. 

I would rather have no concerns about my town, my county, my state, or my country.  I would rather not ponder the dangers of capitulating to radical Islam, treaties that have no real benefit to America but rather usurp the Constitution, the sprint current towards socialism, the upcoming election, or useless laws that only serve to leave a legacy or restrict freedom.  I still have concerns about things other than politics and religion, though.  Actually, I was thankful today for the beating the economy has taken.  I just got a great interest rate for a mortgage refinance that is going to knock at least five years off the length of my loan and keep my monthly payment the same or lower than it has been for ten years.  If President Obama and a liberal Congress had not run our economy into the ground, I would not have been able to get such a low interest rate.  Still, I would rather have a booming economy, since it is better for the country as a whole.

I would rather count down the days until I take my family on a vacation to Great Wolf Lodge than read the news about how Governor Beverly Perdue just signed another thirty-eight bills into law and yet vetoed the state budget recently.  There are another twenty bills on her desk on which she must take a decision.  Fifty-eight pieces of legislation passed along to the Governor?  As I looked over the 38 already signed, I see a lot of stiffening this penalty, making that crime carry a harsher sentence, blah, blah, blah. 

Important works of legislation will probably be better worked and passed in 2013, after the next election.  For instance, I can’t comprehend the US House of Representatives attempting to repeal Obamacare recently.  It is a foregone conclusion that such a bill, even though passed by the House, will never make it through the Senate, much less through President Obama.  Such serious legislation needs to be passed with a conservative Congress and President.  Well, the same applies to the State of North Carolina when it comes to voter ID laws, dealing with illegal immigration, and spending.

I suppose that I could rail on how President Obama just bypassed legislation concerning welfare requirements with an illegal executive order after hypocritically threatening the Supreme Court over the possibility of overturning legislation that was duly passed into law.  Then again, this type of stuff is really getting old, and hopefully, short lived.

Sure, things such as these cheese me off no end.  I truly wish that I could just ignore them, go about my merry way, and be blissfully oblivious to it all.  But if I did that, I would be ignoring who I am and was created to be.

Column for Feb. 7, 2008

Are there any Patriots left? Not if you are a Giant or love the U.S.

I was doubly dismayed at watching the Super Bowl on Sunday night. Not only did the New England Patriots blow a perfect season, I saw some corollaries that just saddened me. The New York Giants did not win The Super Bowl. The Patriots lost the game. There is a difference. The Patriots did not come in with their "A game". They seemed to be just going through the motions of game play except for a brief period in the fourth quarter. They were a much better team than they exhibited on the field.

I see a close parallel in today's culture. True American patriots are not coming to the game field with their best efforts. True patriots are not making the plays needed to secure victory. The effort just is not there. As a result, their opponents in the political realm are excelling and may very well win. For the record, I do not consider a former Muslim who currently attends a cultic "Christian" congregation and has a middle name of Hussein or the wife of a disgraced former President, both of which are admitted socialists by actions if not by name, to be patriots. I consider them to be the enemy.

I also do not consider liberally minded men who pretend to be conservatives to be patriots, either. When I see men running for the Republican Party's nomination for President who author bills that squash freedom of speech, oppose tax cuts, do not oppose gun bans, support amnesty for illegal aliens, desire to treat our war time enemies better than we treat our own soldiers, support increased spending and large government, and have just recently somewhat come to grips with some core conservative principles, I do not see patriots.

I may be biased, and I admit it wholeheartedly when it comes to this subject. One reason that I do not consider Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee to be patriots in the truest sense of the word is because I have been studying a lot lately about the American Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution. As a matter of fact, I have been teaching on the subject on a weekly basis for months. I have done extensive reading behind people like John Adams, John Locke, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Roger Sherman, and a host of others. The courage of men who "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" are far from those we have today. Basically, the true patriots of today, if there are any left, have failed to show up on the game field.

I can not, in all good conscience, vote for most of the men who are running for President this year. I would rather be stabbed to death with a plastic fork than vote for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. If anyone truly believes that they would be good for this nation, then they must not have ever studied economics, the founding documents of this nation, and have no idea why we are a republic, not a democracy, nor a socialist nation. I have a hard time believing that anyone would purposely choose socialism over liberty.

I have an equally hard time voting for John McCain, who is certainly not a conservative. I have seen so many errant decisions on his part that I have a hard time discerning any vestiges of conservatism left in the man. Mitt Romney, though very articulate, is still a relative newcomer to conservatism. Quite honestly, I have misgivings about his loyalties, as well. Though Mike Huckabee is an evangelical Christian and ordained Baptist minister, I still dislike some of his soft stances on a few areas. Though I do not question his loyalty to God, I do question his loyalty to our form of government.

Even my first choice for President, Ron Paul, has some areas with which I strongly disagree. The more I study the U.S. government, our national heritage, and our founding documents, the more I am willing to overlook some areas of disagreement in order to cast a vote for a return to those values. He is certainly the only candidate espousing these same values and standing by them.

Alas, there are not more patriots in this nation that will vote as I will. This year, I refuse to hold my nose and cast yet another vote for the lesser of two evils. Then again, it may be the evil of two lessers. I don't know. What I do know is that just as I saw the New England Patriots blow a perfect football season, fail to show up to play their best, and allowed their opponents to take advantage of their weaknesses, I am seeing the exact same thing in our nation and have for years. Good, strong patriots seem to be in short supply, both in politics and in football.