A Nation Divided … Part 2

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amorality, chaos, compromise, constitution, courage, freedom, generosity, greed, honor, Intergity, kindness, lawlessness, moral compromise, moral gulf, rebellion, selfishness

A Nation divided against itself cannot stand …

Integrity. I hear a lot of banter around the political candidates concerning integrity. Who has it? Who fakes it? Why is integrity important?

Americans are angry and dissatisfied with the way business is done these days in Washington DC, and rightly so. We’ve been lied to and in many cases, deliberately misled. We are pandered to and patronized and treated like ignorant children by those high and mighty supposed “public servants.” But… what do we really want?

Integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.

Uh oh! I see the problem. Do you?

A Nation divided against itself cannot stand …

We say we want integrity, but how can we have integrity without moral principles? If morality is subjective, how can integrity exist?

I don’t want to be subject to your morality, and you don’t want to be measured by my morality. We are at an impasse.

Divisions have always existed in civilizations. Rich/poor, tall/short, young/old, etc. and divisions are not necessarily a bad thing. But the division (singular) we are witnessing in America (and elsewhere,) goes much deeper.

Our Founders referred to “unalienable rights endowed by our Creator,” but it is not politically correct to “force” someone’s ambiguous concept of deity on a society. What Creator? God? Which god? So again, we are at an impasse. If we deny that our rights are endowed by our Creator, where did they come from?

There has been a deliberate hammering over the last few decades, yes decades, maybe longer, the driving of a wedge between people, between ideologies. It is not between rich and poor. It is not between Democrats and Republicans. It is not between races. It is not between the various religions. It is much simpler, much deeper, and much more sobering. It has been happening slowly throughout my lifetime. Look around at how values have changed. Americans once sought virtue, moral strength, character. Now, we seek comfort, leisure, and material gain.

When asked whether the “state of moral values in the country as a whole is getting better or worse,” 72 percent said that they believe that the paradigm is worsening, while, in contrast, just 22 percent said that it is improving. More HERE!

On one side of this moral gulf is chaos, greed, selfishness, lawlessness, rebellion. On the other is structure, kindness, generosity, courage, honor, lawfulness, and … Integrity.

Do you remember when then President Bill Clinton was caught with his pants down? America collectively gasped. “How dare he … in the White House, too!” Noise was made about his indecency, but with the help of our all-but-state-run-press, we came to accept it and moved on. Just one example of our moral compromise.

“What we are seeing in our politics is the predictable result of what occurs when institutions, philosophies and faiths that once united us have either died or have been so co-opted by other considerations that when they’re most needed they lack the power to come to our rescue.” More HERE!

A house divided … moral compromise

Will we watch America crumble because of our selfishness?

The media has its “champions,” the Democrat party backs Hillary, but who does the Republican party back? Logically, it should back the leader, but if that is repugnant to them, they ought to back #2. Why don’t they? Could it be because the party doesn’t like Cruz’s conservative values, and they don’t believe Trump is a conservative at all.

I suggest this indecision is authored and fed by the media pushing THEIR choices on us. People, we are in deep doo doo, and sinking fast into the pools of our our ignorance and willful blindness. Our leaders are simply a reflection of our own indecision. We cannot have both freedom and amorality. We must choose or Hillary will win … and may God help us!

A Nation divided against itself cannot stand …

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America, We Need to Talk!

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America, character, conversation, courage, greed, liberty, life, Old Glory, politics, pursuit of happiness, US Constitution, virtue, WE THE PEOPLE, welfare

Yes, America, you and me, we need to talk:
Do you want to be slave, or do you want to be Free?
That’s the question: Do you need to be Free,
As time exchanges blunt realities.

America, you and me, we need to talk:
Freedom is about personal choices, dreams and goals,
But today, we are starved for such Life, Liberty,
And the drive to pursue happiness: slavery.

America, you and me, we need to talk:
Leadership that chooses, with friendly masks,
To enslave by lethargy the weak among us,
With pretty words and outstretched hands: slavery.

America, you and me, we need to talk:
We used to know, and usually did, the right thing,
The noble thing, the virtuous thing, the neighborly thing,
Now, it is the pampered, arrogant, and selfish thing that thrives: slavery.

America, you and me, we need to talk:
I hear you say, through the veil of myriad sleep juice,
“Look at me now, dressed up so gangsta tough!”
But your heart is rotting within you, my love: slavery.

America, you and me, we need to talk:
So much corruption and so little honor,
So much manufactured contention and so little real caring,
So much competition and so little family: slavery.

America, you and me, we need to talk:
You plus me is supposed to equal we-the-people free,
It’s a musical equation most of us still know:
“O’re the land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.”

America, you and me, we need to talk:
Old Glory still waves gracefully from coast to coast,
Over this land of immeasurable blessing,
No longer quite free, but I see pockets of COURAGE rising!

*Inspiration Monday via BeKindReWrite

Greed belongs to those who have NOT … not to those who have!

Tags

baby boomers, Capitalism, Existentialism, greed, the "ME" generation, Union bosses

There sure are a few angry & uneducated Americans out there who haven’t a shred of understanding how Capitalism works. I’m not sure I should be the one to attempt to rectify that situation because I have a tendency to over-simplify things … like reducing them to their lowest common denominator >>> Anyone remember that? The lowest common denominator? I digress …

For many of us growing up in America, our first brush with Capitalism is the Lemonade stand we do for girl or boy scouts or helping out with a school or church (or synagogue) bake sale or rummage sale. Yup! THAT is Capitalism, my friends, pure & simple! Create a product or service, find a market, sell your service or product at a price the market can bear, reap the rewards, use some to continue or build the business, the rest is PROFIT. Please notice, profit is NOT a 4 letter word! You worked for it; you earned it. If you sell enough lemonade that you need a helper, then you share the PROFIT with that helper in some way (this is “overhead” – the cost of running the business). If you have a good product/service and if the price is right, your business will grow and more helpers will be needed. If, on the other hand, the product/service is NOT good or the price is NOT correct, your business will fail. From Main street to Wall Street, this is how capitalism works. On Wall Street, however, the business has achieved huge success because the owner has made good decisions, provides a Good product/service at an excellent price, but the concept is the same.

What happened somewhere along the way, is really not as complicated as many have said. It’s simple GREED! Union bosses, notoriously corrupt for decades, charge Union members DUES – meant as insurance in case of strikes, to cover the cost of … uh, Union bosses, etc. The vast majority of Union contracts include pensions. The Union members never knew when the pensions started that funding them would soon be a very real issue, but … no worries, every Union member deserves 30 days vacation, full medical benefits, dental, 401K … etc! Again, the majority of Union workers never gave a thought to where all this was coming from … who was paying? Then sometime in the 70’s, people started to ask.

So greed drove Union bosses to levy contracts with pensions without funding. OOOOPS! In the meantime, Corporate CEO’s, with an eye on the bottom line, began to get wise to the unreasonable cost of Union employees, and began to move jobs overseas. Union bosses drove the price of steel, for example, significantly beyond what the market could bear. As a result, steel mills shut down, jobs were shipped overseas because the product could be made cheaper there. It is CAPITALISM = all about the bottom line! Now, if the Union bosses had the foresight to promote EXCELLENCE in the product or service, a slightly higher price wouldn’t have been an issue, but most of us realized that Honda, and Suzuki, and Panasonic, and Sony … actually put out a better product AND cost less – at least in the 60’s – 70’s.

What has happened in the last few decades? More of the same. the Rich get richer because they know how to do it, they know how to provide a product, how to market a product, how to price a product. They are willing to work long hours, in odd places around the clock and around the nation, or even the globe to push their product/service. At some point, it is no longer about the money, but about the “deal!” The high rollers, as we might call them, are all about the “deal,” the bargaining, the trying to out-smart, out-think, out-gamble the other players. GREED? Not really! Greed belongs to those who have NOT … not to those who have!

The turmoil now … the unrest, the angst against the RICH? All based on … you guessed it, GREED! Because Existentialism has been the religion of choice for colleges and universities since the 60’s – maybe earlier, a large segment of our population had their heads filled with the hopelessness and purposelessness that fills what some call good literature. People, however, cannot survive long without a purpose, so … ENTER … well, we can call it SELF-pity, SELF-loathing, or SELF-destruction. After all, we were the “ME” generation. We were ripe for re-programming! In creeps the socialist “fairness” theories. In walks the misplaced anger. Frankly, I think maybe some of us were moving in the phase of indestructibility, thinking America had become indestructible! America could handle our angst no matter how we screwed things up!

Whatever our thoughts, after the “Establishment” was been torn down, we found out there was some value in that Establishment! We wanted the peace and serenity our parents knew. No, not world peace, but inner peace – peace with ones SELF!

Found it yet? If you’re chasing your tail for a bigger bone, or bigger piece of the proverbial pie, I can tell you it will not satisfy! Nothing, no fancy car, no mansion, no gorgeous clothes can FIX what’s broken until you and I come to grips and admit something IS broken. If I am not content with who I am,

A> It is my own fault/responsibility, and

B> No one can make me content.

It is something You and I must do for ourselves. If we manage to conquer this, GREED will not be an issue any longer. And that’s my 2 bits for today!

One of the most dangerous beliefs in western thought is that STUFF and the accumulation of such is the measure of success (or contentment!)

Success consists of going from failure to failure
without loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill

Is This Your America? – Verizon Union Thugs “We’re Here To Fight”…. (via The Last Refuge)

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American, Conservatives, government, government thugs, greed, Liberals, obama, politics, power, protests, Tea Party, uncategorized, unions

Dozens of CWA union members invaded the front yard of Verizon VP Bill Fohsay's house on August 6th complete with a giant inflatable rat and declarations of "we're here to fight". This is video from the official union chapter that carried out the protest.   This is their video, they are proud of this. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0ZyRTSC-xF … Read More

via The Last Refuge

Burying Obama – American Thinker (via Gds44’s Blog)

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barack-obama, big-brother, big-labor, Class Warfare, communism, corruption, cowardice, debt, defund-un, dumbassery, elitist, franklin-d-roosevelt, free-speech, government-failures, government-waste, great-depression, great-society, greed, illegal-government-acts, jimmy-carter, jobs, left-wing-press, liar-in-chief, Liberals, libtard-lies, lyndon-b-johnson, nanny-state, new-deal, obamanomics, politics-as-usual, pseudo-intellectual, race-hustlers, scare-mongers, Socialism, states-rights, stupidity, tax-spend

 Burying Obama – American Thinker. By J.R. Dunn Let me hasten to make it clear before the Secret Service kicks the door in: we're not speaking of the three-dimensional, physical Obama, but the image of Obama created by the DNC, the media, and assorted political mercenaries to sell him and his agenda to an unsuspecting nation.  We need to rid ourselves of Obama as an influence, as an example, as a lens through which to view the world, as a figure … Read More

via Gds44's Blog