Taking a knee

Have any of these highly paid athletes who kneel during the National Anthem ever considered the words that Francis Scott Key penned a little more than two centuries ago?  For that matter, have you who might take offense at their protest considered the song that brings us to our feet and puts our hands over our hearts.

The first verse begins with a question and ends with another question.  They are essential to understanding what we as a nation are all about.

We fought and paid dearly to gain independence from the British Empire.  We won and took a decade to come up with a Constitution that has no equal geographically or chronologically.  We began this grand experiment in a democratic republic with noble concepts, imperfect for sure, but there have been none better—ever.

The British wanted their colonies back and thus began the War of 1812.  By then we had a flag.  We had many in the formative years, but now we had one with stars and stripes.  It stood for this grand experiment for which so many had bled and died.

The song asks if anyone can see if the symbol of this young country had survived the night’s battle.  In the lights of explosions that continued through the night, glimpses of our flag remained, but dawn had come.  Did we survive the night?

We had and so too would our republic.

The question at the end of this verse is not to generations past but to us.  Does that flag still wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave.  Are we still willing to sacrifice today to keep this grand experiment alive?  Are we willing to set aside selfishness to preserve the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity?

This country has problems.  Guess what?  They all do, but we are one of the few where we get to be a part of the solution.  I have been to many countries around this world, not staying in the finest hotels and meeting with celebrities, but living and serving among the working end of this equation called humanity.  I say with no qualification at all, ours is the best of the best.

We have problems but we are blessed to be a part of the solutions.  We are the government unless we get lazy or apathetic.

It is easy to point out problems or to assign blame.  It takes courage to jump into the arena and be a part of the solution.  Are there still racial problems in this great country?  Yes.

I will again say with some definition, they pale in comparison to most of the world.  We are spoiled.  We have abandoned self-discipline and respect for authority, and we—all of us—have authored the problems of this century.  The good news is that we may also be a part of their solutions, at least for now. 

If the American way is so bad that you must protest against it, what is better?  Bring a working model and put it before the people.  Small minds protest, blame, and object without sticking their necks out to produce something better.  Brave and creative ones offer viable alternatives.

The American way is to produce something better than we had before.  Do we want to preserve the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity or do we just want to get some attention that we don’t like the way things are but will not get in the middle of the solution?

Does that star-spangled banner still waver over the land of the free and the home of the brave?  Are we still willing to be a part of the solution or just complain about how bad we have it in the very country where we have the best chance of all to fix things?

I love the words of President Theodore Roosevelt.  He spoke them overseas but they are surely meant for our generation in this country that has become so critical and divisive of everything.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

If you think that we have a problem with our police forces, set aside your Sunday uniform and dawn the blue or khaki of our nation’s most troubled police forces.  Go into the arena where there are no yellow flags to protect you.

If you don’t like the president, support another candidate in the next election but understand that he is where he is because of the process of very wise founders.

If you don’t like the law, elect different legislators.

If you think racism is a problem, then work to improve relations between people.

If you think that protesting is the only thing you can do, then grow a backbone and address the problems at their source.  Grandstanding never solved anything.

If you must kneel, do so before almighty God and thank him that you still live in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

The apostle Paul wrote with regard to Christian freedom—and it applies to freedom in our land as well—that for me everything is permissible; but not everything is profitable.  Not everything is beneficial.

Not every exercise of our freedom is beneficial!

Do we have the wisdom to draw attention to the problems that need fixed in this nation without furthering the divisions that exist in this nation?

For the millionaire athletes that won’t honor the symbol for the very nation that gives them the right to do just that, here is a suggestion.  If it is attention that you want, buy advertising on television and present your solutions.  You are blessed to be paid great amounts of money for playing a sport. 

Are you willing to put your money to work to present solutions or do you just want to stay in the safety of protest without proffered solutions?

Will you live in the arena or on the sidelines for the things that you say matter?

I challenge you to stand for our National Anthem and use the liberty that it symbolizes to help make things better.  At present, you are moving this nation to more and deeper division.  Do you have the courage to help heal and reconcile and preserve liberty?

Do you have the courage to help realize what our founders hoped for, that we would be the land of the free and the home of the brave?

If you are handed the football or receive a pass in a game, will you take a knee because you might get hit?  I hope not. 

So why take a knee when the anthem of our best hope at living as a free people is played?  Blame is the cowards game.  Fixing the problem instead of fixing the blame is only for the brave.

Are you numbered among the brave?

Do I just turn off the NFL?

Do I just turn off the NFL and the absurdity of millionaire athletes exercising their First Amendment Rights to show how disgruntled they are with the land of the free and the home of the brave?  It’s a little ironic that these who use center stage to protest are the most blessed in our nation.

Like I said, it is the right of American expression.  It is their right.  I think in many cases it disrespects so many Americans who put others first, but it is their right.

 Instead of tuning out, let’s exercise our rights.  How about we begin on October 1^st by wearing Red, White, and Blue to every sporting event to demonstrate our support of those who serve:  Servicemen and servicewomen, police, fire and emergency service workers and all those who put others before themselves as they often put their own lives on the line.

Pull for your team but wear Red, White, and Blue.  Imagine an entire stadium that was all red, white, and blue regardless of who your team was.  Let’s make this football season a time to pull for your team and support those who serve.

Let’s start on October 1^st and continue through the Super Bowl.  Instead of exercising our rights to promote further divisiveness; let’s use them to promote unity and respect those who serve, at least when you attend these events.  Hey!  It’s you right too.

Junior High, High School, College, and Profession Football events all full of fans and supporters dressed in our nation’s colors could be a very visible sign to this nation that we do respect those who serve.  It would say that we desire unity and reconciliation more than divisiveness and insistence on so many selfish agendas. 

Let’s start this Sunday with Red, White, and Blue at every sporting event.  If I turn on my television and see a sea of colors of support, I might be able to stomach a few millionaires demonstrating how disgruntled they are with circumstances that they do not endure themselves.

Let’s exercise our rights but use them for the general good and not our selfish agendas.  Are there still problems in this nation?  Yes, but further divisiveness won’t fix them.  Let’s take this opportunity to move towards unity.  Let’s take this football season to say we support those who serve so selflessly, many giving their lives in the service of their country and communities.

Let’s exercise our right to say, we want to be one nation under God.  May God bless America.

GOD BLESS AMERICA

LAND THAT I LOVE!

Liberals eclipsed by shortage of reasons to blame President Trump for Monday's pending eclipse

Liberals worldwide are frantically scrambling, apparently caught off guard and surely without any prepared media barrage, on how to blame the pending eclipse of the sun on Donald Trump.  With just over 12 hours until this historic event, some have opted to a response only strategy, hoping that President Trumps tweets something on the order of what an absolutely fabulous event the eclipse turned out to be and how privileged those alive today are to have witnessed it.

Such a tweet would give those with no productive purpose in life a chance to cast dispersion upon the nation’s commander-in-chief for slighting other such celestial events such as Mars at perihelion and the occasional meteor shower.

As always, the Democratic National Committee has commenced a saturation email campaign declaring that to let Trump get away with the eclipse would be a nation tragedy.  As with other events where the committee found itself at odds with the President, their strategy is a request for money from all email recipients before other such eclipses overtake this nation.  

If only for a moment...

For a brief moment last night, the mainstream media became the press again.  They just reported the news as the United States launched missiles against a Syrian Air Base.  I am certain that they have returned to the current model of 1% news and 99% ever-so-slanted commentary, but it was refreshing to see reporters reporting again and the press being the press, if only for a moment.

Where have my good friends Reason and a Sound Mind gone?

The qualities of reason and sound mind have left the country.  I would get out too if I knew what they did.  The sad thing is that I do know.

Our courts—United States of America courts—will be or perhaps are entertaining arguments about who has constitutional rights; specifically, do you even have to reside in the country to have right guaranteed under our constitution.  Many who live here and are not citizens have constitutional rights.  Whether that was the founder’s intent or not, the courts have said that they do.

But what about someone who is not a citizen and has never been to this nation—do they have constitutional rights?  On its face, it seems crazy, but the courts have ventured far beyond their legitimate domain in their recent findings concerning immigration and national security, so what’s a little more craziness on top of that?

Does someone in Afghanistan or western Kenya who would like to come to the United States have constitutional rights under the supreme law of our land?  Do two Ukrainian soldiers who get in a bar fight over the quality of the vodka have the right against self-incrimination and should we get them a court appointed lawyer if they can’t afford one?

I am trying hard to be facetious, but at this moment some attorney full of vigor but short of standing and legitimate argument is adding my last paragraph to his brief.  We have come to the brink of insanity and insanity—desiring to retain some dignity—will have nothing to do with us.

This is the question that I pose to those desiring to grant constitutional rights to anyone and everyone on the planet:

Why do you believe that a child still in the mother’s womb has no constitutional rights?  Is the membrane between the mother’s body and the world that awaits so much more substantial that an international boundary? 

It seems that somebody has already built a 30 foot wall but it is not on the Mexican border.

How can we consider it constitutional to kill a child that is 9 months old, within hours of delivery, because it has not entered the air breathing world in which we exist?

How can someone on the other side of the planet who made have only heard of America have rights that a child so close to delivery does not have?

Who has deported my good friends Reason, Sanity, and a Sound Mind?

May God have mercy upon us!

How I long for the days of the test pattern

The mute button on my television remote is almost worn out, and it is the most important among the dozens of functions that this small device performs.  Do we realize how far from any standard of reasonableness we have come in this country?  I speak now of the rush to condemn certain actions.

Bad things happen in this world.  Evil is still at work.  People do terrible things, but does the President of the United States really have to comment on all of them?  Why can’t the people of this nation be outraged enough at a desecration of something sacred without the help of the chief executive.  Instead of counting the minutes between the event and the eventual statement, could we not use our time and efforts to lend some support to the victims.  Perhaps we could have organized protests against the offenders, even if we have yet to find them.  That would at least satisfy our propensity to protest things that portend whatever doomsday the protesters see on the horizon.

Perhaps the real news is not how long was it before the President said something official and talking heads analyzed its sufficiency; but the real news is what is happening to catch the offenders?  Silly me—who wants to follow that story?  Who is helping with restoration?  Sorry, that will not pay the empaneled bank of consultants.  How can the common person who wants to be something other than outraged, actually do something to help?  C’mon, that’s a link on the website, not news. Who is already doing something to help that deserves some recognition?  That surely won’t satisfy our appetite for criticism.

The 24-hour news cycle has created an epidemic of diarrhea of the mouth.  There are no new facts or tangible information going into the system but there is no slowdown on the outward flow of blarney.                                                                                                                        

For now, it’s just the mute button.  My next step will be to identify the sponsors of these broadcasts and boycott their products, and encourage others to do so.  I hope I do not have to write the eulogy for the press that once understood its privileged standing in this nation.  I am optimistic but not blind.  We as a nation crave blame and vitriol more than truth.  The media is simply our drug dealer.

How I long for that bygone day that when there was nothing more of substance to say, you stopped talking.  You stopped talking!  This small nugget of wisdom has surely been expunged from the journalism schools of our land.

Oh, how I long for the days of the test pattern that pronounced with certainty and even a little dignity that programming was completed for this day.

May God have mercy on our judgmental and cynical souls.  Heal us!

Darkness has come to America and we have embraced it.

Darkness has come to America and we have embraced it.  It is not Donald Trump.  It is not the protests that seem to pop up everywhere in response to everything.  It is not the media trying to fill a 24 hour a day news broadcast by manufacturing news out of nuance.

It is the people of this nation that have invited darkness into their lives.

We have stopped conversing with each other.  Now we only target those that disagree with us and demonize them.  We no longer discuss the issues.  There are surely conversations to be had on defense and immigration and education and so many other issues; but nobody cares to engage the issues.  We muster a minority of the facts then just take cheap shots at those whose thoughts differ from our own. 

We fear discussion.  We have lost the ability to listen to each other.  We respect neither the high offices of our officials nor our peers who elected them nor those who hoped that others might prevail.

We have become a small-minded people.  That does not mean we lack intelligence.  We lack the wisdom to use our intelligence to advance our nation and our culture and the common good to a better place.  We have chosen extreme divisiveness over the divine application of our diversity.

In the process, we have placed our liberty at risk.  Self-government is work, not complaining and demonizing those who disagree, but finding ways to do things that work for the common good. 

The pendulum of politics swings left and right.  The wise see this and know that balance is not something that exists at any given time, but over time.  The foolish can see only the moment before them and rail against any and everything that they don’t like.

In this distrust of a system of government that has not only prevailed for over two centuries but done so continuing the blessings of liberty, we set the stage for self-destruction.  In this ubiquitous demonizing of individuals who hold different perspectives of how to continue this Grand Experiment, we accelerate the demise of our democratic republic.

I for one am not ready to discard what our founders embraced so dearly and until this current century, we as Americans preserved as part of our patriotic duty.  The time to set aside acrimony and vitriol is now.  Bitterness and hatred towards our elected officials must end.  The civil and patriotic way to object is the ballot box and we must honor the result of our peaceful transition of power or know that we are destined to lose it altogether. 

For decades, we were light unto the world.  Now we embrace darkness.  Give those elected a chance to do what they said they would do even if their approaches are different.  Stop demonizing each other because we disagree.  Civil discourse must prevail among the millions of Americans who are blessed to live in the liberty that we know.

So many around the world look to us as the example of how to live in a free society.  We as the people of this great nation are setting a terrible example for those in the rest of the world that only dream of liberty.  We must once again be a light to this world.

Let us set aside our selfishness, our self-pity, and our childish behavior and model civil discourse.  Let us respect each other again though we may differ in almost every thought or philosophy.  Let’s be the American people that we want our grandchildren to model their lives after.

Let us live lives of light and not darkness!