American Liberty & Leadership, Hand in Hand!

Accountability seems to be a lost quality especially in the our government, just ask any one of our 565 or so elected representatives.

I’m not going to start this year off where last year ended. We are all too familiar with the challenges that confront us as a nation, Immigration and insolvency, (on many levels), are still at the top of the list, healthcare is ‘reformed’, although I think they got it all wrong, even made it worse if that’s possible, and employment at 10% will haunt us for some time to come. How many of you are thinking of going ‘Green’ this year?

It’s nice to see the banking sector made out ok though, did any of you notice an improvement in your financial position? I read in the Wall Street Journal that Goldman Sacks had it’s best year ever! Was 2009 one of your best years financially?

All that aside, we have some real issues to consider as we move forward as a people and a nation. Yes the political landscape is a tentative one at best but I believe there is something more important to consider, the American Family, that is to say, the survival of the American Family!

The last 50 years have brought many changes in both the substance and structure of what makes up a family in America today. Gone forever is the stay at home mom. The family dinner hour and family attendance at Sunday Services are becoming more scarce with each passing year. Children grow up so fast these days, I’m not sure if they mature as fast as they grow however. Much of it is due to peer pressure and some to the lack of structure in their young lives. I think that more of a problem for our children, (by no fault of their own), is the absence of moral clarity.

Far be it from me to preach to anyone, I know I’ve made more than my share of mistakes, both as a parent and a person. It certainly is tough when outside influences are so prominent in our lives, let alone the lives our children’s. It’s kinda’ tough when you try to teach your children about the importance of credibility and the need for moral character when so many public figures seem to be rewarded for lacking both. And we complicate it even more by admiring them.

From Brittany Spears to Eliot Spitzer, it seems the reward of bad behavior is notoriety! That doesn’t seem quite right no matter how you spin it. If getting caught on camera with your panties down so to speak warrants a 15 minute spot on ‘E!” or the cover if People Magazine, don’t we need to protect our children from getting the message all wrong.

We take the 10 Commandments out of our courthouses, the Bible out of our schools and the morals out of our politics and expect society to teach our children about virtue, character and credibility. Lacking these qualities, what man would sacrifice his life for the defense of liberty?

It’s evident that social and political issues facing our Nation today would have never been in debate 50 years or more ago. American men and women so willing to fight and die for oppressed people the world over would not stand idly by as their own freedoms and the freedoms of their children come under attack. The greater travesty is the fact that the threats to our freedoms are being perpetrated not by our enemies but by our own elected representatives. The ‘Oath of Office’ sworn to by so many politicians, although so ceremoniously administered seems so thoughtlessly disregarded.

The liberties we no longer defend, the liberties we are so reluctant to protect are the same liberties denied to and envied by people across the globe. How can something so precious be treated so carelessly?

Have we become so complacent that we can no longer see the enemy even in our own back yard, and if so what will it take to motivate us once again? We can’t seem to come to the defense of our own children as we witness, allow and even condone government as it sells their future prosperity and freedom to ideologies bent on the destruction of the ‘American Dream’!

Never in the history of man has one nation, the concept of a handful of dreamers, advanced civilization for the good of all humanity. The unbridled spirit of America is at the heart of freedom throughout the world. Why then are we so willing to assist in destroying it?

I know that in the short passage above I have asked many questions. I don’t pretend to have the answers, at times I feel so overwhelmed I don’t know where to begin or even what to do. I do know this though, we must do something.

President Obama likens himself to our 16^th President, Abraham Lincoln. He speaks often of President Lincoln’s fortitude and courage and quotes him at every opportunity. As Obama asks us to consider the heroics and humility of one of our greatest leaders, his own politics and policies threaten the very liberties of which Mr. Lincoln proclaimed in his ‘Gettysburg Address’:

“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Our enemies, at home and abroad, note our reluctance to revel in our history, in fact they make note of our short memories and consider it our weakness. What chance do we have when our current leaders do not understand the sacrifice made by our fathers, their fathers and their father’s fathers!

I can only hope that the character of great men in our history will once again emerge in men of our present to inspire us to defend our children and our future.