Holding the Handle

These columns and others by astute observers have summarized many problems that our nation is facing. At times it seems as if the difficulties are so numerous that we can’t resolve them all. We can’t seem “to get a handle” on our current situation because it’s too difficult to grasp. Fiscal, social, economic and political problems are overwhelming us. Although each issue may appear to stand alone, they are all inter-related and interconnected. The linkage is rather clear if one lifts the hood and peeks underneath it. Just as health issues in one part of the human body can impact other vital functions, the national sickness is similar.

Clearly if we focus on the issues and problems, we will have to duct tape our heads to stop them from exploding. You can easily observe how broad the scope is for difficulties we face by monitoring your email threads. Every day seems to include a new outrage by the government wherein some typical citizen is abused by either government power or official indifference. I have discovered the secret handle that allows me to deal with all these diverse problems. I have been blessed to “get a handle on the issues.” Strengthen your grip because here we go.

Faith is vital for coping with the numerous wheels that seem to be flying off our nation and our society. The opposite of faith is despair which leads to inertia and passivity. Faith in God, faith in the future, and faith in your fellow patriots are all reservoirs of strength as you confront the chaos. Progressives (socialists, communists, statists) gleefully demean people of faith while at the same time failing to understand that their baseless hope in the power and beneficence of government is also faith-based. Sometimes it appears that their faith exceeds ours because they never quit despite numerous examples of the failure of their faith in government.

Freedom is the cornerstone of the handle….the glue that holds it together. While faith is necessary for life, freedom is critical for living. One must have the maneuverability to react to circumstances, and flexibility is nearly impossible when one’s freedom to think, to act and to organize has been severely curtailed by the state or social convention. We have witnessed that freedom is fleeting and becomes more endangered every day. So, we must positively capitalize on our remaining freedom to sound the alarms for our communities and our loved ones. Some of us have a tendency to under-estimate our freedom and resist “making waves,” but we’ll never get the envelope to the intended recipient if we are too timid to push it. Movements are started and expanded as more people choose to exercise their freedom.

Fidelity is a derivative of faith, but in the context of a crumbling nation, it references trust and loyalty. It is important that we not get caught-up in the movement and superficially support positions that we may not hold dear. During the past few years of my efforts for liberty, I have encountered legions of people who give lip service to freedom and constitutional government yet…at crunch time they are unwilling to let go of certain programs or big-government policies. Their faltering attitudes undermine the movement and diminish the impact because the numbers of supporters are not real. They are imaginary.

Before committing your “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” to a movement be absolutely certain that you have thought through the positions and will stand for its principles….despite fierce opposition.

Force is a fundamental aspect of societies and nations. Force is the primary tool of government to assure compliance with the various rules and laws of the community, state or nation. Our Framers understood that government embodied force as the basic component for implementing its policies and programs. Invariably the force of the government conflicts with the liberty of the individual which is why our wise designers sought to limit the size and reach of government. When governments exceed their legitimate purposes and become oppressive, the people may have to resort to force to reinstitute their basic liberties. Force should always be the last resort because by its very nature, it is destructive. When the power of the state grows too large, legitimate measures for correction are often ineffective. The state will either co-opt the dissenting movement with false promises or forcibly crush it. Force is part of the “handle” because the restorers should understand its importance to the government and the potential necessity for using it to recapture the Founding dream. Force should be avoided whenever possible, but astute patriots will always be aware of its presence and be prepared to utilize it when necessary. They key word is “prepared.” Force should not be the product of mob frenzy, but should only be judiciously employed as a last resort.

Faith, freedom, fidelity and force can be valuable tools for coping with the surrounding chaos if we work for the best and are prepared for the worst. It is absolutely critical that each of us look inward and precisely define our limits and our visions. Failure to do so will lead to tragedy.

cearlwriting@hotmail.com

www.littlestuff-minoosha.blogspot.com

Steeple Chase

Recently I drove from my home in Northwest Ohio to Elizabethtown, Kentucky (about an hour south of Louisville) for a speaking engagement. My wife traveled with me as we left of Friday afternoon, spent Friday night with our daughter and her family near West Chester, Ohio, then drove to E-town on Saturday and returned to the Dayton Airport on Sunday (Pat flew to Washington D.C. and I went home). The Sunday morning 3.5 hour drive from Elizabethtown to Dayton was revealing. It was a beautiful sunny day, and we passed hordes of little towns in addition to Louisville, Cincinnati and Dayton during our drive. We also drove by many fast-food restaurants.

During our 207 mile trek we passed many churches. Their steeples pierced the air on this glorious Sunday morning. We left E-town at approximately 9:30am in order to arrive in time for Pat’s 2:30pm flight. We must have driven by nearly 200 churches in that short time, but very few of the parking lots were full. Many of the off-road fast-food establishments were quite busy, however. The contrasting scenes of the plastic restaurants versus the brick, clapboard and stucco churches struck me as symbolic of the issues confronting our nation at this time. My Saturday speech was entitled “Why Liberty? Why Now?” and focused on the absolute necessity of liberty for the health of our faith, our families and our freedom. Yet….our northern drive on that Sunday morning suggested that faith and family were losing their importance for us just as I feared our liberty might be. We have become a nation of people engaged in “trivial pursuits” apparently with little concern about enduring principles or important matters.

Just as our liberties are being eroded by increasing government meddling, our faith may be undermined by our greater reliance on government for many of our basic needs. It is government involvement, too, that has weakened our families by creating a plethora of programs that shift our reliance from family support systems to government bureaucracies. Those lonely steeples that adorned the skyline along Route 65, Route 71 and Route 75 are stark illustrations of how our government and all its noxious side effects have diminished the importance of institutions and beliefs that our ancestors held dear. Our forefathers died for faith, family and freedom, and this generation appears to be willingly complicit in their devaluation. The all-encompassing, all providing, all powerful government has replaced Almighty God, a strong family bond and individual liberty. And many of us have allowed it with nary a whimper.

Faith can be renewed by carefully considering the wonders around us, or it can be jarringly introduced via an epiphany. Family’s importance can be preserved through conscious efforts and continual outreaching and support—freely given—for one another. To reclaim our liberty is more difficult. We must fight for it. We must rescue our freedom from the grasping clutches of a too-powerful government. For me and I suspect for many others, faith and family are integral components for freedom. I believe that I alone could endure the coming serfdom, but I do not want my children and grandchildren to suffer the indignities and repression. My personal faith in a just and merciful Lord moves me to be worthy of His gift and His grace. Liberty is a gift directly from Him in my view, and to ignore its importance in everyone’s life is to deny His Lordship. A support system of some nature, and a burning passion or faith of some sort is vital for preserving, defending or recapturing freedom.

Our new technologies are terrific resources for retrieving data or for instant communication with others all over the globe. The danger is that so much of our personal communication is becoming digitally mediated. We may have thousands of “friends’ but may not recognize them on the street. Our bonds of mutual support become somewhat tenuous because our relationships are momentary and fleeting, and our commitment to one another is probably not so firm. We may share ideals and ideas. We fear the same outcomes and dangers, but we do not KNOW one another. Thus, for our conviction for freedom to thrive we must build stronger ties with our families, our friends….and our digital associates. The floating “zeros and ones” in the ether resemble the lonely spires of the little churches scattered across the landscape. For freedom to prevail we must rebind the bonds that hold us together. For great undertakings to succeed there must be trust….in our leaders, in our fellow laborers and in our purpose. Trust can only be built through knowledge and personal contact.

Time is working against us as we attempt to save our republic. To be victorious we should first restore the foundational elements that we will need if we are successful. We must rebuild our family relationships, renew our commitments of faith and to our Lord, and strengthen our ties with other patriots who are dedicated to our nation’s rebuilding. This task is too difficult to undertaken for small token numbers of passionate people. We need the Lord’s assistance, our families’ blessings and our people’s strength before we can claim victory for future generations. To reach back to the old hymn: “Blest be the ties that bind.”

cearlwriting@hotmail.com

www.littlestuff-minoosha.blogspot.com

  

Potentates and Eunuchs

Potentates surrounded themselves with eunuchs for a number of reasons. One primary purpose was to assure that the “help” didn’t get too frisky with leader’s harem. Another reason was to maintain a bureaucracy and clerical or administrative staff that wouldn’t be distracted from their appointed duties by carnal desires. It seemed to be a mutually beneficial arrangement (unless you were a eunuch) because the system survived for centuries in various cultures throughout the globe. In today’s political environment there are some who would consider the ancient relationship to be barbaric or, at the very least, incredibly backward. But…politically speaking, nothing has changed despite the enlightened leadership of the 21^st Century. Even here…in the United States of America … we have a modernized version of potentates and eunuchs.

Although the Constitution of the United States was designed to place the power of the nation in the hands of the people, we have evolved into a barely-recognizable distortion of the Framers’ original purpose. Numerous fiefdoms have emerged and each is the playground for various potentates and oligarchs. Congress, the Administration, Supreme Court and the countless bureaucracies all have become fertile ground for satraps and potentates. In historical times the eunuchs were key members of the bureaucracy, but in modern days the people have become political eunuchs as their power hungry petty rulers abuse them.  The historical role of eunuchs has been transformed into one of anatomically-deficient potentates. Every member of Congress, the House and the Senate, has carved out a little niche of power, and the members of their staffs and the committee staffs each has a little power fiefdom.

You may accuse me of hyperbole, but if you consider how local officials and their staffs jealously guard their turf and protocols, you can extrapolate the same attitudes (on steroids) to the state and federal apparatchiks. Though they may fill the roles formerly held by eunuchs, they have in the current situation developed into mini-potentates. If you as a taxpaying citizen seek to resolve an issue or receive an answer, you may be treated as if you were the lowliest of serfs….unworthy of the satrap’s undivided attention. You are often made to feel as if you are an unwelcome intruder who disrupts the important business of the bureaucracy. You may feel as if you’re the skunk at the picnic. Private enterprise has an institutional investment in pleasing the customer and making her feel welcome. When we encounter someone at a business who is less than helpful or rude, we may react by taking our business to a competitor. Government agencies have no competition, and when we find someone who is particularly polite or helpful, we are surprised.

Eunuchs were notoriously disdainful of those who were beneath their exalted stations. They generally reserved their best behavior for the potentates, their senior counselors and the royal family. So it is today as many of our public service eunuchs treat their ethically-challenged political masters fawningly while reluctantly performing their tasks for the commoners. Some might argue that the real eunuchs in American government are the elected officials. They appear to lack testosterone and courage while constantly dodging important decisions. The bureaucracy, on the other, has become emboldened and dictatorial because of the Congressional and legislative practices of passing enabling legislation. This type of legislative action merely lays out the framework and the overall purpose of the act and empowers the bureaucracy to “flesh it out” by writing rules, regulations and protocols. In essence the eunuchs call the shots, and the potentates fiddle and fuss. Their roles have been reversed.

So, in the final analysis our public servants who fill the roles of eunuchs behave as if they’re potentates, and the leadership while living the lifestyles of satraps actually have melted into unprincipled eunuchs. There is one glaring exception to this observation in today’s political landscape. Our President, Barrack Hussein Obama, has assumed the persona of a despotic potentate. He barks orders and expects others to jump in compliance. When they do not readily yield to his demands, he expresses his frustration and anger like one would expect from a tin-pot dictator. We can imagine him screaming “off with their heads” in another era. In reality, though, he represents the eunuch class much more effectively than he does the potentates. His quirkiness, anger and petulance are more fitting for a functionary than they are for a true leader. Perhaps he has earned the operative title of “The Eunuch Wannabe Tyrant.” I realize that belittling him in this manner may be a bit over the top because he has, indeed, generated and motivated enough activity that has radically damaged our republic. He has achievements that would be envied by any deranged potentate and gleefully enforced by any power-hungry state eunuch.

In a real sense Obama has become the perfectly merged embodiment of the eunuch and the potentate. He is an historical anachronism who has through his perfidy managed to undermine and dislodge critical elements of the social and political fabric of the nation. His petty nature combined with his grandiose socialist schemes has driven him to shake the basic foundations of our country. Those who preceded him prepared the stage, but His Eminent Potentate the Eunuch-in-Chief has dropped the curtain and is playing the leading role.

cearlwriting@hotmail.com

www.littlestuff-minoosha.blogspot.com