At 91, creating a web site to get your ideas out is quite an adventure.
You are accustomed to seeing the ideas of others on the web and various other forms of technology. Texting, twittering, face-booking, e-mailing, and other “ings” are common. But for my generation, these are not common. When friends and folks see me texting, they often exclaim, “You’re texting!” Some don’t even have computers, and are adamant about never having one.
I learned to text and do the other stuff on a touch-screen phone because I wanted to keep in touch with my grandchildren who range in age from 27 to 11. I did not want to be cut off from those precious encounters. Yes, we still talk on the phone and one of them still loves to get letters. No, we haven’t forgotten how to write and speak in more ordinary ways. But I have found over the years that learning something new doesn’t have to wipe away any good thing that I already know. There are plenty of neurons to go around.
When I wrote America First, Again, I wanted to share my enthusiasm for the exceptionality of this great country. Nowhere else in the world do they have the two great freedoms we have in our United States of America. We were created as a republic with the concept of Divine Guidance as one base, and with documents to guide us that guaranteed the rights and liberty of every individual.
Two great freedoms–Freedom from our Creator to be all that we can be, and documents from our founders that guarantee our rights to pursue the first freedom. These are our legacy.
I wanted to share some history that I had neglected, history that is no longer taught in our schools. I hoped to remind us of our precious heritage. I wanted to refresh our memory about our founders, these founders who have become mere notes in our history books or not even mentioned at all.
I am saddened by much of the news. One in seven Americans on food stamps. The social security disability rolls are swollen beyond belief. The weight of our national debt is staggering. The regulations and edicts frighten me. You hear the stories, too. You hear the loud, shrill voices declaring their rights, but you hear nothing about responsibilities from these same voices.
I want to remind us of our responsibilities. I want to point out the values, attitudes, efforts, and commitment of those who gave us this great experiment in government. I want to remind us that some of us haven’t lost those values and precepts left to us. We remember in spite of all the efforts of “the transformers” to make us believe that “hope and change” lie in a government that takes care of us. Creating an entitlement culture is not my idea of caring for me or my children or grandchildren.
Our freedoms, I believe, are on a steep slope downward at the moment. They are disappearing every day before our eyes. They are sliding into the abyss of entitlement. That abyss swallows up the energy of self-reliance, individual responsibility, and gradually kills the human spirit. The dragons of the abyss breathe fire on our freedoms and torch the documents that declare and protect those freedoms.
I hope to share my joys, my concerns, and my historical perspective on what’s happening around us. I have been so blessed over these 91 years that I cannot sit silently by and watch those blessings disappear. These are the blessings of freedom that several generations have been privileged to enjoy as a result of their predecessors. Now the generation of entitlement is throwing the republic away.
Children of this generation and those of the future will labor under the mountain of debt, the paucity of freedom, and the lack of opportunity they have been left by the entitlement generation.
If I can become a blogger at 91, what can you do to make America First, Again?