Posted by
Jan@Oasis on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 1:26:41 PM
As my America falls to the far left, I wish to state that I WAS HERE for what the left says NEVER existed in the United States. I WAS HERE, so you will have a hard time convincing me ,especially you young, naive, ignorant, namby pamby socialist/communist "students," that I wasn't. And HERE, Children, is how it USED to be.
I was here when my parents and grandparents discussed the Great Depression and how hard it was--how ashamed they'd have been to have had to go "on the dole," as it was derisively called then, how each of them coped and kept the faith in America and its core values and prinicples. My grandfather went to work painting houses when the newspaper for which he'd been the business manager closed down. My mother, a schoolteacher by profession, worked at Lerner's to put her brother through college while waiting for a teaching job. My dad put himself through college (with not a DIME of government help, though he was from a poor farming family) and joined the Air Force. My grandmother made her four children's clothes from scratch and could stretch a food budget to last a week instead of a day. All my relatives were staunch American capitalists and they knew that if they could keep those principles going, eventually things would turn around. They were right.
Now we not only have more and more people, including illegal aliens, on the dole, but wanting more, more, more from the guv'mint (read ME) and to be protected from their own bad decisions and ridiculous debts. Because of the low quality of public education in the past 30 or so years (thanks to the takeover of our schools by the far left educrats), the young people of today are far less educated after college than students were then after 8th grade. If you could see the curriculum back then as compared to now, you would be appalled, if you haven't been brainwashed by the current left-wing edcucational regime.
I was here when parents were married, one man and one woman, and the husband worked and the wife took care of her own children! Yes! That was the NORM, and though my mother loved teaching, she would not have for one nanosecond considered hiring strangers to raise her babies. She never regretted leaving teaching (to which she returned when we grew up) for us. We were hers and my dad's priority, and thankfully that was still the case when I had my children. I am an RN, but that job (which I loved) paled in comparison to the thrill of being with my kids (even on days when things were downright crazy) and watching them grow and develop. When I was growing up, single motherhood was a disgrace to be avoided and a man expecting his wife to be a breadwinner would have been appalling. Men had pride in their ability to provide for their families. Moms were considered essential, especially for babies, but also for kids. I lived the Leave it to Beaver life, and so did most of my friends and family. It DID exist and it was pretty fine.
I was here when individualism and ambition to do well were the American way. I was here when freedom was paramount, not equality. The one thing we had here that very few others in the world had was freedom to strive to be the best you could be, no matter the outcome. Equality of OPPORTUNITY is the American dream, not equality of OUTCOME. The outcome was what one made it to be. Hard work, self-control, goals, values (Judeo-Christian), morality were all important--vital even--to this country. They are what made us great. Their loss is what will destroy us.
I was here when people emigrated to the United States to become Americans. Not to bring their own cultures here and expect us to honor them and adapt to them. Multiculturalism is NOT what made us great. It IS what will help bring us down. We must have an AMERICAN identity. A common belief system, a common language (just one, Children), a common philosophy of what our society stands for. I was here when we had that.
I was here when people were responsible for their own behavior and there were consequences to that behavior. I was here before we started living our lives to please lawyers. To avoid lawsuits. To give criminals the benefit of the doubt and victims the shaft. Before everything got turned inside out and upside down. When the death penalty meant you were gone in a year. Consequences. Now consequences for bad behavior, even criminal behavior, are rewarded by the government with bailouts, good money after bad, and 20 years on death row doing drugs and having sex and even producing offspring. My, as the saying goes, times have changed!
So now we have--what? Who knows what this election result will bring? The most amazing thing to me is how, in my lifetime, the number of truly stupid people has increased to this point. I know that the public school system and the far left wing college environment has contributed, but when did parents stop teaching their children about America and what it is and has been? Oh, right. When they stopped raising their own kids and pushed selfishness to limits no previous generation could have imagined. As I wrote in a previous post to my grandpa, my apologies to those generations and to my grandchildren for not being able to stop this train. I mourn for the United States I grew up in and love, and so wanted to keep for my grandbabies and their grandbabies. If this is good-bye, and I fear it is, the world has lost forever that shining city on a hill, the beacon of hope (no, not THAT hope) and the refuge for all who want to be grown up, independent, and FREE.