First it was the avian flu. It scared me to pieces. I would sit up late at browsing the Internet to see any info I could find on it.
I go to Disney World eight months pregnant, caught the flu there. It was miserable. But it wasn't the Avian Flu. High fever, (104) Horrible cough, and the aches....the aches, oh that was the worst.
So when the "Swine" flu started to make the headlines, I was at first a bit skeptical. Because the Avian Flu never really caused much damage here in the US. But this Swine Flu, it was really close to the US because of Mexico.
Now, me, I am not one to run to the doctor for every aliment. I learned a long time ago, when we were on the more poorer side that it saves a great deal of money. ;-)
Since I don't run to the doctor, I have tried to learn and put into practice some natural home remedies to see if that will nip whatever I have in the bud, before I'll make a trip to the doctor. In eight years of marriage, and three kids later I have gone to the doctor about...um about 10 times, and an emergency room visit. This is not an exaggeration either. We just don't visit the doc very often.
About a week ago a friend of mine posted on her facebook that she had the Swine flu. I am like, "Oh Great! I am worried that I am going to get it now." As it seems every month I have "caught" something.
Sweetie then came down with a fever on Thursday night, so on Friday I made a trip to the health food store and stocked up on some Vitamin C, and a homeopathic flu formula. "Just in case"
Saturday night, I just sort of felt "off", and then woke up Sunday morning feeling pretty much yuck.
I began to drink my little "EmergenC's" every time I was thirsty. Then the fever came. So I began taking my homeopathic flu formula. In between that, I took heavy doses of Echencia/golden seal.
The aches were the worse thing of the whole ordeal. My head ached, my ears, jaw teeth, wrists, ankles, EVERYTHING. Motrin and warm showers helped me immensely. And sleep. After 24 hours the fever broke, the aches went away, and I thought, "nah! I didn't have the Swine flu" I didn't even get the respiratory problems. Just a little stuffy nose.
For one, the Swine flu was supposed to be worse than the regular flu right? Well, I had the regular flu, and that was about FIVE times more worse than what I had just experienced including the aches. And the regular flu lasted about five times longer, so it couldn't be the Swine Flu.
Until I saw my friend and asked her how she was doing, and if the flu was as horrible as the media is making it out to be. Her answer. No. The Media is definitely hyping it up. She said the first day was the worse, but after that, she was fine.
Did I have the Swine Flu? I don't know. But I was exposed to it, I live in an area where the outbreaks are "elevated" and had all the symptoms of the flu. Dr. Oz said that the main signs of Swine Flu were the Fever and body aches.
I certainly don't think it's worth risking your life or health on the up and coming Swine Flu shot
DISCLAIMER: What I wrote above is my own opinions. I am not a doctor, and I am not responsible for any choice you make regarding your own health.
Showing posts with label Opinions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Opinions. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Swine Flu...A Big Hype???
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Peace and Healing
My last post~ I *Wanted* to be Amish; it is just a smidgen of who I have become today. It's part of my history.
I am convinced that all of human life on this earth are in pursuit of something, and that is "peace".
Peace is such a pretty word too. Whenever I hear it, I always think of soft breezes, the warm glow of the late afternoon sun. The smell of jasmine wafting in the breeze. Children laughing and playing the neighborhood as an occasional dog barks.
Or I think of a log cabin with smoke drifting out of it's chimney in the twilight hours. Horses grazing and hearing the "munch munch" sound.
But reality is....it isn't *always* that picture perfect.
I am *such* an idealistic perfectionist, that when I "grew up" I had a pretty hard blow to my head when I entered "reality".
I am *such* an idealistic perfectionist, that when I "grew up" I had a pretty hard blow to my head when I entered "reality".
Before I entered life in the world of cruelty, I think I was a bit like Anne Shirley. But Anne kept her "dreamy" ways despite the hard cruel world. And there was no Mariella to firmly but gently help guide me back to the "real world". ;-)
So. I didn't stay in my "dreamy" ways after adulthood. In fact, to be blunt and honest. I about lost my mind. ;-) My little duckies didn't all line up in a row. In fact, they were stubborn little things! Most of the swam in directions that I wasn't anticipating and others out right flew away from me! (The ducks being my " idealistic dreams") And my imagination just wouldn't cooperate. (Like Ann, no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't seem to imagine her red hair away)
I have a very strong sense of "right" and "wrong", "truth" and "lies".
And if there was any breech in these qualities, in my own character, my idealistic perfectionism would take over, and my conscience would be overwhelmingly guilty. I couldn't seem to imagine away the wrong that I had done either. Nor did I feel I had the right to imagine away my guilt. That too would be a sin.
My idealistic perfectionism geared towards my "spiritual life". At first, the spiritual walk that I had chosen seemed to be working quite well.
But as time went on, my mind began to become affected with wrong thinking about myself and about God himself, and it lead into a deep, dark, and l-o-n-g depression.
Finally, after what seemed forever, I found peace. But despite the fact that I had peace, I needed to "heal" from some major wounds. Some of those wounds I had inflicted upon myself, and some wounds, from others who ignorantly wounded me.
But the funny thing is...all of us humans... all of us on the journey to find real peace, we also seem to need some kind of "healing" as well.
My story is different than yours I am sure. But I am also sure that almost everyone that I come in contact with has a story. And most of the time that story involves pain from wounds in their past.
The good news is...there is hope. There *is* healing.
Luke 4:18
The Spirit of the Lord [is] upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
Friday, February 20, 2009
Potty Training Philosophy
Well, we have been in the middle of potty training around here.
So far so good.
Tiny Boy is my third child to potty train. And I have found a method that works for me, I can dare say, after almost seven years of experience in motherhood.
Over the years, I have heard say, "Boys are harder to train than girls"
Well, that maybe true on average. But Tiny Boy has been a pleasant experience so far. ♥
My method is quite simple:
1. Wait until the kid is ready. Don't PUSH. If they don't understand simple directions, then they aren't ready. Maybe you can "potty train" them at an age where they don't follow simple directions...but it will be a headache in the long run.
2. Make sure that they can communicate clearly with you, the mommy. If you don't understand what they are trying to say to you when they are explaining something important to them, then it will only lead to frustration on the mommy's part.
3. Make sure they they are able to handle dexterity tasks. Can the unscrew bottle caps? Can they put their toys away, etc.
Those are my signs for when a child is ready for graduation out of diapers.
Each child is different. Sweetie and Bean were both ready waaay before I did train them. But I was pregnant and nearing delivery when both of them were ready to train, so I didn't bother. Having a new baby is a huge adjustment for a little tyke, as well as the mommy. Adding the stress of potty training just didn't seem wise to me.
So Tiny Boy. He began showing in "interest" in September. And I "played" with it with him. I wasn't being pushy about it. But I acted extremely pleased if he wanted to "sit" on the potty like his big sisters.
But the time came. It was past his third birthday.
So. I brought out the "big boy pants" with Carz, Woody, Buzz, and Nemo on them. I Stocked up on his favorite Juice.
The morning came, and I told him, "We are going to wear Big Boy pants". I put them on him. He fussed.
I asked him if he wanted Juice. Of course he did. And promptly he forgot about wearing those stupid things.
I set the timer for 10 minutes after he drank his juice.
When the timer went off, I sat him on the potty. That was a bit of a struggle, but I told him that if he went pee pee, he would get a candy. So he sat.
Eventually he peed.
Yaaaaa! BIG BOY!!!! YIPPEE!!!! LET's GO GET SOME CANDY!!!!
You get the idea.
More juice. Set Timer.
Oops. accident. Tiny Boy does *not* like that feeling. We change Buzz Lightyear pants to Mr. Incredible pants
Set Timer again. This time I set it sooner than before.
We made the deadline!
Yaaaa! BIG BOY!!!! YIPPEE!!! LET'S GO GET SOME CANDY!!!!!
Set the timer again.
Success this time.
Yaaaa! BIG BOY!!! YIPPEE!!! LET'S GO GET SOME CANDY!!!!!
Oh no. Another accident. Tiny Boy not Happy. Change Pants.
So you see the routine right?
The next day we start all over. This time Tiny Boy isn't upset about putting on the Big Boy Pants. I set the timer, give him juice, and repeat the process from the previous day.
This time a slight change occurs. Tiny Boy is starting to come and *tell* me he needs to go...and a few times before the timer goes off.
Only one "accident" on the second day.
Day Three. We repeat the same scenarios as in previous days.
This time, I can't remember the timer going off before Tiny Boy comes and says he needs to go. There are no accidents on day three.
Tomorrow will be day four. The real test is when we leave the house LOL!
Now, let me just stop here and go off on a little bunny trail here. I don't know why but Potty Training can be *such* a controversial subject amongst moms, aunts, grandmas, and friends. I am still scratching my head as to ummmm.....why!?
I have been in groups where different ladies were discussing this, and many of them passing judgment on mothers in how they and their husbands choose to go about this not so fun duty.
Well, if the child is eight, then maybe....maybe there might be something wrong. But I know of many friends, and other people, who's little children's bladders are *not* developed in the way they need to be in order to potty train.
And other mothers just need a little encouragement. Not disdain and judgement over what can be a difficult time.
I know I have been made to feel like I wasn't doing my job because my kids weren't trained by the time they were two.
People need to give people grace. Sometimes Mommy's have issues and circumstances that won't allow them the time that is needed to potty train.
Sometimes Mommies are:
1. Pregnant and about to give birth
2. Nursing. (Which is demanding in of itself. Try nursing, hearing your toddler scream, "I gotta go now!" and you have your babe stuck to your boob. Putting the baby down and running the toddler to the potty.)
3. Moving Homes. (packing, unpacking, rearranging furniture, etc)
4 Having more than one child.
5. Have all the above scenarios and your husband works late, and you have no immediate family near by to help you.
Yeah. Those are some pretty trying circumstances in which to take a toddler to the potty every 15 minutes and then sit there and wait patiently until they go. Not to mention all the "normal" things like, laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc.
So the next time you see a toddler in diapers. Make sure you think twice before thinking "Ugg! That Mother hasn't trained him yet?" ♥ ♥ ♥
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
I Should Be Ashamed!
A few days ago, I kept getting Anon, comments on my blog...whom I *highly* suspect is from the same person. (Although I don't have a clue as to who this person is) They used phrases and words that were the same in their comments. One of which "I should be ashamed of myself"
1. For Brainwashing Bean
2. For equating Obama to Hitler
I am on Cafemom, and I am in a group that is a Christian debate group. There are several lovely ladies in there who happen to be created with dark skin. We got into a topic on "Race" and "racism" in this country.
While discussing this topic with these ladies, I have realized that this election was more about the fact that Obama had a darker color of skin than previous presidents. And while discussing my thoughts and views on Obama in my blog, it may of come across as me being a "racist".
Even a friend on Facebook was surprised at all that "Radical" Republicans that were in her friend list. And on her page, she expressed her views of Obama, which for the most part had to do with his color of skin, than with his beliefs or policies.
Even a friend on Facebook was surprised at all that "Radical" Republicans that were in her friend list. And on her page, she expressed her views of Obama, which for the most part had to do with his color of skin, than with his beliefs or policies.
The reason I voted McCain wasn't because he was "white" and Obama was "black". But the fact that Obama has some *really* bad ideas that goes against every ounce of my beliefs. If Obama's ideas and beliefs would of lined up with my own, I would of voted for him. But, I didn't vote for McCain, solely because he is white. That's plain silly; to vote for someone based on the color of their skin!
Which is what I fear most people that God created with a darker color of skin did in this election. They voted for Obama solely because of the color of his skin, and not for what he believed.
On my debate group on Cafemom, I made the reference that if Condoleezza Rice had ran against Obama, this election wouldn't of been about skin color but about the beliefs of the candidates for this country. And I wish she had.
Several ladies that voted for Obama, said that they would of voted for her because they "love" her. That raised a big question in my mind. If it *had* been between Obama and Condoleezza, and most of the black ladies would of voted for her over Obama, then this campaign was more about the color of skin, rather than Obama's belief of this country.
So having written that disclaimer; my dad sent me an article about a fact of Obama. And how that fact is one of the same beliefs as Hitler's was. Hmmmm.... Why should I be ashamed of myself for equating Obama with Hitler, if he and Hitler believed one of the same things? If not many?
And the reason I equate Obama with Hitler, isn't because of the color of his skin. But because of what he believes.
Here is the article:
Georgia congressman warns of Obama dictatorship By BEN EVANS
(Associated Press Writer)From Associated Press November 10, 2008 6:38 PM EST
WASHINGTON -A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that
President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a
Marxist or fascist dictatorship.
"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but
the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul
Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just
trying to bring attention to the fact that we may - may not, I hope not - but we
may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or
Marxism."
Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the
Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a
civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the
military.
"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly
what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national
security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military,
he's showing me signs of being Marxist."
Obama's comments about a national
security force came during a speech in Colorado about building a new civil
service corps. Among other things, he called for expanding the nation's foreign
service and doubling the size of the Peace Corps "to renew our
diplomacy."
"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to
achieve the national security objectives that we've set," Obama said in July.
"We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful,
just as strong, just as well-funded."
Broun said he also believes Obama
likely will move to ban gun ownership if he does build a national police
force.
Obama has said he respects the Second Amendment right to bear arms and
favors "common sense" gun laws. Gun rights advocates interpret that as meaning
he'll at least enact curbs on ownership of assault weapons and concealed
weapons. As an Illinois state lawmaker, Obama supported a ban on semiautomatic
weapons and tighter restrictions on firearms generally.
"We can't be lulled
into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was
elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm
saying is there is the potential."
Obama's transition office did not respond
immediately to Broun's remarks.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Ronny
Program Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, we take pride in presenting a thoughtful address by Ronald Reagan. Mr. Reagan:
Reagan: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you and good evening. The sponsor has been identified, but unlike most television programs, the performer hasn't been provided with a script. As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own words and discuss my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks.
I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines. Now, one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has been used, "We've never had it so good."
But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn't something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector's share, and yet our government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in. We haven't balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We've raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the world. We have 15 billion dollars in gold in our treasury; we don't own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are 27.3 billion dollars. And we've just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.
As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it's been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.
Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.
And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man.
This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down: [up] man's old -- old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the "Great Society," or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a greater government activity in the affairs of the people. But they've been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves; and all of the things I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say, "The cold war will end through our acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism." Another voice says, "The profit motive has become outmoded. It must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state." Or, "Our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century." Senator Fulbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the President as "our moral teacher and our leader," and he says he is "hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by this antiquated document." He must "be freed," so that he "can do for us" what he knows "is best." And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as "meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government."
Well, I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as "the masses." This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, "the full power of centralized government" -- this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.
Now, we have no better example of this than government's involvement in the farm economy over the last 30 years. Since 1955, the cost of this program has nearly doubled. One-fourth of farming in America is responsible for 85% of the farm surplus. Three-fourths of farming is out on the free market and has known a 21% increase in the per capita consumption of all its produce. You see, that one-fourth of farming -- that's regulated and controlled by the federal government. In the last three years we've spent 43 dollars in the feed grain program for every dollar bushel of corn we don't grow.
Senator Humphrey last week charged that Barry Goldwater, as President, would seek to eliminate farmers. He should do his homework a little better, because he'll find out that we've had a decline of 5 million in the farm population under these government programs. He'll also find that the Democratic administration has sought to get from Congress [an] extension of the farm program to include that three-fourths that is now free. He'll find that they've also asked for the right to imprison farmers who wouldn't keep books as prescribed by the federal government. The Secretary of Agriculture asked for the right to seize farms through condemnation and resell them to other individuals. And contained in that same program was a provision that would have allowed the federal government to remove 2 million farmers from the soil.
At the same time, there's been an increase in the Department of Agriculture employees. There's now one for every 30 farms in the United States, and still they can't tell us how 66 shiploads of grain headed for Austria disappeared without a trace and Billie Sol Estes never left shore.
Every responsible farmer and farm organization has repeatedly asked the government to free the farm economy, but how -- who are farmers to know what's best for them? The wheat farmers voted against a wheat program. The government passed it anyway. Now the price of bread goes up; the price of wheat to the farmer goes down.
Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the assault on freedom carries on. Private property rights [are] so diluted that public interest is almost anything a few government planners decide it should be. In a program that takes from the needy and gives to the greedy, we see such spectacles as in Cleveland, Ohio, a million-and-a-half-dollar building completed only three years ago must be destroyed to make way for what government officials call a "more compatible use of the land." The President tells us he's now going to start building public housing units in the thousands, where heretofore we've only built them in the hundreds. But FHA [Federal Housing Authority] and the Veterans Administration tell us they have 120,000 housing units they've taken back through mortgage foreclosure. For three decades, we've sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan. The latest is the Area Redevelopment Agency.
They've just declared Rice County, Kansas, a depressed area. Rice County, Kansas, has two hundred oil wells, and the 14,000 people there have over 30 million dollars on deposit in personal savings in their banks. And when the government tells you you're depressed, lie down and be depressed.
We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they're going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer -- and they've had almost 30 years of it -- shouldn't we expect government to read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn't they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?
But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater; the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we're told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than 3,000 dollars a year. Welfare spending [is] 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We're spending 45 billion dollars on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you'll find that if we divided the 45 billion dollars up equally among those 9 million poor families, we'd be able to give each family 4,600 dollars a year. And this added to their present income should eliminate poverty. Direct aid to the poor, however, is only running only about 600 dollars per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.
Now -- so now we declare "war on poverty," or "You, too, can be a Bobby Baker." Now do they honestly expect us to believe that if we add 1 billion dollars to the 45 billion we're spending, one more program to the 30-odd we have -- and remember, this new program doesn't replace any, it just duplicates existing programs -- do they believe that poverty is suddenly going to disappear by magic? Well, in all fairness I should explain there is one part of the new program that isn't duplicated. This is the youth feature. We're now going to solve the dropout problem, juvenile delinquency, by reinstituting something like the old CCC camps [Civilian Conservation Corps], and we're going to put our young people in these camps. But again we do some arithmetic, and we find that we're going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person we help 4,700 dollars a year. We can send them to Harvard for 2,700! Course, don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting Harvard is the answer to juvenile delinquency.
But seriously, what are we doing to those we seek to help? Not too long ago, a judge called me here in Los Angeles. He told me of a young woman who'd come before him for a divorce. She had six children, was pregnant with her seventh. Under his questioning, she revealed her husband was a laborer earning 250 dollars a month. She wanted a divorce to get an 80 dollar raise. She's eligible for 330 dollars a month in the Aid to Dependent Children Program. She got the idea from two women in her neighborhood who'd already done that very thing.
Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we're always "against" things -- we're never "for" anything.
Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.
Now -- we're for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we've accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.
But we're against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those people who depend on them for a livelihood. They've called it "insurance" to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified it was a welfare program. They only use the term "insurance" to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is 298 billion dollars in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble. And they're doing just that.
A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary -- his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee 220 dollars a month at age 65. The government promises 127. He could live it up until he's 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now are we so lacking in business sense that we can't put this program on a sound basis, so that people who do require those payments will find they can get them when they're due -- that the cupboard isn't bare?
Barry Goldwater thinks we can.
At the same time, can't we introduce voluntary features that would permit a citizen who can do better on his own to be excused upon presentation of evidence that he had made provision for the non-earning years? Should we not allow a widow with children to work, and not lose the benefits supposedly paid for by her deceased husband? Shouldn't you and I be allowed to declare who our beneficiaries will be under this program, which we cannot do? I think we're for telling our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. But I think we're against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, especially when we have such examples, as was announced last week, when France admitted that their Medicare program is now bankrupt. They've come to the end of the road.
In addition, was Barry Goldwater so irresponsible when he suggested that our government give up its program of deliberate, planned inflation, so that when you do get your Social Security pension, a dollar will buy a dollar's worth, and not 45 cents worth?
I think we're for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we're against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world's population. I think we're against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in the Soviet colonies in the satellite nations.
I think we're for aiding our allies by sharing of our material blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs, but we're against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world. We set out to help 19 countries. We're helping 107. We've spent 146 billion dollars. With that money, we bought a 2 million dollar yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenya[n] government officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity. In the last six years, 52 nations have bought 7 billion dollars worth of our gold, and all 52 are receiving foreign aid from this country.
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So, governments' programs, once launched, never disappear.
Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth.
Federal employees -- federal employees number two and a half million; and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the nation's work force employed by government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man's property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury? And they can seize and sell his property at auction to enforce the payment of that fine. In Chico County, Arkansas, James Wier over-planted his rice allotment. The government obtained a 17,000 dollar judgment. And a U.S. marshal sold his 960-acre farm at auction. The government said it was necessary as a warning to others to make the system work.
Last February 19th at the University of Minnesota, Norman Thomas, six-times candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket, said, "If Barry Goldwater became President, he would stop the advance of socialism in the United States." I think that's exactly what he will do.
But as a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn't the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration, because back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his Party was taking the Party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his Party, and he never returned til the day he died -- because to this day, the leadership of that Party has been taking that Party, that honorable Party, down the road in the image of the labor Socialist Party of England.
Now it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed to the -- or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? And such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.
Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men -- that we're to choose just between two personalities.
Well what of this man that they would destroy -- and in destroying, they would destroy that which he represents, the ideas that you and I hold dear? Is he the brash and shallow and trigger-happy man they say he is? Well I've been privileged to know him "when." I knew him long before he ever dreamed of trying for high office, and I can tell you personally I've never known a man in my life I believed so incapable of doing a dishonest or dishonorable thing.
This is a man who, in his own business before he entered politics, instituted a profit-sharing plan before unions had ever thought of it. He put in health and medical insurance for all his employees. He took 50 percent of the profits before taxes and set up a retirement program, a pension plan for all his employees. He sent monthly checks for life to an employee who was ill and couldn't work. He provides nursing care for the children of mothers who work in the stores. When Mexico was ravaged by the floods in the Rio Grande, he climbed in his airplane and flew medicine and supplies down there.
An ex-GI told me how he met him. It was the week before Christmas during the Korean War, and he was at the Los Angeles airport trying to get a ride home to Arizona for Christmas. And he said that [there were] a lot of servicemen there and no seats available on the planes. And then a voice came over the loudspeaker and said, "Any men in uniform wanting a ride to Arizona, go to runway such-and-such," and they went down there, and there was a fellow named Barry Goldwater sitting in his plane. Every day in those weeks before Christmas, all day long, he'd load up the plane, fly it to Arizona, fly them to their homes, fly back over to get another load.
During the hectic split-second timing of a campaign, this is a man who took time out to sit beside an old friend who was dying of cancer. His campaign managers were understandably impatient, but he said, "There aren't many left who care what happens to her. I'd like her to know I care." This is a man who said to his 19-year-old son, "There is no foundation like the rock of honesty and fairness, and when you begin to build your life on that rock, with the cement of the faith in God that you have, then you have a real start." This is not a man who could carelessly send other people's sons to war. And that is the issue of this campaign that makes all the other problems I've discussed academic, unless we realize we're in a war that must be won.
Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we'll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he'll forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer -- not an easy answer -- but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.
We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we're willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace -- and you can have it in the next second -- surrender.
Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face -- that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand -- the ultimatum. And what then -- when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we're retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he's heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he'd rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us.
You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin -- just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it's a simple answer after all.
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." "There is a point beyond which they must not advance." And this -- this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said, "The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits -- not animals." And he said, "There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.
We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.
We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.
Thank you very much.
I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines. Now, one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has been used, "We've never had it so good."
But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn't something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector's share, and yet our government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in. We haven't balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We've raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the world. We have 15 billion dollars in gold in our treasury; we don't own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are 27.3 billion dollars. And we've just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.
As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it's been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.
Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.
And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man.
This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down: [up] man's old -- old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the "Great Society," or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a greater government activity in the affairs of the people. But they've been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves; and all of the things I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say, "The cold war will end through our acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism." Another voice says, "The profit motive has become outmoded. It must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state." Or, "Our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century." Senator Fulbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the President as "our moral teacher and our leader," and he says he is "hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by this antiquated document." He must "be freed," so that he "can do for us" what he knows "is best." And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as "meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government."
Well, I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as "the masses." This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, "the full power of centralized government" -- this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.
Now, we have no better example of this than government's involvement in the farm economy over the last 30 years. Since 1955, the cost of this program has nearly doubled. One-fourth of farming in America is responsible for 85% of the farm surplus. Three-fourths of farming is out on the free market and has known a 21% increase in the per capita consumption of all its produce. You see, that one-fourth of farming -- that's regulated and controlled by the federal government. In the last three years we've spent 43 dollars in the feed grain program for every dollar bushel of corn we don't grow.
Senator Humphrey last week charged that Barry Goldwater, as President, would seek to eliminate farmers. He should do his homework a little better, because he'll find out that we've had a decline of 5 million in the farm population under these government programs. He'll also find that the Democratic administration has sought to get from Congress [an] extension of the farm program to include that three-fourths that is now free. He'll find that they've also asked for the right to imprison farmers who wouldn't keep books as prescribed by the federal government. The Secretary of Agriculture asked for the right to seize farms through condemnation and resell them to other individuals. And contained in that same program was a provision that would have allowed the federal government to remove 2 million farmers from the soil.
At the same time, there's been an increase in the Department of Agriculture employees. There's now one for every 30 farms in the United States, and still they can't tell us how 66 shiploads of grain headed for Austria disappeared without a trace and Billie Sol Estes never left shore.
Every responsible farmer and farm organization has repeatedly asked the government to free the farm economy, but how -- who are farmers to know what's best for them? The wheat farmers voted against a wheat program. The government passed it anyway. Now the price of bread goes up; the price of wheat to the farmer goes down.
Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the assault on freedom carries on. Private property rights [are] so diluted that public interest is almost anything a few government planners decide it should be. In a program that takes from the needy and gives to the greedy, we see such spectacles as in Cleveland, Ohio, a million-and-a-half-dollar building completed only three years ago must be destroyed to make way for what government officials call a "more compatible use of the land." The President tells us he's now going to start building public housing units in the thousands, where heretofore we've only built them in the hundreds. But FHA [Federal Housing Authority] and the Veterans Administration tell us they have 120,000 housing units they've taken back through mortgage foreclosure. For three decades, we've sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan. The latest is the Area Redevelopment Agency.
They've just declared Rice County, Kansas, a depressed area. Rice County, Kansas, has two hundred oil wells, and the 14,000 people there have over 30 million dollars on deposit in personal savings in their banks. And when the government tells you you're depressed, lie down and be depressed.
We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they're going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer -- and they've had almost 30 years of it -- shouldn't we expect government to read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn't they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?
But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater; the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we're told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than 3,000 dollars a year. Welfare spending [is] 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We're spending 45 billion dollars on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you'll find that if we divided the 45 billion dollars up equally among those 9 million poor families, we'd be able to give each family 4,600 dollars a year. And this added to their present income should eliminate poverty. Direct aid to the poor, however, is only running only about 600 dollars per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.
Now -- so now we declare "war on poverty," or "You, too, can be a Bobby Baker." Now do they honestly expect us to believe that if we add 1 billion dollars to the 45 billion we're spending, one more program to the 30-odd we have -- and remember, this new program doesn't replace any, it just duplicates existing programs -- do they believe that poverty is suddenly going to disappear by magic? Well, in all fairness I should explain there is one part of the new program that isn't duplicated. This is the youth feature. We're now going to solve the dropout problem, juvenile delinquency, by reinstituting something like the old CCC camps [Civilian Conservation Corps], and we're going to put our young people in these camps. But again we do some arithmetic, and we find that we're going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person we help 4,700 dollars a year. We can send them to Harvard for 2,700! Course, don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting Harvard is the answer to juvenile delinquency.
But seriously, what are we doing to those we seek to help? Not too long ago, a judge called me here in Los Angeles. He told me of a young woman who'd come before him for a divorce. She had six children, was pregnant with her seventh. Under his questioning, she revealed her husband was a laborer earning 250 dollars a month. She wanted a divorce to get an 80 dollar raise. She's eligible for 330 dollars a month in the Aid to Dependent Children Program. She got the idea from two women in her neighborhood who'd already done that very thing.
Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we're always "against" things -- we're never "for" anything.
Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.
Now -- we're for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we've accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.
But we're against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those people who depend on them for a livelihood. They've called it "insurance" to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified it was a welfare program. They only use the term "insurance" to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is 298 billion dollars in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble. And they're doing just that.
A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary -- his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee 220 dollars a month at age 65. The government promises 127. He could live it up until he's 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now are we so lacking in business sense that we can't put this program on a sound basis, so that people who do require those payments will find they can get them when they're due -- that the cupboard isn't bare?
Barry Goldwater thinks we can.
At the same time, can't we introduce voluntary features that would permit a citizen who can do better on his own to be excused upon presentation of evidence that he had made provision for the non-earning years? Should we not allow a widow with children to work, and not lose the benefits supposedly paid for by her deceased husband? Shouldn't you and I be allowed to declare who our beneficiaries will be under this program, which we cannot do? I think we're for telling our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. But I think we're against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, especially when we have such examples, as was announced last week, when France admitted that their Medicare program is now bankrupt. They've come to the end of the road.
In addition, was Barry Goldwater so irresponsible when he suggested that our government give up its program of deliberate, planned inflation, so that when you do get your Social Security pension, a dollar will buy a dollar's worth, and not 45 cents worth?
I think we're for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we're against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world's population. I think we're against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in the Soviet colonies in the satellite nations.
I think we're for aiding our allies by sharing of our material blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs, but we're against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world. We set out to help 19 countries. We're helping 107. We've spent 146 billion dollars. With that money, we bought a 2 million dollar yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenya[n] government officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity. In the last six years, 52 nations have bought 7 billion dollars worth of our gold, and all 52 are receiving foreign aid from this country.
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So, governments' programs, once launched, never disappear.
Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth.
Federal employees -- federal employees number two and a half million; and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the nation's work force employed by government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man's property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury? And they can seize and sell his property at auction to enforce the payment of that fine. In Chico County, Arkansas, James Wier over-planted his rice allotment. The government obtained a 17,000 dollar judgment. And a U.S. marshal sold his 960-acre farm at auction. The government said it was necessary as a warning to others to make the system work.
Last February 19th at the University of Minnesota, Norman Thomas, six-times candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket, said, "If Barry Goldwater became President, he would stop the advance of socialism in the United States." I think that's exactly what he will do.
But as a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn't the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration, because back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his Party was taking the Party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his Party, and he never returned til the day he died -- because to this day, the leadership of that Party has been taking that Party, that honorable Party, down the road in the image of the labor Socialist Party of England.
Now it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed to the -- or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? And such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.
Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men -- that we're to choose just between two personalities.
Well what of this man that they would destroy -- and in destroying, they would destroy that which he represents, the ideas that you and I hold dear? Is he the brash and shallow and trigger-happy man they say he is? Well I've been privileged to know him "when." I knew him long before he ever dreamed of trying for high office, and I can tell you personally I've never known a man in my life I believed so incapable of doing a dishonest or dishonorable thing.
This is a man who, in his own business before he entered politics, instituted a profit-sharing plan before unions had ever thought of it. He put in health and medical insurance for all his employees. He took 50 percent of the profits before taxes and set up a retirement program, a pension plan for all his employees. He sent monthly checks for life to an employee who was ill and couldn't work. He provides nursing care for the children of mothers who work in the stores. When Mexico was ravaged by the floods in the Rio Grande, he climbed in his airplane and flew medicine and supplies down there.
An ex-GI told me how he met him. It was the week before Christmas during the Korean War, and he was at the Los Angeles airport trying to get a ride home to Arizona for Christmas. And he said that [there were] a lot of servicemen there and no seats available on the planes. And then a voice came over the loudspeaker and said, "Any men in uniform wanting a ride to Arizona, go to runway such-and-such," and they went down there, and there was a fellow named Barry Goldwater sitting in his plane. Every day in those weeks before Christmas, all day long, he'd load up the plane, fly it to Arizona, fly them to their homes, fly back over to get another load.
During the hectic split-second timing of a campaign, this is a man who took time out to sit beside an old friend who was dying of cancer. His campaign managers were understandably impatient, but he said, "There aren't many left who care what happens to her. I'd like her to know I care." This is a man who said to his 19-year-old son, "There is no foundation like the rock of honesty and fairness, and when you begin to build your life on that rock, with the cement of the faith in God that you have, then you have a real start." This is not a man who could carelessly send other people's sons to war. And that is the issue of this campaign that makes all the other problems I've discussed academic, unless we realize we're in a war that must be won.
Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we'll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he'll forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer -- not an easy answer -- but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.
We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we're willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace -- and you can have it in the next second -- surrender.
Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face -- that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand -- the ultimatum. And what then -- when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we're retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he's heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he'd rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us.
You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin -- just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it's a simple answer after all.
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." "There is a point beyond which they must not advance." And this -- this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said, "The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits -- not animals." And he said, "There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.
We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.
We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.
Thank you very much.
I have disabled Anon Comments
I keep getting an "anon" comment on my controversial posts. So whoever keeps posting "anonymously" keeps up with this blog.
I appreciate your views, but if you can't identify yourself in someway, I am not going to "listen". This is my blog. I don't mind discussing things and talking about them, but I find it quite annoying that you are too coward to identify yourself in some way. There are purposes for making yourself anon...for personal security reasons. Which is why my name is "Mommy" on this blog. But you have no way of letting me get ahold of you. If you want to discuss this, you can email me, and identify yourself and we will talk.
But for now, I am disabling the anon option on my comments.
Yes, I did design the Hitler vs. Obama button on my blog. Maybe someone else had the same idea on the Internet. There are others who feel the same way I do. I don't hate Hitler...He is accountable to God. And I don't hate Obama.
But he and Obama have some uncanny similarities. Not that they are exactly alike. I doubt that Obama will kill those who disagree with him. But he does have a trancing power over people's minds it seems. And I don't blame the people for this. They are starved for love and encouragement. Obama seems to be giving them that. So did Hitler...for a time.
But anyway, I am refraining myself from political posts for now. Jesus is more important yes. And yes, Jesus did, negate those who didn't agree with the Word of God. They were called Pharisees. And he was pretty crass and blunt with them at times. Calling them white washed tombs with dead man's bones inside. Calling them snakes, and other things.
Jesus was compassionate yes... but he showed his compassion on those who knew they were nothing in God's eyes. He did not tolerate self-righteousness.
So, having said that. :) Please email me, tell me who you are, and we can discuss this privately if you so choose.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
A Sad Mourning In the History of America (pun intended)
I designed the picture below of Obama and Hitler. Some may think that is a bit harsh, or a very over-stated. Or even mean spirited.
I found this article on the history of Hitler, and it is uncanny of the similarities of Pre-WWII Germany and America today. Please read. A good eye opener: The Rise Of Adolf Hitler~Germans elect Nazi's
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Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Another Parent "Brainwashing" their Child
Ok, so... I was accused of brainwashing my child for teaching them the truth. About Obama's views on abortion, and his views on taxing the "rich" to re-distribute to the "poor".
(By the way... we are one of the "poor" hard working families that work for "rich" people, so I am against that idea even though we probably would "benefit" from his policy...short term at least)
In Bean's video below, a "concerned" parent left me a nice comment telling me that I am "brainwashing" my child and ruining her physic.
Ever since that comment, I have been shaking my head. There is *SO MUCH* more things to be brainwashed over than the truth. Like *LIES*. That is what brainwashing is!
It is sugar coating a lie to look so yummy that people believe the lie. And yes many children are brainwashed.
But you can't "brainwash" with the truth. The truth *is*. You can't "change" it, and you can't hide it. For those who seek "truth" sincerely, they will find it.
I am just so baffled that this "concerned parent" thinks that me teaching my little four year old that taking baby out of a mommies tummy before it is due, and then crushing it to death is "brainwashing". It is truth. It happens. Everyday. It is sickening. It is *truth* and Obama supports it.
So what? I told my little girl the truth. Such a shock! Most parents teach their kids that Santa is real. Yet they don't get accused of bad parenting, and being told that they should talk to phycologist about lieing to their children about a man that doesn't exist.
I get chided for brainwashing my child about thievery. I teach her that she isn't allowed to take that which doesn't belong to her. That which she doesn't have the money to buy. I tell her it is wrong to take money from someone so you can use it; even if you *need* it. It is wrong. That's the truth.
But Obama wants to "re-distribute" the wealth. Hmmm.... I am ruining my daughter with the truth! How completely awful.
I am told that I don't do any good with my children,(despite the fact right after that video we baked cookies to enter into the county fair and before that, we packed shoeboxes to give to underprivledge children with our own money. It wasn't forced from us), and I should be ashamed of myself. The only thing I ashamed of is that there are people calling good evil, and evil good!
Giving money to people in need because God loves them and so do we. That *is* good! Helping unwed mothers find the Lord and birth the *living* soul inside of them *is* good!
*FAR* too many things are passing under our eyes that are harming our children, and people hardly notice.
1. Se*xual abuse is rampant in our country. Children are being molested and used by parents, teachers, and other adults that should be trusted in their lives. That ruins them *far* more than telling them the truth!
2. Children are being *brainwashed* in schools everyday that se*x outside of marriage is ok to do as long as it is "safe". They are educated on how to be "safe", and shown explicit po*ngraphic materials in school to "demonstrate" things. It is *disgusting* and utterly upsetting. And yet, *I* am the bad parent, because I choose to teach my child the *truth*. Something is wrong here people. Terribly wrong.
3. Children are being brainwashed in schools that evolution is a scientific fact, when all it is just a theory, based on man's mere imagination! It takes more faith to believe that this world somehow evolved into what it is. That everything works in harmony and precision, to just "Bang" together. It is impossible. Yet, we Americans are fed, and feed this garbage to our little kindergartners everyday as they sit at desks chocked full of Ritalin.
4. We have over drugged our kids for being ADD, when they are just that kids! Did you know that kids didn't *start* school until they were seven or eight years old. And finished by the time they were 16. *AND* they were smarter than today's kids? It's quite frightening! And most cases of ADD are "diaognosied" before age six? Hmmmm? Something strange there too.
5. Children are being torn apart from their families by divorce. Not many marriages survive these years. Children are harmed and ruined by this. Some make it fine; Jesus, who loves them, helps. But Most are scarred for life. I happen to be happily married; for seven years. I have passed a "danger" zone. And I am GLAD I got married! My hubby is a great guy. He is my hero, and my life is better because of him. And my kids sense the harmony between us.
So. Here is the comment that was left me, in case anyone wants to read it. I don't know who this "concerned parent" is... for all I know I could be related to them. But even if I am. That doesn't change the fact that I will *always* tell my children the truth. I won't lie to them for the sake of being "politically correct". Ever. And if Bean decided to be a Democrat when she grows up. I'll still love her. ;-) But I highly doubt she will swallow lies easily. She is very sensitive to lies. Just ask my mom. ;-)
I can't imagine how you can teach your child this kind of thing.
It's called brainwashing and you should be ashamed of yourself. Children are
canvases that you can hurt deeply and scar for life. Why not be positive and
encourage them in good ways? Please take a course on parenting so you know what
you are doing to them. You may have had good intentions but ask any child
psychologist what you are doing and maybe they can help you to not hurt their
psyche in this manner.Just trying to help and inform you of the seriousness of
parenting in an undestructive way. Thanks for listening.
And, if you have gotten this far; to lighten things up a bit, here are other parents "brainwashing" their child... ;-)
Friday, October 31, 2008
What Children say about Obama
Mat 21:16
And said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?
(Children Simplify things so much. Listen to Bean and her simple Campaign. Vote according the the *truth*.)
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Faith
And the same day, when the even was come, he saith unto them, Let us
pass over unto the other side.
And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him
even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little
ships.
And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves
beat into the ship, so that it was now full.
And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow:
and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, cares thou not that we
perish?
And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be
still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.
And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that
ye have no faith?
And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of
man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? Mark 4:35-41
This passage of scripture really hit me in the heart when I read it on Sunday. The reason it hit me so hard, is because it is something that I have struggled with. And it is faith.
Faith, used to be some "strange mysterious thing" to me. It seemed some had boatloads of it, and others, like me, really struggled with having "enough".
Preachers (at least in my circles) also don't help it out. I have heard this story preached so many times in the past. It was put on the shelf of "those dumb disciples" kind of thing. Like they should know better! They didn't have "enough" faith
Well, the Holy Spirit taught me something totally different; causing faith and confidence to arise in my heart towards Jesus.
Jesus said to them, "Why are you so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?"
He asked them why they had "no" faith. Not "enough" faith.
So that caused me to go back and read the context:
vs 35 And the same day, when the even was come, he saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other side.
Jesus said, that they were going to go to the other side. He said it. But they didn't believe him, which is why they had "no faith".
They didn't believe him for good reasons, truly. A huge storm had come upon them, they were taking in water, and Jesus was asleep on the boat. If Jesus had not been the Son of God, and any other sinful human being, they were dead.
But Jesus was not a sinful human being, and he was the son of God, and he told them that they they were going to the other side. And they did not believe him.
That is why they asked him "carest thou not that we perish?" I don't think they were asking him because they were mad at him for not performing a miracle. They were kind of amazed that he was sleeping through this storm I think. How could anyone sleep through that type of storm in a ship?!?
So when Jesus arose, he stopped the storm, and that is why he asked them why they had no faith. He had been performing all sorts of miracles, and he had *TOLD* them that they were going to the other side.
They didn't believe his "word". His word, being, They were going to pass over to the other side. Jesus didn't mince his words. What he said was truth. They were going to the other side, no matter what. Even a huge storm, that by all appearances, looked like it was going to kill them. But this was God in the flesh speaking. He said they were going over to the other side.
So what did this teach me? Despite my circumstances in life. If my "storms" look exactly opposite of what God said in his Word, don't believe the "storm" believe the Word of God.
Faith isn't blind. Jesus gave the disciples "something to hold to". His Word. He said they were going to pass over to the other side. That is why he chided them for having no faith. It wasn't up to their faith to get them to the other side. They got to the other side despite their lack of faith.
Why? Because Jesus said they were going to pass over to the other side. Jesus doesn't go back on his word. If they had had faith, it would of made the journey less stressful during the storm. Maybe even adventuristic. Or perhaps fun? But Jesus kept his Word even though they didn't have faith.
And I believe he stopped the storm to show the disciples that their faith wasn't in Jesus. It wasn't that they didn't have *enough* faith. They just plain old didn't believe Jesus at all. Otherwise, they would of not been upset with him for sleeping in the boat.
So this teaches me. I can believe Jesus, and what the Bible says, "NO MATTER WHAT" is going on in my life. If my feelings, or my circumstance are going completely against what Jesus said, I am not going to believe it. Even if it seems God is asleep, I am going to believe what Jesus said is true, because Jesus doesn't lie. Jesus has proven he has not lied at all in his Word. So in my own life he won't lie either.
That is why this story built faith in me. It showed me that faith isn't a mystical thing that we have or don't have. It is a decision to believe what Jesus says is true despite what is happening around us, that looks like it proves his Word as wrong. If he is God, (and he is) then what he says will happen, no matter what!
That is what I believe the point of this passage is. Not that the disciples were "dumb" but that they chose to look at the circumstances going on, instead of holding fast to what Jesus had said. And even though they had no faith, Jesus still kept his word. He didn't lie. :) So that too shows me he is trustworthy.
Faith isn't some hard thing to grasp hold of. It is just choosing to believe God no matter what. :)
Saturday, August 9, 2008
The Gentle Art of Learning
Homeschooling has been on my mind lately. We begin officially in a couple of weeks. I have been worried if I will be able to really teach Sweetie how to read. I know I have pottied trained her, taught her colors, numbers and other things. But reading? That is a different story all together.
While I have been reading about the Charlotte Mason philosophy, the concept of not pushing a child; but allowing their natural curiosity to guide me into teaching them is brought up over and over again.
The idea sounded good, but was it true? While most kids Sweetie's age are already going into first grade, Sweetie who is now six, will be officially entering Kindergarten. I just played around with "school" last year, to see what direction I wanted to go with the "official" year.
I attempted to teach her to read. While she was grasping the concepts quite easily, she quickly would become bored and frustrated. After Christmas, I stopped pushing it. I had other things I needed to do.
Recently, Sweetie has been blossoming with her reading, on her own. She has taken an interest in words, and how they are "spelled" and sounding them out all on her own. Occasionally, she comes to me for help. And I help her with it.
Two nights ago, I spelled a word for my husband. It was the word Twix. I wanted him to get me a Twix candy bar, but I didn't want the children to know what it was. Sweetie asks, "What's a T-W-I-X? I told her to sound it out. So we went to her little chalk board, and I wrote Twix down, and she sounded it out, and read it!
She then asks, "What's a twix?" So I wrote the word "candy" on the board, and she sounded it out! By this time, she was quite taken with being able to read "hard" words, that she forgot all about the candy, and wanted me to write more words for her to figure out.
When Nana came to visit the other day, we showed Nana her abilities. Sweetie was quite proud and excited with herself.
While Nana and I were busy with something. The house grew quiet. When I walked out into the living room, I saw that Sweetie had written down many words on her white board. On her own, without *any* help from me. Without any formal curriculum. It was all just play in her mind. But she was learning! It was the Gentle Art of Learning. I took a picture of her white board:
I am so glad that I didn't push her more, and cause her to be frustrated with reading. Because now, it is fun for her, and she is enjoying it. Now, she wants to learn to read. And seeing this progress form her, has encouraged me *very* much. It is going to be a joy to teach her to "cipher" her letters, instead of a battle. :)
Speaking of the Gentle Art of Learning... My best friend has put together a Charlotte Mason Blog FULL of a tremendous amount of resources. Check it out.. It is Ancient Paths Schoolhouse She has done *alot* of work in order for other people to know where to begin with exploring the Charlotte Mason philosophy.
Also, I am working on building our home school blog. I am not sure how I am going to use it yet; I am still formulating it. But I'll let you know when it is ready to read.
Have a beautiful weekend!
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