Thursday's Quote

Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
-Thomas Sowell

Politicians are good at blowing smoke up our collective bums. Most will say whatever they need to say to get or keep their positions of power. While I like to believe there are honorable men and women in political office, they would be the exception to the rule. This is nothing new; it's been going on since Man first invented government.

In America, the only solution I know of is vigilance. As you know (if you are a product of the public school system...maybe not), we were founded on the concept of a government of the people. The idea of self-governance comes with a certain level of responsibility. "We the People" unfortunately, have been lacking. For too long we have allowed the people in office to slowly gain power and erode our liberties, while we sat around on our smoke-filled asses.

The person at a "One Nation" rally with a "Communist Party USA" banner spouting off their blatant desire to bring America down may be totally repulsive to me, but they aren't, in my opinion, the true enemy. The real enemy is APATHY. We sit on the sidelines, listening to and buying into the same empty rhetoric, and we do nothing.

We are told we have to spend money to get out of debt, and we just nod our heads, and continue watching TV. We are told that to save the free market system we have to abandon the free market system. To preserve our free society, we have to sacrifice some of our freedoms.

We see stories about homes being seized via eminent domain and given to private companies, because the shopping centers they build will yield more tax revenues. We see stories about a man being charged a fine because he had the audacity of growing vegetables on his private property, and giving them away to his neighbors. We just shrug our shoulders and change channels, because it doesn't affect us directly.

We lost that vigilance. We lost the drive of American Patriotism. It was cut out of our schools, out of our history, out of our everyday lives, leaving an empty hole in the soul of America. It really isn't surprising that something else moved in to fill the vacuum.