What are you willing to fight for?

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. Here’s a partial list of what I’ve read/am reading/rereading lately:

• The Five Thousand Year Leap (Cleon Skousen)
• The Fourth Turning (William Strauss and Neil Howe)
• The Real George Washington (Jay Parry)
• An Inconvenient Book (by Glenn Beck)
• Fluke (Christopher Moore)
• Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)

As I’ve been reading, I’ve been thinking – thinking about my country, how it works, how it’s changing, and what I want to see for our future.

This is the first time in my lifetime that I’ve seen our country at a crossroads, not only politically, but theologically, spiritually, philosophically, and emotionally. Think of it as the perfect storm, where closet Progressives have given way to those that are unashamedly, unabashedly “Progressive.” We are in the midst of a battle for the hearts, minds, and souls of our country. And most people that are on the battlefield aren’t even aware that there’s a war on. Let me give you an example.

We’ve been lied to. When you studied history in school, did you learn about the rise of the progressive movement before World War II? Did you study the New Deal as something that was a controversial plan, or did you learn that FDR used to to save America from the Great Depression? Did you ever stop to wonder how the government could do so many things that are not Constitutional, if we still have a Constitution? I didn’t. At first. But like Paul on the road to Tarsus, I’ve had the scaled lifted off my eyes, and I’ve come to understand. You see, for years education has been co-opted by the Left. They took control over higher learning, pushing out conservative thought. They teach the teachers, and the authors of textbooks. Soon, all that Liberal thought trickled down from on high, to high schools, middle schools and elementary schools. We didn’t go from the McGuffy Reader and See Dick and Jane to I Have Two Daddies in a few weeks – or by accident. No, this was all by design. Some genius figured out that if you could control education, it wouldn’t take but one generation to co-opt an entire generation. And they did. At first, the changes were subtle. Liberal historians, scientists and theologians argued, persuasively, that their side needed to be told, too. As they grew in numbers and influnce, their points of view became dominant, and Conservative thought was first marginalized, then villified, and now, in many instances, outlawed. (See: “The case against Global Warming.”)

In my history books, Teddy Roosevelt was taught as the father of our National Parks system, an outdoorsman, and the “good” Roosevelt (as opposed to FDR, who was the father of the New Deal). Woodrow Wilson was portrayed as the father of the precursor to the U.N., and the man who guided us through World War I.  While all of this is more-or-less true, what you’ve NOT been told is that Teddy and Woodrow were the original American Progressives, and were the ones that set our country away from the principles of our founding fathers and towards socialism. You’ve also NOT been told that FDR’s grand experiment in socialism (a.k.a. “The New Deal”) was an abject failure, prolonged and deepened the Great Depression, and left us with a legacy of debt that we’ve STILL not paid off over 70 years later.

Here’s the problem. Schools may teach how great our Constitution is (and it is!) but what they fail to mention is how the delicate balance between the powers given to the Federal government and the role of the States as watchdogs against too much Federal power has been blown to Hell. When all you know is what you’re told, and you don’t have the resources or wherewithal to learn the truth (especially when you don’t even suspect that what you’ve been told is not the truth) it’s pretty difficult to figure things out on your own.

You see, there’s nothing – nothing – in the Constitution that would have permitted Obama from nationalizing the banks, the automobile industry and the mortgage companies. There’s no Constitutional authority for a bailout, minimum wage laws, Federal gun registration, and a slew of other laws. That’s the STATES’ job. Read the Constitution – the Federal government has only 17 specific powers granted it by We the People. Everything else, and I do mean everything else is reserved for the States and the People. But power abhors a vacuum, and when the states don’t whack the Feds over the head for taking what doesn’t belong to them, we have creeping Federalism veering quickly into a Socialist state.

So the question is, how do we fix this? The first answer is education. Everyone needs to read and understand the Constitution. Read The Five Thousand Year Leap. Please. Then read Atlas Shrugged and see if it isn’t scary in a prescient way. Start thinking about what you’ve been told, and re-examine your beliefs. Sart by understannding the meaning behind “States Rights” and the need to rein in the Federal Goverment. Think about what YOU believe is the role of the Federal Government in our lives, and ask yourself if you really believe it possible to spend your way out of debt.

Do all that, and then it’s time to ask yourself, are you willing to fight for your country? Are you willing to stand up and be counted, in order to stop spending, cut taxes, and rein in government? What are you willing to fight for?