During the last several years, I have been increasingly embarrassed by the number of Americans who have sold out to the well-intentioned but misguided concept of COMPASSION. It is an age-old deception passed down through the generations that says if we are to be kind, we must be willing to compromise our standards. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, true compassion, the self-sacrificing noble compassion can only be rooted in solid, absolute but merciful moral code.
The question is, what is the best way to alleviate the suffering or hardship of others. Pain and suffering are part of life, and not necessarily the worst part. Though no one desires pain and hardship, many people around the world manage to endure it with joy, or at least acceptance knowing that good always follows pain … eventually.
It saddens me that in today’s America, we seem to have forgotten the benefits of struggle, or working toward a goal, of fighting through disease, of sacrificing for the good of others. This is the essence of compassion.
Instead, we have opted for the shortcuts. Problem is, “No pain – no gain” is completely accurate! We are left with a nation of Americans who have no idea what it cost to build America into a nation where, at least before the current administration, people of all races, religions, and backgrounds could live together in relative harmony. We are no longer taught of the price the Founding Fathers paid for their rebellion against the status quo. Of course, humans are imperfect, and today’s educators and political liberals choose to focus on their imperfections rather than the enormous gifts they gave and the heavy costs they paid.
Now, there are many whose lives reflect the same selfless sacrifice in service to others. Recently, police have come under irrational scrutiny because of some ideologues political agenda. Of course, there are imperfections and abuses. As long as they are human, that will be the case. But we dare not overlook the tremendous personal sacrifices made by our first responders and military service members (and families.)
As we celebrate this weekend, I pray we remember … the tremendous cost of freedom that allows us the many choices we have, and it is my prayer that we will work to overcome evil with good…each of us…one kindness at a time!
Father God, many in our nation have turned away from You, but you know each one and love us still. Father God, please turn our hearts back to You in gratitude for all You have provided. Heal the divides between neighbors. Restore our yearning for self-reliance with You as our Source and our Guide … for the sake of the lost people of the world.
“In 1807, Britain introduced a series of trade restrictions to impede on-going American trade with France, with which Britain was at war. The U.S. contested these restrictions as illegal under international law. The British did not wish to allow the Americans to trade with France, regardless of their theoretical right as neutrals to do so.”(Wikipedia) The tensions increased and the wealthy politicians in Britain exercised their influence and put pressure on the America to bow to their wishes. An unstated but powerful motivation for the Americans was the desire to uphold their newly won national honor in the face of what they considered to be British tests and insults.
It is this war “whereby the fledging, in-fighting, unprepared baby United States cemented its status as an independent nation by defeating the most powerful military power in the western world. The final battle waged in Baltimore, Maryland, was the one celebrated in Francis Scott Key’s famous poem, which was made into our national anthem: “Star Spangled Banner”. READ MORE
The Battle for Ft McHenry
The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire, including those of present-day Canada.[nb 2] The Americans declared war in 1812 for a number of reasons, including a desire for expansion into the Northwest Territory, trade restrictions because of Britain’s ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant sailors into the Royal Navy, British support of American Indian tribes against American expansion, and the humiliation of American honour. Until 1814, the British Empire adopted a defensive strategy, repelling multiple American invasions of the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. However, the Americans gained control over Lake Erie in 1813, seized parts of western Ontario, and destroyed Tecumseh’s dream of an Indian confederacy. In the Southwest General Andrew Jackson humbled the Creek nation at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend but with the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, the British adopted a more aggressive strategy, sending in three large armies along with more patrols. British victory at the Battle of Bladensburg in August 1814 allowed the British to capture and burn Washington, D.C. American victories in September 1814 and January 1815 repulsed British invasions of New York, Baltimore and New Orleans.” CONTINUE READING
Scribbled lyrics by the inspired F.S.Key
“During the rainy night, Key had witnessed the bombardment and observed that the fort’s smaller “storm flag” continued to fly, but once the shell and Congreve rocket barrage had stopped, he would not know how the battle had turned out until dawn. By then, the storm flag had been lowered and the larger flag had been raised.
During the bombardment, HMS Erebus provided the “rockets red glare”. HMS Meteor provided at least some of the “bombs bursting in air”.
Key was inspired by the American victory and the sight of the large American flag flying triumphantly above the fort. This flag, with fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, came to be known as the Star Spangled Banner Flag and is today on display in the National Museum of American History, a treasure of the Smithsonian Institution. It was restored in 1914 by Amelia Fowler, and again in 1998 as part of an ongoing conservation program.
Aboard the ship the next day, Key wrote a poem on the back of a letter he had kept in his pocket. At twilight on September 16, he and Skinner were released in Baltimore. He completed the poem at the Indian Queen Hotel, where he was staying, and entitled it “Defence of Fort McHenry.” (Wikipedia)
“The Star-Spangled Banner” was written in a time of great national crisis. The Capital of the United States had fallen to the enemy. Its most important Federal buildings were charred ruins in the wake of the British occupation. There seemed to be nothing separating Britain’s vaunted military power from complete victory, except the small bodies of scattered and disorganized militia. American morale was at a low ebb. It required a bold man at that time to prophesy the spiritual rebirth of the American Nation as Francis Scott Key did in “The Star-Spangled Banner.”CONTINUE READING
The Star Spangled Banner Lyrics
By Francis Scott Key 1814
Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
We still enjoy more liberty than any other nation, but that arguably has begun to change. The Stars and Stripes still wave over this land, but are Americans still “the brave?” Do we have the courage to maintain our liberty?
This week, we have witnessed Egyptian people rising to the occasion and overthrowing the undesirable government we President Obama helped to install. They are fighting for their FREEDOM! Their courage is evident. Regardless how it turns out, I am impressed with their resolve. They want FREEDOM! Do we even realize our freedoms are being slid under the proverbial rug to disappear in time?
We hear a good deal nowadays about “a wall of separation” between church and state in America. To some people’s surprise, this phrase cannot be found in either the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. Actually, the phrase occurs in a letter from Thomas Jefferson, as a candidate for office, to an assembly of Baptists in Connecticut.
The first clause of the First Amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This clause is followed by guarantees of freedom of speech, of publication, of assembly, and of petitioning. These various aspects of liberty were lumped together in the First Amendment for the sake of convenience; Congress had originally intended to assign “establishment of religion” to a separate amendment because the relationships between state and church are considerably different from the civil liberties of speech, publication, assembly, and petitioning.
The purpose of the “Establishment Clause” was two-fold: (1) to prohibit Congress from imposing a national religion upon the people; and (2) to prohibit Congress (and the Federal government generally) from interfering with existing church-state relations in the several States. Thus the “Establishment Clause” is linked directly to the “Free Exercise Clause.” It was designed to promote religious freedom by forbidding Congress to prefer one religious sect over other religious sects. It was also intended, however, to assure each State that its reserved powers included the power to decide for itself, under its own constitution or bill of rights, what kind of relationship it wanted with religious denominations in the State. Hence the importance of the word “respecting”: Congress shall make no law “respecting,” that is, touching or dealing with, the subject of religious establishment.
In effect, this “Establishment Clause” was a compromise between two eminent members of the first Congress—James Madison and Fisher Ames. Representative Ames, from Massachusetts, was a Federalist. In his own State, and also in Connecticut, there still was an established church—the Congregational Church. By 1787–1791, an “established church” was one which was formally recognized by a State government as the publicly preferred form of religion. Such a church was entitled to certain taxes, called tithes, that were collected from the public by the State. Earlier, several other of Britain’s colonies had recognized established churches, but those other establishments had vanished during the Revolution.
Now, if Congress had established a national church—and many countries, in the eighteenth century, had official national churches—probably it would have chosen to establish the Episcopal Church, related to the Church of England. For Episcopalians constituted the most numerous and influential Christian denomination in the United States. Had the Episcopal Church been so established nationally, the Congregational Church would have been disestablished in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Therefore, Fisher Ames and his Massachusetts constituents in 1789 were eager for a constitutional amendment that would not permit Congress to establish any national church or disestablish any State church.
The motive of James Madison for advocating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was somewhat different. Madison believed that for the Federal government to establish one church—the Episcopal Church, say—would vex the numerous Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Quaker, and other religious denominations. After all, it seemed hard enough to hold the United States together in those first months of the Constitution without stirring up religious controversies. So Madison, who was generally in favor of religious toleration, strongly advocated an Establishment Clause on the ground that it would avert disunity in the Republic.
In short, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was not intended as a declaration of governmental hostility toward religion, or even of governmental neutrality in the debate between believers and non-believers. It was simply a device for keeping religious passions out of American politics. The phrase “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” was meant to keep the Congress from ever meddling in the disputes among religious bodies or interfering with the mode of worship……..MORE HERE
by Gerard W. Gawalt Gerard W. Gawalt is the manuscript specialist for early American history in the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
“The ruthless, supremely committed element of radical Islam we face today are not new to the United States of America.
More than two hundred years ago the newly established United States faced Muslim pirates that were the scourge of the Mediterranean Sea and a significant area of the North Atlantic. Their practice was to attack any and every ship and ransom the captives. Pirate ships and crews from the North African states of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers (the Barbary Coast) became the extortionists of the seas and presented a radically different threat to the young American nation.
“Before the United States obtained its independence in the American Revolution, 1775-83, American merchant ships and sailors had been protected from the ravages of the North African pirates by the naval and diplomatic power of Great Britain. British naval power and the tribute or subsidies Britain paid to the piratical states protected American vessels and crews. During the Revolution, the ships of the United States were protected by the 1778 alliance with France, which required the French nation to protect “American vessels and effects against all violence, insults, attacks, or depredations, on the part of the said Princes and States of Barbary or their subjects.”
“After the United States won its independence in the treaty of 1783, it had to protect its own commerce against dangers such as the Barbary pirates. As early as 1784 Congress followed the tradition of the European shipping powers and appropriated $80,000 as tribute to the Barbary states, directing its ministers in Europe, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, to begin negotiations with them. Trouble began the next year, in July 1785, when Algerians captured two American ships and the dey of Algiers held their crews of twenty-one people for a ransom of nearly $60,000.” (Gawalt)
“How many know that perhaps 1.5 million Europeans and Americans were enslaved in Islamic North Africa between 1530 and 1780? We dimly recall that Miguel de Cervantes was briefly in the galleys. But what of the people of the town of Baltimore in Ireland, all carried off by “corsair” raiders in a single night?
Some of this activity was hostage trading and ransom farming rather than the more labor-intensive horror of the Atlantic trade and the Middle Passage, but it exerted a huge effect on the imagination of the time—and probably on no one more than on Thomas Jefferson. Peering at the paragraph denouncing the American slave trade in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, later excised, I [Christopher Hitchens] noticed for the first time that it sarcastically condemned “the Christian King of Great Britain” for engaging in “this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers.” The allusion to Barbary practice seemed inescapable.”
“In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Great Britain to ask him by what right his nation attacked American ships and enslaved American citizens. He claimed that the right was founded on the laws of their prophet and that it was written in the Koran that all nations that didn’t acknowledge their authority were sinners, and that not only was it their right and duty to make war upon these sinners wherever they could be found, but to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Muslim slain in battle was guaranteed a place in Paradise. Despite this stunning admission of pre-meditated violence on non-Muslim nations, as well as the objections of numerous notable Americans, including George Washington, who warned that caving in was both wrong and would only further embolden their enemy, the United States Congress continued to buy off the Barbary Muslims with bribes and ransom money.
“They paid Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers upwards of one million dollars a year over the next fifteen years, which by 1800 amounted to 20% of the United States annual revenues. Jefferson was disgusted. To add insult to injury, when he was sworn in as the third president of the United States in 1801, the pasha of Tripoli sent him a note demanding an immediate payment of $225,000 plus $25,000 a year thereafter. That was when everything changed!
Jefferson let the pasha know in no uncertain terms what he could do with his demand. The pasha responded by chopping down the flagpole in front of the US Consulate and declaring war on the United States. Tunis, Morocco and Algiers followed suit.” (The Last Patriot, by Brad Thor)
“Thomas Jefferson, United States minister to France, opposed the payment of tribute, as he later testified in words that have a particular resonance today. In his autobiography, Jefferson wrote that in 1785 and 1786 he unsuccessfully “endeavored to form an association of the powers subject to habitual depredation from them. I accordingly prepared, and proposed to their ministers at Paris, for consultation with their governments, articles of a special confederation.” Jefferson argued that “The object of the convention shall be to compel the piratical States to perpetual peace.” Jefferson prepared a detailed plan for the interested states. “Portugal, Naples, the two Sicilies, Venice, Malta, Denmark and Sweden were favorably disposed to such an association,” Jefferson remembered, but there were “apprehensions” that England and France would follow their own paths, “and so it fell through.”
“Paying the ransom would only lead to further demands, Jefferson argued in letters to future presidents John Adams, then America’s minister to Great Britain, and James Monroe, then a member of Congress. As Jefferson wrote to Adams in a July 11, 1786, letter, “I acknolege [sic] I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace thro’ the medium of war.” Paying tribute will merely invite more demands, and even if a coalition proves workable, the only solution is a strong navy that can reach the pirates, Jefferson argued in an August 18, 1786, letter to James Monroe: “The states must see the rod; perhaps it must be felt by some one of them. . . . Every national citizen must wish to see an effective instrument of coercion, and should fear to see it on any other element than the water. A naval force can never endanger our liberties, nor occasion bloodshed; a land force would do both.” “From what I learn from the temper of my countrymen and their tenaciousness of their money,” Jefferson added in a December 26, 1786, letter to the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles, “it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them.”
“Jefferson’s plan for an international coalition foundered on the shoals of indifference and a belief that it was cheaper to pay the tribute than fight a war. The United States’s relations with the Barbary states continued to revolve around negotiations for ransom of American ships and sailors and the payment of annual tributes or gifts. Even though Secretary of State Jefferson declared to Thomas Barclay, American consul to Morocco, in a May 13, 1791, letter of instructions for a new treaty with Morocco that it is “lastly our determination to prefer war in all cases to tribute under any form, and to any people whatever,” the United States continued to negotiate for cash settlements. In 1795 alone the United States was forced to pay nearly a million dollars in cash, naval stores, and a frigate to ransom 115 sailors from the dey of Algiers. Annual gifts were settled by treaty on Algiers, Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli.
“When Jefferson became president in 1801 he refused to accede to Tripoli’s demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States. Although as secretary of state and vice president he had opposed developing an American navy capable of anything more than coastal defense, President Jefferson dispatched a squadron of naval vessels to the Mediterranean. As he declared in his first annual message to Congress: “To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . .”
The American show of force quickly awed Tunis and Algiers into breaking their alliance with Tripoli. The humiliating loss of the frigate Philadelphia and the capture of her captain and crew in Tripoli in 1803, criticism from his political opponents, and even opposition within his own cabinet did not deter Jefferson from his chosen course during four years of war. The aggressive action of Commodore Edward Preble (1803-4) forced Morocco out of the fight and his five bombardments of Tripoli restored some order to the Mediterranean. However, it was not until 1805, when an American fleet under Commodore John Rogers and a land force raised by an American naval agent to the Barbary powers, Captain William Eaton, threatened to capture Tripoli and install the brother of Tripoli’s pasha on the throne, that a treaty brought an end to the hostilities. Negotiated by Tobias Lear, former secretary to President Washington and now consul general in Algiers, the treaty of 1805 still required the United States to pay a ransom of $60,000 for each of the sailors held by the dey of Algiers, and so it went without Senatorial consent until April 1806. Nevertheless, Jefferson was able to report in his sixth annual message to Congress in December 1806 that in addition to the successful completion of the Lewis and Clark expedition, “The states on the coast of Barbary seem generally disposed at present to respect our peace and friendship.”
“In fact, it was not until the second war with Algiers, in 1815, that naval victories by Commodores William Bainbridge and Stephen Decatur led to treaties ending all tribute payments by the United States. European nations continued annual payments until the 1830s. However, international piracy in Atlantic and Mediterranean waters declined during this time under pressure from the Euro-American nations, who no longer viewed pirate states as mere annoyances during peacetime and potential allies during war. MORE HERE
“Among the more intriguing stories, the USS Philadelphia, a 44-gun Navy frigate, ran aground off Tripoli in October 1803. The Tripolitans forced the captain and crew to surrender, and they used the Philadelphia for harbor defense against the Americans. On Feb. 16, 1804, Lt. Stephen Decatur, using a captured Tripolitan boat, led a contingent of Marines to seize the Philadelphia and burn it. They also briefly captured Tripoli, but they didn’t recover the captain or crew. Decatur became the first military hero since the Revolution and became a commodore, who kicked more ass in the Second Barbary War in 1815. Tripoli was again captured, and the pirates surrendered in 1805. This is why the Marine Hymn has the phrase, “. . .to the shores of Tripoli.”
Thomas Jefferson understood the same thing Ronald Reagan understood … that the best position for negotiation is from a position of strength. He quickly realized that though he was pledged to “religious freedom,” the brand of Islam involved in this slave trade taught him Islam was not just a religion but a political system as well. The fact that President Obama continues to dismantle and understaff our military, and fail to give them a specific and clear “winnable” objective demonstrates either his lack of resolve OR his resolve to our destruction.
*NOTE: All notations to quoted text are done by blogsensebybarb for emphasis.
To my mind, this song captures the “fighting spirit” of the American people. It stirs the images of Old Glory flying over the bloodied battlefields of the Civil War and echoes the emboldened cries of the abolitionists and the newly freed slaves. If we close our eyes and listen, we can see the troops flooding onto the shores of Normandy. There is, however, also contained within these lyrics, a virtuous spirit, and righteous indignation aimed at the evils of slavery. Slavery continues today, but with a different face on either end. The Master is not big business, but the Government itself! And the slaves? Any of us who are dependent on the good graces, the finances of Uncle Sam.
So once again, we must rise as ABOLITIONISTS against the oppressive government. We must throw off the shackles and FREE OURSELVES …
BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage
where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning
of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires
of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar
in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence
by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
(Chorus)
I have read a fiery gospel writ
in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my contemners,
so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman,
crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.”
(Chorus)
He has sounded forth the trumpet
that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men
before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him!
be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
(Chorus)
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
(Chorus)
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,
Our God is marching on.
(Chorus)
Pretty “heavy” lyrics … Can you honestly sing along?
“What Makes an American”
(March 1939 – Atlantic Monthly) “To become an American is a process which resembles a conversion. It is not so much a new country that one adopts as a new creed. And in all Americans can be discerned some of the traits of those who have, at one time or another, abandoned an ancient faith for a new one.” By Raoul de Roussy de Sales
At the conclusion of Friday’s [18 Sep, 2001] service of prayer and remembrance at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., the congregation (which included President George W. Bush and former Presidents Clinton, Carter, and Ford) joined voices to sing Julia Ward Howe’s defiant anthem, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” For many, the singing of this hymn, which enjoins the American “hero” to “crush the serpent with his heel,” and to “die to make men free” signaled America’s willingness to retaliate against the recent terrorist assault.
“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” has buoyed Americans in conflict since it first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in February, 1862, during the Civil War. Julia Ward Howe, the wife of a prominent Boston abolitionist, had visited a Union Army camp in Virginia where she heard soldiers singing a tribute to the abolitionist John Brown (who had been hanged in 1859 for leading an attempted slave insurrection at Harper’s Ferry). A clergyman at the camp, aware that Howe occasionally wrote poetry, suggested that she craft new verses more appropriate to the Civil War effort, to be set to the same rousing tune.
As Howe later explained it, the verses came to her in a single night:
I went to bed and slept as usual, but awoke the next morning in the gray of the early dawn, and to my astonishment found that the wished-for lines were arranging themselves in my brain. I lay quite still until the last verse had completed itself in my thoughts, then hastily arose, saying to myself, I shall lose this if I don’t write it down immediately. I searched for an old sheet of paper and an old stub of a pen which I had had the night before, and began to scrawl the lines almost without looking, as I learned to do by often scratching down verses in the darkened room when my little children were sleeping. Having completed this, I lay down again and fell asleep, but not before feeling that something of importance had happened to me.
Soon afterwards, she submitted the poem to The Atlantic Monthly, which accepted it and paid her a fee of four dollars. After the verses appeared on the first page of the February, 1862, issue, they quickly caught on as the rallying anthem of the Union troops, and were sung frequently throughout the rest of the Civil War. Howe’s words later inspired American soldiers during World War II, and civil-rights activists during the sixties. Now it seems, as the United States girds itself for what President Bush has referred to as “the first war of the twenty-first century,” Americans are once again drawing encouragement from Howe’s resolute words. —Sage Stossel
One of the craziest things about this political system we have is how bassackwards it has become. From the time I was a little girl, my dad educated my brother and I concerning the REAL Democratic Party and the REAL Republican Party. He explained it like this:
The Democrats bill themselves as the “FRIENDS” of the poor, creating programs and policies that provide for their care. In the process, they simply enable these one-time slaves to simply change owners and enslave themselves to the government.
The Republicans, billed as friends of the Rich, are in fact, the friends of the poor, offering temporary help programs to get individuals and families through hard times, but help them find a better way, one NOT dependent on the government or anyone else.
Yes, the Senate, the Democrat controlled Senate has blocked the President’s Spending Jobs Bill!
Two elements of President Barack Obama’s jobs bill failed on procedural votes when Senators tried to move them as individual measures.
The chamber then plunged ahead on a long series of votes on amendments to a package of three appropriations bills before advancing the measure, setting up a vote on passage for the week of October 31.
A proposal to provide $35 billion to keep teachers and first responders from being laid off was the first portion of the president’s $447 billion obs proposal to receive an individual vote. It went down 50-50, short of the 60 needed for the Senate to take up the measure. MORE HERE
Be sober, be vigilant;
because your adversary the devil,
as a roaring lion, walks about,
seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8)
Have you ever noticed that lighting one match in a dark room is all one needs to chase the darkness away? One small flame and darkness is gone. It doesn’t require a spotlight or a bonfire, just one small match.
I am convinced that the ills of our nation run much deeper than our political ties. We have abandoned our faith. We have allowed IDOLS to be erected around our nation, and whether it’s celebrities, athletes, or even knowledge, they cannot replace faith. We have allowed our common ground of morality to be widdled away, sliver by sliver until there seems to be no common ground left (or right.)
I do not buy the fabrication of life as portrayed by the Left, because I believe the American people remain a people of faith. You see, it really is not about WHAT faith, because most major faiths have moral principles that are shared in common with others, with the exception of Islam. But that is no reason why Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, 7th Day Adventists … etc can’t come together on the common ground of the 10 Commandments or even the “Greatest Commandment.”
At age 16, George Washington began to accumulate and memorize what has become known as “George Washington’s Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.” In reality, George Washington did not compose these rules. “They are based on a set of rules composed by French Jesuits in 1595. Presumably they were copied out as part of an exercise in penmanship assigned by young Washington’s schoolmaster. The first English translation of the French rules appeared in 1640, and are ascribed to Francis Hawkins the twelve-year-old son of a doctor.”
The folks in biblical times wanted a summary of the commandments, kind of like us, they sought a shortcut. This is that discussion!
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied:
“‘Love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul
and with all your mind.’
This is the first and greatest commandment.
And the second is like it:
‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
All the Law and the Prophets
hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:36-40
If each Americanreconnected with their faith, and those who chose to live between faiths found a common moral ground or with simple rules of Civility… the evils we see encroaching into our lives and our culture would lose their power over us. If we, as neighbors, reached out to our neighbors, got to know them, and maybe even became friends, we might begin to regain trust and fear would diminish. When the light shines, the darkness fades!
Morality (or civility) is not just a bunch of rules and regulations. It is a compass by which we chose to live. It is a system by which we can intelligently guide our life and steer our heart. Traditionally, our Judeo-Christian morality was the glue that held Americans together in spite of our profound differences. People from all over the world were able to come together on this foundation and build a new, improved life as Americans. It was the unnamed presumption of our Founding Fathers. This morality is not gone, it has merely been hidden beneath the weight of everyday life and the lies of Progressivism.
It is for such a time as this that we need our morality, our faith, our foundation and our common ground. We must find a way to come together in spite of our differences! When the gales of daily hardship blow against us, it is our morals, our faith, our basic kindness that will serve as the light that will see us through the storm. Without it, we are lost to the storm.
“[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.” –John Adams, An Essay on Man’s Lust for Power, 1763
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