Cows and Kids

It seems to me it's time for a change ... no not the failed hope and change we were promised but serious change away from the creeping corruption and political correctness that has poisoned our country. Everyone knows deep down inside that things are on an awful trajectory that could end in a huge amount of suffering, if not extinction, but we are afraid to identify the problems frankly. We all know illegal aliens are illegal ... we know Hamas and Hezbollah are funded by Iran as are most other terrorist organizations ... we know that we have the resources to become energy independent within a decade ... we know our schools suck ... we know that our tax code is several thousand pages too long and overly complicated ... we know that green energy is a very long way off. I could go on and on as I'm sure could each of you.

My question is, why are we not solving these problems? Why are we not marching in the streets insisting on practical solutions and demanding leadership from our politicians? Instead we watch a bunch of crazy loons, labor thugs, pseudo-communists and layabouts demanding their student loans be cancelled while defecating and soiling our public spaces.

It seems to me that part of the reason we are not being more outspoken and active is because we are afraid of pissing people off ... sadly political correctness, the gag created by left leaning idiots who are willing to call others all sorts of names but scream in horror when we speak to the truth, tends to dampen the fire of our passion. If I say that part of the problem in the black community is that 70% of their children are born into single parent homes I would be called a racist instead of a truth speaker. That's the logic of PC.

But I think there are two other contributing factors. Our indifference may come partly from our herd mentality. We tend to simply follow along assuming all will turn out well. This poem by a fellow named Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911) pretty well sums up the problem... 

The Calf Path

One day through a primeval wood,

 a calf walked as a good calf should,

But made a trail all bent askew,

 a crooked trail, as all calves do.

The trail was taken up next day

 by a lone dog that passed that way.

And then a wise bellwether sheep

 pursued the trail over vale and steep

And led his flock behind him too

 as all good bellwethers do

And from that day over hill and glade

 through those old woods a path was made.

Many a man wound in and out,

 and dodged and turned and bent about

And uttered words of righteous wrath

 because it was such a crooked path.

The forest path became a lane

 that bent and turned and turned again.

This crooked lane became a road

 where many a poor horse with his load

Toiled beneath the burning sun,

 and traveled a good three miles in one.

The years passed on in swiftness, fleet;

 the road became a village street,

And thus before men were aware,

 a city’s crowded thoroughfare,

And soon the central street was this

 of a renowned metropolis.

And men two centuries and a half,

 tread the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a one hundred thousand route

 followed that zig zag calf about

And over his crooked journey went

 the traffic of a continent.

A hundred thousand men were led

 by a calf near three centuries dead.

They following his crooked way,

 lost one hundred years every day.

For thus such deference is lent,

 to a well established precedent.

A moral lesson this might teach,

 were I ordained and called to preach:

For men are prone to go it blind

 along the calf paths of the mind.

And work away from sun to sun,

 to do what other men have done.

They follow the well beaten track,

 out and in and forth and back.

And still their devious course pursue
 to keep the paths that other do.

Perhaps it's time
for all of us to stop
following the herd
and blaze a new
common sense path.





Finally ... I think the following from a blog by Bruce Walker identifies the third thing that is preventing common sense from claiming its rightful place in America.

The Lawyers' Party
By Bruce Walker 
The Democratic Party has become the Lawyers Party.
Barack Obama is a lawyer.
Michelle Obama is a lawyer.
Hillary Clinton is a lawyer. Bill Clinton is a lawyer.
John Edwards is a lawyer.
Elizabeth Edwards was a lawyer.
Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate).
Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school.

Look at leaders of the Democrat Party in Congress:
Harry Reid is a lawyer.
Nancy Pelosi is a lawyer.

The Republican Party is different.
President Bush is a businessman.
Vice President Cheney is a businessman.
The leaders of the Republican Revolution:
Newt Gingrich was a history professor.
Tom Delay was an exterminator. Dick Armey was an economist.
House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastics manufacturer.
The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon.

Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer? Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976. The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work, who are often the targets of lawyers. The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick, like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history, like Gingrich. The Lawyers Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America. And, so we have seen the procession of official enemies, in the eyes of the Lawyers Party, grow.
Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail? Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers, and anyone producing anything of value in our nation.

This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers.
Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the American people. Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side. Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine. But it is an awful way to govern a great nation.
When politicians as lawyers begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all-consuming.
Some Americans become adverse parties of our very government. We are not all litigants in some vast social class-action suit. We are citizens of a republic that promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers.

Today, we are drowning in laws; we are contorted by judicial decisions; we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked. When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big.

When House Democrats sue America in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to us, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.

We cannot expect the Lawyers Party to provide real change, real reform or real hope in America. Most Americans know that a republic in which every major government action must be blessed by nine unelected judges is not what Washington intended in 1789. Most Americans grasp that we cannot fight a war when ACLU lawsuits snap at the heels of our defenders. Most Americans intuit that more lawyers and judges will not restore declining moral values or spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy.

Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business.
Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work. Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.

The United States has 5% of the world's population and 66% of the world's lawyers!
Tort (legal) reform legislation has been introduced in congress several times in the last several years to limit punitive damages in ridiculous lawsuits such as spilling hot coffee on yourself and suing the establishment that sold it to you and also to limit punitive damages in huge medical malpractice lawsuits. This legislation has continually been blocked from even being voted on by the Democrat Party.
When you see that 97% of the political contributions from the American Trial Lawyers Association goes to the Democrat Party, then you realize who is responsible for our medical and product costs being so high!
 

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Allen - Leslie - Johnee

Recently our three adult kids attended a convention in Las Vegas. Needless to say they were the best looking, most charming and intelligent people there ... hey it's my blog.

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Sales of In The Shadow of Babylon are progressing, if a bit slower than anticipated. One of the things I've done to create a broader reader base is to offer the book on a site called Smashwords.com to students and military personnel for $.99 between now and 11/11/11 (cool date huh?). So if you know anyone in the service or school they can download an electronic version by going to: http://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=In+The+Shadow+of+Babylon and at checkout enter the code: EB99P. The book is available in the following formats:

Online Reading (HTML, good for sampling in web browser)   
Online Reading (JavaScript, experimental, buggy)   
Kindle (.mobi for Kindle devices and Kindle apps)   
Epub (Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, others)   
PDF (good for reading on PC, or for home printing)   
RTF (readable on most word processors)   
LRF (Use only for older model Sony Readers that don't support .epub)   
Palm Doc (PDB) (for Palm reading devices)   
Plain Text (download) (flexible, but lacks much formatting)   
Plain Text (view) (viewable as web page)

Of course it's still available on Amazon in the print version and for Kindle.

If you have read Babylon I would love to hear your honest comments either at the bottom of this blog or on the Amazon page. Also on the Amazon page you can click LIKE and a picture of the book and a short comment will automatically appear on your Facebook page.