Tax the wealthy and there will be no money for investments and new jobs. Monies for charities will dry up. Tax the wealthy and you hurt charities and the middle class the most. Obama has no clue as to what he is doing. Sadly, people voted for just another politician.
So last night I watch this movie, “Into The Wild”, about this young guy who leaves everything behind and heads to Alaska. I sit back in my chair and I cry. I was headed in that same direction in 1972.
In those days, I left my dorm room at Moody Bible Institute one night and walked home. I just kept walking. I walked fifteen miles. I walked from the Des Plaines EL station to Addison, fifteen miles. My mother cried that night. The school called my father. He called his friends. I show up at the house at 10:30 pm. I hugged my mother and I went to bed.
So the next day, my father makes me scrambled eggs and then he drives me back to Moody. I talk to twenty people. I talk to the men’s assistant dean of students and he tells me that men have cycles like women do. I listen but my head is in Alaska. He asks me if I want a new roommate. I say, “Yes. I don’t want to room with someone named Tim.” I tell him that my first year roommate was Tim from Indianapolis. My second year roommate was Tim from Pennsylvania. The school gives me a new roommate. His name is Steve. We become good friends, in fact, great friends. One Friday night, in my dorm room, I get a call from the men’s assistant dean of students. He tells me that Steve was killed in a car accident on the way to his wedding rehearsal. He fell asleep behind the wheel of his car driving in Kansas. I stay at school to finish the semester and then I leave and I don’t come back.
Three months later my dad comes in my room and wakes me up. He says, “You gotta get up. You can’t sleep anymore. You gotta work. You gotta find a job.” So I get dressed, eat scrambled eggs and I walk to the industrial section of Addison. In the industrial park I look for signs in the front yards of factories. “Help Wanted. Machine Operator” the sign says. I apply.
Inside the factory a man tells me my job. “Take the plastic pieces that come out of here and then grind them over here.” So I take the plastic pieces and I grind them but my head is in Alaska. I walk away from the job during my coffee break. The man calls my dad and he tells him that I walked away. I go look for another job.
At another factory a man hires me. He tells me that I will operate a plastic extruder on the second shift. I say “OK” and I show up that night. Someone shows me the end of the extruder. There are strands of hot plastic coming out of the extruder’s die. The strands are pulled under water to cool and then a blower dries them off. Then, the strands are chopped into pellets. The man tells me to keep my hands out of the pelletizer. I remember this. My job is to keep the extruder hopper full of regrind, keep the plastic strands in their path and empty the pellets into a box. I do this until the third shift guy appears. He is a tall, lanky black man in a jumpsuit. He is carrying a Yankee Doodle Dandy Hamburger in his hand.
I process plastic for the next six years. I also get married to someone I meet at church. We have two sons. I tell my bride-to-be that I want to live in Alaska. I tell her that I have collected maps and books about how to live in the wild. She tells her mother. Her mother tells her that I am crazy. Her mother wants her grandchildren to be close. We divorce after five years and two sons. Alaska is on hold until the majority age of minor children.
So I work and I work and I work. I become a designer of plastic machines. I become director of engineering. I become a partner in a manufacturing company and I get married again. I tell my bride-to-be that I want to go to Alaska. She tells her mother. Her mother says that I am crazy. Her mother wants her grandchildren to be close. So, I work and I work and I work. I work night and day as a partner. I make a six figure income. I get a Suburban. I get a company credit card. I have twenty-five people working under me. I work so much that when my wife takes the Suburban on camping trips with the kids she says that she doesn’t know if she wants to come back. I went to work and I came home to an empty house. When she was home and I was home, my wife and I would fight. The way I figured it, she wanted more of what my well-paying job offered her but she wouldn’t stand me at the same time. I worked and worked and I worked until one day I told my partners that I wanted to quit.
So, I left the company I helped to start fourteen years before. I left the partnership and the perks behind. I came home and looked in the paper in the help wanted section. I looked and I looked and I looked but there was nothing. I refinanced our home to pay the bills. After three months my wife tells me, “I want a separation.” I cry.
So, we go to marriage counselors. First we go to a male counselor and then we go to a female counselor and then we go to a male counselor. My wife is convinced that I have something on my mind, that I don’t love her. I don’t mention Alaska. After some counseling, we agree to live to together again. My wife says, “I’ll see how you do.”
So I find a job and I go to work. This time I build electrical control panels. I work and I work and I work but the money is not the same as the partnership money. One day the manager takes me in his office and tells me, “Things are slow. We are downsizing. We are closing this branch. We don’t have any openings in our home office in Janesville, Wisconsin.” I say, “Oh.” I call my wife and we meet at a restaurant because I want to tell her in person what happened. I drink two gin and tonics while I am waiting for her to show up. I look out the window and see her pull up in our rusty family van. She comes in and sees me drinking and she wonders what’s up and I tell her. She asks me what I am going to do and I tell her, “I will look for work.”
So I look in the Help Wanted Ads in the newspaper. No jobs. I file for unemployment. Three months later my wife says she wants a separation. I say, “No.” She says, “Get out or I will force you out.” I leave. I go to a hotel. I get a room and call my kids.
So that night I watch this movie, “Into The Wild”, about this young guy who leaves behind everything and heads to Alaska. I sit back in my hotel chair and I cry. I was headed in that same direction in 1972.
America deserves better than this media mollycoddled divisive passive-aggressive politician. The hangover from election night 2008 still has America off her feet.
****
This morning I bumped into our office’s cleaning lady. I’ll call her Dushanka.
Dushanka asked if I had watched the election coverage last night. I answered sadly that I did.
I never knew Dushanka’s political inclination before this morning. We previously had only talked before about our families and about work. We often talk when we arrive to work at 6:30 in the morning. We sometimes see each other during the long work day and then we also chat.
Dushanka came to America from Romania. She came to America because America was hope and change long before Obama came on the scene. Dushanka works long hard hours just as I do. We both pay our taxes and we obey the rules. But after watching the election results and the crowd at McCormick Place and on the street she told me, “America is now broken.” She could not fathom why those young people were standing there paying homage to Dear Leader, economic reality held in abeyance. Nor could I.
Dushanka told me something that I am no longer shocked about in Obama America: another cleaning women working with D cheats the “system” – you and me.
This woman, a foreigner, is using some else’s social security number. This woman has a child from a boyfriend. This woman registered the child at a Chicago Public school and received $200.00 (for what Dushanka didn’t know). This woman who works with Dushanka also receives food stamps. This same woman wrote on her job application that she had graduated from high school though she never graduated. All of these things and more this woman related to Dushanka in a rather smug way: “Look, I am getting away with this. You can too.” In other words she is “cleaning up” at our expense. That is Barack Obama’s America. And that is status quo for Chicago. It is quickly becoming so for the nation. This is Social Justice Obama style but is this going forward in a morally right direction?
Dushanka told me that she does not cheat the system: “That would be cheating God.”
Where is the Social Justice for people like Dushanka, for people like me? Where is the social justice when people steal from other Americans? And where is the social justice when people forcibly take your property and give it to someone else though taxation? Where is social justice in class warfare? In dividing the country racially? There can be no social justice when men are not given their due, when materialism trumps the justice due human dignity and worth.
Did you notice that our American ambassador and his aides were slaughtered in Benghazi? The Obama White House is covering up their decided lack of involvement. American citizens were killed but Obama played golf, campaigned and had another cigarette. Could it be that there is now in place “a U.S. government policy of “engaging, legitimating, enriching and emboldening Islamists who have taken over or are ascendant in much of the Middle East,”? This is the biggest scandal in American History. The Obama regime wants to stonewall the whole business so that time will pass and people will forget. But we won’t forget.
Did you notice Fast and Furious – AG Eric Holder sends lethal weapons to narco-terrorists in a scheme to teach America a lesson about owning guns? The scheme backfired and a US border agent, an American citizen, is killed with the same guns along with hundreds of Mexicans. This is Social Justice Obama style.
Religious liberties are now being deleted for the new religion of political correctness. Moral relativism is replacing absolute truth.
Asstounding! People voted for more uncertainty, more unpredictability, more taxes, more regulation, more tight money, more policies that undermine business confidence and block economic recovery. They voted for more incompetence from Barack Obama!
Today’s children want socialism. And it is the very people who want socialism who bring nothing to the table. That is why they want redistribution of other people’s money – they have nothing to offer themselves.
People now want the government to be their insurance company and their vending machine for everything from birth control to abortions to health care. People now want government to cover all their bets and to give them other people’s money to play. The majority of people voted for the indentured slavery of big government and the Boot placed on their neck!
****
Obama’s Hope and Change cocktail has put our country on its back. The only cure for the “Goddamn America” hangover from the 2008 and 2014 election nights is “God Bless America.” The cure didn’t happen the last four years and it is not going to happen these next four years. The narcotic effects of atheism, nihilism, materialism and antinomianism (lawlessness) – an elixir of evil gulped down on those election nights will now spread rapidly through your system. Liberty won’t know what hit it.
Just ask D.
*****
Read The Forgotten Man – those who supply jobs and resources – requirements for human flourishing – are not the academics.
The journey of a lifetime was being nixed at the first intersection. Boyd pulled up to the red light in the middle of our town. He braked and the Caddy stopped dead. There was nothing lit up on the driver panel – no “BATT” light, no “CHECK ENGINE” light, nothing. The Marantz stereo we placed on the back seat hump coasted to a stop. As it did the Lizard King’s voice churned down Riders On the Storm with a demonic basso profundo until the needle stopped sucking sound. Could a journey of a thousand miles end with a single stoplight?
Before the trip my mom had said “Go.” Boyd’s mom handing Boyd the Amoco gas card said “Go,” They both said, “Be careful.” So we went. So we thought.
Boyd and I sat in the Caddy facing a green light with dashed hope silence. There was no crank of the engine, no radio, no stereo rush, just a mortifying silence a half mile into our road trip. We looked at each other and then over at the Saint Jude medallion dangling from the rear view mirror. The “Pray for us” entreaty quickly came out of limbo. A horn blast broke our abject reverie and we jumped out of the car.
Boyd popped the hood and looked into the vast Caddy cavern. The engine gave no indication of changing its mind. The emergency light wasn’t working so I stood behind the car and waved folks around. Boyd ran over to the library and made a call home: “Mom we are stuck at the intersection of Kennedy Drive and Lake Street. The car just stopped dead.”
The Caddy was Boyd’s dad’s idea. He thought we would be safer driving the massive armored vehicle instead of Boyd’s sporty cruiser, a Chevy Caprice. But the journey of a thousand miles would restart with the Caprice.
Boyd’s mom drove the Caprice over to where we were stranded. We unloaded our gear from the Caddy into the Caprice. Boyd reconnected the AC cord of the Marantz to the dc to ac converter plugged into the cigarette lighter. We were good to go musically. Hope started charging the moment the Caprice cranked over. We thanked Boyd’s mom and drove off leaving her to wait for the tow truck.
After a couple of hours driving we had left Illinois behind. Boyd drove the whole first day and night of the trip. No-Doz, Dr. Pepper and a BTO album kept Boyd’s hand thumping the dashboard for hours on end. We puffed on Dutch Master Panetelas as he drove us through Wisconsin and through Minnesota and then into South Dakota, clicking off mile after mile, ash after ash. While he drove I lay back in my seat, eyes half-open, as the day turned to night before us. When it became dark I wondered if Boyd could stay awake the whole night staring at the two-lane monotony always just headlights away. As DJ Denny I was soon charged with changing the records and keeping him alert. Bumps in the road and lane changes kept me busy returning the wandering needle to its groove.
South Dakota: grasslands, vast open landscape, not a building in sight. In the early morning hours back-lit by the sunrise, the tall wheat grass looked like golden blond hair as it was brushed by the wind. After fourteen hours we let the turn table go silent. When we did I heard other music playing outside the open car window – ancient music streaming in the wind. The cessation of all that I knew from a life in Chicago and the revelation of sights and sounds I never knew somehow caused ancient memories to stir up in me, a mystical vision of a boy running free – no shirt, no shoes, just earth and boy and wind. Snap! A Wall Drug billboard appeared and then another and another. Burma Shave Lives on: GET A SODA…GET A ROOT BEER…TURN THE CORNER…JUST AS NEAR…TO HIGHWAY 16 AND 14
FREE ICE WATER…WALL DRUG.
What great wonder of the world awaited us? Boyd drove us past the endless signs to that middle of nowhere – the town of Wall, South Dakota, home of Wall Drug. The promise of free ice water noted on the drug store’s ubiquitous billboards along I- 90 had wetted our interest.
Wall Drug was just what my post card thought’s had pictured: Indian lore and artifacts packaged for tourists along with food, souvenirs, polished stones, rubber tomahawks, prescription drugs and the free bottle of ice cold water. When we got back to the Caprice a Wall Drug bumper sticker was affixed to the rear bumper – a billboard to go:
“WHERE THE HECK IS WALL DRUG?”
We set off with our free ice water and our newly labeled rear end and headed for the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore, the Badlands and the Corn Palace. I queued up Paul and Linda McCarthy’s Ram album. Out came “Too Many People,” “Three Legs,” “Ram On.” The Beatles were breaking up in our back seat.
“Looking for a home in the heart of the country….Heart of the country, where the holy people grow, Heart of the country, smell the grass in the meadow.”
We exited I-90 at Rapid City and drove south to Custer State Park. After scratching our heads we left. We followed Iron Mountain road out of the eastern gate of Custer State Park. The road’s corkscrewing “pigtail” bridges and three narrow honk-your-horn-through-the-rock tunnels wound us through the Black Hills to Mount Rushmore. As we drove out of one tunnel the chalk-white “Shrine of Democracy” appeared before us in the receding aperture. We had come out of the rabbit-hole of the sixties and face to face with our forefathers. We sat up straight in our seats.
As we stood on Mt.Rushmore’s viewing terrace I was hoping to see Cary Grant or Eva Marie Saint but not James Mason. I was in a North by Northwest latitude of mind. With some intrigue in mind I did put some tokens into a telescope. I was hoping to catch someone hanging from the nose of a president but all I saw was a few eroded pores. Stone faces don’t do anything for me.
That night we decided to camp at Mount Rushmore National Park. Red – eyed and saddle-sore, we had been driving since 2:00 in the afternoon the day before. It was now 7:30 pm Saturday. Fortunate for us the gods behind the stone faces smiled down upon us: we were able to get the last open spot on the campground. After pitching our two-man tent on a floor of pine needles we crawled into our sleeping bags. We let sleep overcome us – screaming kids, barking dogs and banging pots not withstanding.
The next morning’s commotion gave us a start. Folks were packing kids and camping gear into their cars and leaving the park. We didn’t start a fire or make coffee. We pissed, packed the tent and drove back to Rapid City where there was a Waffle house and breakfast.
After some scrambled eggs and toast and plenty of coffee we pulled onto I-90 heading northwest. I put the needle down on BTO’s groove “Taking Care of Business.” Boyd again thumped the dashboard as we drove past Sturgis into Wyoming. We drove past Sundance and then Gillette. We turned south and headed to Casper passing the Hole-In-The Wall hideout. We had heard that Butch and Sundance were out of the country so we didn’t stop and say “Hi.”
After an early supper in Casper we made the Grand Teton National Forest by twilight. On a bluff that overlooked Jackson Lake’s Spalding Bay we set up our tent. The once-in-a-lifetime view: the cerulean blue lady of Jackson Lake had put on a string of diamonds that sparkled as the sun set.
The air that night was crisp and clean, full of promise. We slept like two bears in hibernation. I finally woke the next day when I stretched out my legs and my feet touched the cool damp edge of the tent. I poked myself out of the tent and found the same morning dew had been soaking the bottoms of my shoes. “Hey, Boyd wake up. Look at this.”
With one last snort Boyd roused and fumbled out the tent, one leg in his pant’s the other caught in the tent. “What?”
“Look!” I pointed.
Boyd’s jaw dropped.
All around our tent there were huge paw prints in the damp earth. A bear had been stalking our campsite during the night. “Whew!” – our collective thought blurt out from our ashen faces. We were relieved that we had not been mistaken for food and that the cache of food we had brought with was safely packed in the car’s trunk ~ a two-week supply of beef jerky, spam and bottles of Dr. Pepper. As far as I was concerned, though, the bear could have the jerky. GIGO, as they say.
Now Boyd liked to keep moving. He was not ADD. He was ASAP. His mom told me one day that “you never know with Boyd. Boyd goes wherever the wind takes him at the moment.” Boyd was my Dean Moriarty. So every day, On the Road, wind at our backs, we drove like the world was holding out on us.
For the both of us movement meant music. Boyd brought his LP and eight track collection and I brought my LPs: Boyd’s road tunes: Bachman Turner Overdrive (BTO), the Beatle’s White Album, McCarthy’s Ram, The Bee Gees, Barry Manilow (yes, Barry Manilow), Jefferson Airplane. Mine: Chicago Transit Authority, Blood Sweat and Tears, Bill Chase: Chase, The Doors, Sargent Pepper Lonely Heart’s Club Band, the Woodstock soundtrack, George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, Simon & Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Green River, Moody Blues Every Good Boy Deserves Favour . Mile markers, grooves, tracks and flashbacks – we let the RPMs take us.
Driving up to Yellowstone was a panoramic delight. We “aw”-ed at the sight of Old Faithful, we laughed at the “blup blup” of the Mud Volcano erupting and pinched our noses at the rotten egg smell of the Sulphur Caldron – the bounty of good earth filled our senses.
From Yellowstone we headed south to Wind River Indian Reservation. We set up our tent in the early evening in a nearby campsite and started a fire. Boyd stirred up some Sanka.
We sat by the crackling pine needle fire until the reflective light of the moon flooded directly down onto us through the towering jack pines. Branches scratched each other in the night breeze. After a while we decided to hike over to a treeless area we could make out at the edge of our forest canopy. As we did we came upon a creek bed lay that lay at an opening in the side of a deep ravine.
It appeared that a mighty river had once flowed through the rock, its torrent gouging a deep channel through the sandstone and later breaking out the gulch before us. But now instead of a large swift river forcing it way upon the landscape, a shallow unhurried stream silently passed over a bed of smooth stones and sand. The desultory shimmer of wet stone offered teasing glimpses of the moon’s face from earth. Boyd and I sat down near the stream on a fallen grey tree trunk. Our short shadows floating on the stream.
I saw her then, a silhouette of a young woman with waist length hair. She was kneeling at a bend in the stream. She looked to be a cutout of the Indian princess on the Land-O-Lakes butter package. (My fantasies always include food.) Kneeling about twenty feet from where we sat she turned toward us. I met her gaze. The next thing I knew my legs were carrying me over to where she knelt. Funny things, legs, but I guess when you are seventeen and having just graduated from high school the torrent of impulse is unleashed within you moving your legs before all else.
“The moon,” was all I got out and I sat down next to her feet. The moon’s ethereal light dappled our faces with faint glow. We sat silently for a while, my fearlessness now speechlessness. And while I waited for my impulse to catch its breath I hoped that she would say something.
“I’m Anna.”
“I’m Denny. Hi.” I looked over at her hoping to see more of her face but it was in shadow.
“Hi.”
After a couple of awkward minutes she said, “My folks are taking us to California for vacation. I’m from Rapid City, South Dakota.”
“I’m from Chicago.”
“I can tell.”
“How’s that?”
“Guys from Chicago talk like Chicago. You know, like their chewing on meat and potatoes when their talking to you, like regular guys. That’s what my mom says about her dad. He’s from Chicago.”
“I didn’t know I was regular until today. I do like my mom’s pot roast.”
“Regular is good. It means you are who you are and not something else. I could sense it before I walked out here alone.” She turned quickly toward the trees. “I am not alone. My parents are right over there in the camper, so I am not alone. See?”
I looked where she looked and nodded. “OH. OK then. I am regular.” I said looking at her. “Regular is good. So be it.”
From behind me came the sound of a small rumble and then a loud splashing of hoofs followed by neighs and whinnies. A herd of wild horses ~ Mustangs ~ appeared out of the east ravine passage. They stopped right in front of Boyd to slurp up the clear water.
It was midnight and a dreamscape: wild horses standing in a quick sliver stream, my hand now in hers, the moon’s pale illumination casting a black and white surrealism onto the ravine walls and Boyd, a shadow, sitting alone on a log. I shook off my dream.
I said good night to Anna telling her that I hoped we’d meet again in another dream and walked over to where Boyd sat. He had been whittling a pine branch into what looked like a spear. I sat down and together we watched the horses until they chased each other down the stream and out of our view. We returned to our tent for the night. The Dream followed me there.
*****
One fine morning, girl, I’ll wake up
Wipe the sleep from my eyes
Go outside and feel the sunshine
Then I know I’ll realize
That as long as you love me, girl, we’ll fly
And on that mornin’ when I wake up
I’ll see your face inside a cloud
See your smile inside a window
Hear your voice inside a crowd
Calling, “Come with me baby and we’ll fly”
Later, Boyd said he didn’t mind about me and the girl. But he did begin to mind when I met another girl on our trip to England and then another on a trip to Miami and then another on our trip around the Great Lakes. I was happy when began to talk about a girl he liked at church. I hoped she liked him.
*****
Wyoming was a state of mind that I didn’t want to leave. I vowed to return and make my home among the broncos. Denver was next on our road trip. Our former pastor lived in a suburb of Denver and Boyd decided that we should surprise him by showing up at his church office. The pastor gulped when he saw us.
Pastor Renz greeted us and then invited us to his home for lunch. We ate PB & J sandwiches and drank lemonade. His told us that his wife was out-of-town so we sat with him and his three sons on their patio. During lunch we chatted about our trip and about our home town and then we said goodbye. This side trip was important for Boyd. Years before I had brought Boyd to our church. This pastor had led Boyd to the Lord. Boyd wanted to see him one more time and thank him. As his mother said Boyd was impulsive in every way. The high RPMs of his soul kept us moving quickly in some direction – a direction we’d figure out on the way.
After lunch Boyd’s compass pointed northeast and to Estes Park, Colorado. We made our way to this mountain town where the bindle bums of the sixties had come to find a Rocky Mountain High – hippies and tie-dye shrines were everywhere among the polished stone and incense shops. Guitars were being strummed by glazed eyed folk singers warning of the world’s destruction at the hands of the Man. We quickly left town after stocking up on a supply of beef jerky and Mountain Dew. We soon found a campsite along Silver Creek.
Our rented patch of earth for that night was no more than six feet by five feet. It sat right on the edge of a small bubbling creek. All the other campsites were taken for the night. With no space to build a fire and an itch to do something we left the tent and drove around until we found a sign for a drive-in movie theatre nestled within the steep mountain valley. An hour before the movie began we bought our tickets. To pass the time we sat on the hood of the Caprice eating popcorn watching the sunset gild the mountain ridges.
By 9:30 the mountains had shuttered off light on all sides except for the corona of moonlight directly above us. The previews began to roll and then came the main feature: Le Mans with Steve McQueen. There were Porsches and Ferraris burning up the track. There were more wild horses, more RPMs. All good until the screen went blank after the credits. Everyone had driven off except us. The Caprice wouldn’t start. Then the drive-in manager shut off the food stand lights. Our race car wasn’t going anywhere. Boyd wiggled the battery cable but the battery had been DOA.
After talking to the drive–in manager Boyd made a phone call, this time to AAA. An hour later a tow truck chained our fate to its cantilever pulley and hauled us over to a darkened Amoco gas station. The sign on the door told us the station opened at seven am. We got back into the car and slept restlessly wondering if seven o’clock MST was ever going to show up like it did in CST. I also began to realize that Beef jerky and popcorn don’t come together for your enjoyment.
At seven-o-five a mechanic pulled his pickup into the driveway of the gas station. He got out of the truck, dropped his mouth open at the sight of us and then spat some brown liquid twenty feet behind him. He then walked over to front of the gas station and unlocked the garage door. He then set about brewing some coffee. When the muck he was brewing had finally stopped belching he offered it – an oily looking residue with islands of powdered cream floating on top – in a grimy Styrofoam cup. The lack of air at that altitude must have deprived my brain of needed oxygen. I drank the coffee.
While the mechanic installed a new battery we called home. We wanted to let our parents know that we hadn’t fled the country to avoid the draft. We were “OK” we told them, “just more battery problems.” We set out again confident that we were firing on all electrolyte cells.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet.” The drive through Rocky Mountain National Park lifted our spirits skyward but the dizzying drop offs and the struggling out-of-breath car are the things I remember. And the feeling of being at the top of the world with eagles, soaring.
After descending the mountains our trip began to take on a deliberate speed. We had tired of sleeping on the hard ground and the endless ribbon of highway unreeling in our sleep. We drove across Colorado to a town on its western edge, the town of Dinosaur. This small town and its streets were so named because of their proximity to Dinosaur National Monument – the home of prehistoric fossil beds. The rocky ridges along the highway leading to Dinosaur gave the appearance of exposed dinosaur backbones.
After a brief glimpse in the direction of epochs and eras Boyd pushed the “Fast Forward” button on the floor of the Caprice. From Dinosaur we drove into Utah so we could say that we had been to Utah. We found a campsite east of Vernal. In the morning we headed southeast to Grand Junction Colorado and then up and around Denver and straight for Kansas. We camped that night outside Salina Kansas, under a large oak tree. The next day I wondered if I would see Jim Ryan, the first high-school cross-country runner to break a four-minute mile, run past us as we drove through his home state.
Topeka came and went. We drove into and across Missouri. We spent the night at a St. Louis West Route 66 KOA campsite. After breakfast in St. Louis we sped a northeast diagonal across Illinois prairie up to our homes outside of Chicago. Even wild horses need their batteries recharged.
Since the elections are days away from taking place I thought it important to post information to help inform your decision. Our nation is at the tipping point of being destroyed. A second Obama Term will make that happen. Vote wisely and not with feelings that do not pay the bills.
Socialism does not work in Europe. It will not work in America either, no matter the label on the snake oil bottle: Progressivism or Social Justice or Redistribution of Wealth. It’s bad bad medicine.
“We have entered, as I see it, a spiritual limbo. Our educational institutions are no longer the bearers of high culture, and public life has been deliberately moronised. But here and there, sheltered from the noise and glare of the media, the old spiritual forces are at work” Roger Scruton
*****
“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
*****
“Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.” Oswald Chambers
*****
“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
*****
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony,Oswald Chambers
*****
“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
*****
Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
*****
If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
*****
“In Sweden, giving to charity, absurdly, came to be considered a lack of solidarity, since it undermined the need for the welfare state.” – Roland Martinsson
*****
“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
*****
Capitalism seeks to help others through a servce or product it provides. Free Market Capitalism is the most moral and fair economic system available to man. Capitalism augments personal growth, responsibility and ownership. Charity flourishes under capitalism. Charity dies under subjective “fair share” government confiscatory policies. Socialism redistributes ambivalence and greed.
*****
“We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.” G.K. Chesterton
*****
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
*****
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
*****
“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
*****
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
*****
God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
*****
From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
*****
“Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.” Oswald Chambers
*****
One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
*****
“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
*****
God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
*****
“America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.” John W. Gardner
**
“Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.” John W. Gardner
*****
“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” Dorothy L. Sayers
*****
“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
*****
“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
*****
This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
-The prophet Jeremiah, 6:16
*****
“…our common task is not so much discovering a truth hiding among contrary viewpoints as it is coming to possess a selfhood that no longer evades and eludes the truth with which it is importunately confronted.” James McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
*****
Cindy Wity 
Thanksgiving Food for Thought
November 22, 2012 1 Comment
Thomas Sowell: Liberals and Conservatives
Thomas Sowell: Occupying Mindlessness
Milton Friedman: Cause and effect
Tax the wealthy and there will be no money for investments and new jobs. Monies for charities will dry up. Tax the wealthy and you hurt charities and the middle class the most. Obama has no clue as to what he is doing. Sadly, people voted for just another politician.
Rate this:
Filed under Political Commentary Tagged with conservatives, Economics, liberals, liberals and conservatives, Liberty, Marxism, Milton Friedman, Obama, Occupy Wall Street, taxation, the wealthy, Thomas Sowell