What I have Seen....

As you can tell, the past week and a half has been pretty rough on me personally. My wife suffered a stroke on the eve of Valentines Day, my father is going to live with my sister in California and it would appear that my chances of seeing him before he dies are pretty slim. 

While my wife was in the hospital, I discovered that while she was lying in a bed in the emergency room awaiting treatment, there was a panel in another part of the hospital determining whether not she should receive treatment. All thanks to Obama Care. 

Usually when I write this blog, I write it with a view toward America and what is happening to it. I also try to explain why it is happening. Recently I have had the dubious opportunity to see the effects these changes have had on a more personal level. When my step-mother, Momma Terry, past away about this time of year almost five years ago, I remember standing in the kitchen of my father’s house the day of her memorial and hearing my father angrily shout;” I’m not leaving my home!”  Now it seems that time, age and circumstance has changed that. 

You see for many years my father was a member of the Arizona State House of Representatives. During his fourteen year tenure there he accomplished many things for both Arizona, and in many respects the country. In many cases the ideals he presented to the State legislature were also adopted in several other states. Among them at the time was no sales tax on food items purchased at the grocery store. Contrary to what some might say about my father, he was a man of the people. He understood what America needed and what America represented. Politically Dad and I didn’t agree on many things. Turns out that I was more conservative than he was. Never the less he did good. 

As you can see, I am very proud of my father, despite the fact that there are times when he thinks that I am a bit of a flake. 

I have never really met my father’s expectations, choosing instead to go out and follow my own path. As a result of that choosing I have traveled the world. Seen how other countries and cultures live. I have managed to squeeze three life times into one. And throughout my travels I have discovered perhaps the most important fact of all. America is the greatest country in the world. 

This belief admittedly may come from the fact that I was born and raise in America, but it also comes from my observations of those places I visited in my youth. 

Among those places I visited was Communist Russia where the people were constantly curious about America, and despite the fear that permeated the country constantly the people were not too much different than I was. While visiting I remember a comment that one old retired soldier made to me. He said; “One day we will be free and your country will be like ours”. 

He was right, but what no one realized was that both our nations would at this time in history be fighting to save what we have. America to keep our Constitution from being shredded by a corrupt administration and the Russians fighting the corruption that was communism and is now under a different guise. 

Freedom is not cheap. Freedom comes at a price and at times that price comes dearly. I had mentioned my father because I discovered that thanks to government and the price it is now demanding he can no longer remain in the home that he loved and carried so many memories for him. And yes, age does have a great deal to do with it, but I can’t help but wonder if his choice to move in with my sister was prompted just by age alone? At 81 years of age he no longer has any real income and as a result finds it difficult to live and at the same time pay property taxes.

I guess that at my age I have become a bit of a sentimentalist. As time passes I see the things that I held dear suddenly disappear out of my life like smoke in the wind. The anchors that were a part of my life are suddenly disappearing, and I am feeling terribly alone. 

Many of those anchors were a part of my country. Over the past 50 years, I have watched as America has become something that I can no longer recognize. The freedoms that we as Americans once enjoyed have slowly and systematically been stripped away from us, and it has been done so quietly we were not aware that it was happening. 

I have often talked about it. Ranted about it, stated that we must fight to keep it from happening. In the end, I and my family have fallen victim to those changes and discovered that there is nothing that can be done about it unless we as Americans band together and fight the change that is being forced upon us. 

As I sometimes do I read the Declaration of Independence again. As I read it my heart began to sink. Not because of what the document said, because simple truths cannot be changed no matter how much you try. But because in that document, I saw that once again America was in the exact same situation it was when that document was written. No it is not the Constitution of the United States, and no in reality it is not a legal and binding document as is the Constitution. And no we are not trying to break away from England. But suddenly we are fighting our own government which has violated everything outlined in the Declaration of Independence. 

In many ways it is more important. It is important because it is a document of truth and no matter how hard you try you cannot deny the truth. When it was written it outlined several truths that are as important now as they were at the writing of it. So important in fact that it raised the question; “what are you willing to fight for?” 

Are you, like our forefathers, willing to stand up to a government that has become oppressive and controlling and fight? Are you willing to shed your blood for an idea that can and has shaped the world we live in? Are you willing to stand and be counted as Americans? Or have you given up?