Thursday, December 31, 2009

This year is almost "in the can"

I am thankful for this country. For it's being a light of freedom and helping other countries experience democracy. I am thankful for my family who serve and continue to serve. I am thankful for the men and women in the armed forces who put themselves in harm's way to protect us and freedom everywhere. I am thankful for God, the almighty, the Alpha and Omega. I am thankful for the founding fathers who envisioned a free and just democracy.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Alone again (unnaturally)

Spent Christmas alone and snowed in. It was okay, I got to watch my Chargers win again and clench the second seed for the playoffs. Laurie's in California, Eliza is in Texas and though Alex was going from Grand Forks to Kaycee's parents, he couldn't get down the country roads in the storm to pick me up. We had a little Christmas dinner at Paradiso's last night and exchanged gifts. New Years might be about the same. But alls well. I hope everybody had a Great Christmas and let's have a better New Year where we actually talk to one-another. I promise to try.

Does this bother anyone else?

I was on my Facebook account and my liberal relative made a comment about never wanting to hear the name Sarah Palin again. Her friends all chimed in blah, blah, blah. They said some things like how can anyone listen to Rush, Beck et al and not see how bad they were. Conservatives are so stupid. Same old stuff.

I just started thinking. How did it get so bad? There was a time when, although Dems and Reps disagreed on some things, they still held to some shared core beliefs in the foundational ideals that formed America. Sure the founding fathers fought over slavery and other things, and we have had to fight about Imperialism vs Isolationalism. States rights vs Federal rights. But all-in-all, The American dream was alive and we could all stand together as Americans.

But now it seems like we conservatives have the ideals of personal responsibility, free market solutions, private property, secure borders, and strong national defense. And it seems like the left is totally opposed to this. But it confuses me, because Democrats still start and grow businesses. Still buy houses, cars, boats, and vacations. Still want their children to be safe in the neighborhood and school, and want the US government to be the US government.

But no one on either side can seem to speak to anyone on the other side in a rational conversation. If we want to talk about free market, they say we’re greedy and I have to admit, that unchecked, the greedy person will take advantage of things. But they want to help the needy and we scream “welfare state” even though the majority of conservatives believe in helping the less fortunate.
I know what any of you will say to these examples, but the point is, neither side will listen to the other.

Am I making sense?

There is less animosity at a Packer-Viking football game than there is in today’s political discussion.

I’m not blaming the left for this, I thing both sides are to blame. We have people in Washington on both sides who spend too much and take unfair advantage of the system for their own benefit. I’m no longer sure if either side being in control is the answer. I know another party or two isn’t. Somehow we as citizens have to realize how badly we have been divided by the ones in power. The grass roots movement has to be more than just a move to the right or left, It has to be a move towards us taking intelligent control of the systems and stop being pawns who are kept at each other’s throats while our pockets are being picked and this country is systematically destroyed.

My challenge is for all of us to start reaching out to the others and getting some serious thought and dialog started.