# 107
“1s and 2s”
IN DEFENSE OF COMMON SENSE
By Hetty Gray
February 21, 2012
Today’s date is chock full of 1s and 2s. Applied to our Bill of Rights, we see freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. Both of these are under attack and because so few of us are familiar with the U.S. Constitution, we tune into the ball games, the races, or the movies and leave the politics to the politicians. Bad decision.
Borne out of extreme control and censorship by The Crown, the colonists drafted those rights to allow people to be able to think for themselves and to express their thoughts. It was the right to speak out against an overbearing government that brought a lump to the throats of those people who had lived under an overarching government with no protected mechanism through which to complain or to petition for redress. It was the right to take up arms that held sway over a populace that was under the thumb of the British soldiers that was so prized by the United States’ first citizens.
By the way, it assures us freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion. And the people of God rose up as one… Will they? Basically, those within the government who target religion see it as competition. If religion guides us, government cannot.
As for current attitudes toward the Second Amendment, does the term “Fast and Furious” come to mind? Just who do those folks want not to have guns? Criminals will get weapons whether they are legal or not, and a license is a joke to an armed felon.
How about “gun free zones”? We see that term thrown around a lot. I pose one question for reflection. What would have happened if a teacher or a professor in either Columbine High School or Virginia Tech had been armed? Maybe you need to ask the families of the victims what they think.
Like a pig in a poke, whenever the government takes a hand, the result is not what you expect and involves a big hand — one seldom worthy of it synonym, applause.
Bigger is not better, so an individual’s rights need to be guaranteed. You know for yourself that local issues are local. If yielded to either the state or the national level, the ensuing messes would be unfathomable. Talk about a communication crisis! That would be one, for sure!
The minute you hear federal officials claim “they know what’s best for you,” run for it. Name one government entity that makes money. Hmmmmm…. No answer? That’s understandable. Let’s just look at one example. USPS is so up to its ears in pensions that it loses billions (yes with a B) of dollars each year and now we hear that a single stamp will be 50 cents!
I don’t see FedEx or UPS losing money, do you? No. That’s because they plan for the future of their employees by economizing, organizing, and simply performing better to make — now, hold your breath — a profit. Egad! The PROFIT is the word that so many in the government decry as if it were evil.
Well, if it weren’t for “evil profit,” no small business would exist and we would all be shopping, for want of another name, at the equivalent of the coalmine company store.
I heard an analyst state that if you were to rate government programs, most of them are losers and have been for years. Yet, they stay on the books and continue to suck up your tax money. I wonder if the annual Golden Fleece Awards still exist. These went to the government programs that best fleeced the public largesse. Looking back, if they hadn’t been so sad, they would have been funny as all get out.
Tightening the belt doesn’t seem to be SOP in government. Have you heard Congressional patriots who hold out for cutting spending labeled as real “obstructionists”? Those name callers are right, you know. Yeah, that’s what they are — obstructionists. They are busy trying to add logs to the levee while the critics are opening the spending floodgates! Get the picture?
If we don’t support the Senators and Congressmen (and women) who refuse to accept more spending without equal or greater cuts, we get just what we deserve — bankruptcy! Moreover, that bankruptcy will not at a personal level, either, but at a national level.
When the nation was founded, Benjamin Franklin suggested the turkey for the national bird. Well, sorry Mr. Eagle, but if things keep going the way they are right now, the Founding Fathers should have let Ben have his way.
The current administration struts about and makes a lot of noise; but, if given permission, will relegate us to a real turkey — fried, as in Greece. That’s not a faux pas in spelling, either. I didn’t mean fried in “grease,” I meant fried like GREECE. Consider what’s happening now in Greece.
Over the past years, the Greek people became accustomed to working less, retiring very early, and looking to their national government for their every need. It was a shortsighted and ill-conceived plan. Alas, the government well — predictably — ran dry, and lending Greece more money is not high on the European Union’s list. Other countries simply do not want to pay the Greek’s bills or finance their enormous debt.
Socrates and Plato must be rolling over in their graves! Let’s vow that OUR Founding Fathers do not suffer the same fate. Contact your Congress people and tell them to fight for solvency. Truly, it’s the only solution. If you owe a lot of money, you don’t up the limit on your credit card and spend more, do you? Well, maybe you don’t, but the government does!
I shudder at the folks who would answer “yes” to that question. You cannot spend your way out of financial trouble. Yet, that’s precisely what this administration has touted as financially prudent for the past three years and now gasoline is closing in on $4 a gallon – nearly twice as expensive than when they took control. When gasoline was in the $3.50 range in the 1990s, the media was all over it. Where are they today? Anyone knows that as gasoline rise, so follow do prices for consumer goods and commodities.
We are in a hole, people — A BIG HOLE! Isn’t it about time we stopped digging? Gee, I had no idea THAT was the meaning of “shovel ready”! Did you? Think about it.