TRUMPETING TRUMP

If I can control myself this will be my last political Blog.

In psychology speak they say, "We trust and cooperate more readily with people who look and sound like us. We expect them to share our values and norms." This is my 77th Blog posting in 3 years. Generally, the content centered on politics. It was sent to people who mostly "look and sounded like me." After the first few months those who didn't agree with my take on politics, who didn't share my "values and norms" dropped off They didn't attempt a dialog; they just stopped reading. I then spent the next 2 1/2 years preaching to the choir. It is said that "politics are sports for old people." Well, I'm getting too old for this sport. I no longer understand the rules. Facts mean nothing and lies are expected and accepted. After the following posting I'm going back to writing about something I've done a lot of--living.

TRUMPETING TRUMP

How many of you know Donald Trump's stand on foreign policy, budgets, immigration, abortion, guns, economy, crime, climate change, taxes etc.? How many of you know what Trump said about women on the TMZ video, what he said about a Mexican judge, about illegal immigrants, about Rosie O'Donnell or what he paid on his taxes? To elect the best President of the United States which of the above two aspects of the upcoming election are most important for the voters to know, which one do you hear most about?

One must give the Democrat party its due. They are excellent in working with their attached-at-the-hip media brothers and sisters. Let's face it most of us know little or nothing about what’s going on outside our front door other than what we read or hear from the media. The party that controls the media controls the thought. Liberal media try to misdirect by saying the media is in the tank for Conservatives. Anybody dense enough to believe that just has to watch which story leads the news and consumes more time; the latest gonzo thing Trump said or allegedly did, or the daily dump of hundreds of Hillary emails which expose the kind of person she is and the inner workings of the Democrat party. These emails have given us if we ever heard about them, a hint of the kind of people Hillary associates with and the kind of administration she would run.

Let's pretend that there was such an animal as a purely bipartisan person, a person not afraid of being called a racist. During the 2012 election, this person, given the condition of the economy, I believe would have selected Mitt Romney with his experience, to be the best person for the job. The Democrat Propaganda Wing (DPW) realized this. The problem they were going to have was, yes he was the most qualified for the job, but also he was squeaky clean. They were up to the task. They found out that one summer vacation, the Romneys took the family dog with them and put the dog in a travel crate firmly attached to the roof. Also, in middle school he bullied a younger boy and then the straw that broke Romney's political back was that he told the truth about 47% of the population not paying Federal income tax. Even the truth in the hands of real DPW professionals can come back to bite a person. To be fair, Romney did shoot himself in the foot by not running the best of campaigns.

Now to 2016. Let's take a look at the Big 4 non-issue reasons that the DPW came up with for not voting for Donald Trump. Immigration--he painted the illegal Mexican immigrants with a single brush as low lives and Syrian and Muslims as a potential terrorist. Now this of course was not a politically smart move. You should never alienate any group of people when you are looking for votes. The DPW got busy labeling Trump a bigoted racist. They forgot two things. Trump is not a politician and his first thought here was not votes but was what was necessary to keep America safe. He was willing to commit a mortal sin in Liberal land. He profiled. Trump's core loved it.

Trump was then labeled a misogynist because he reverted to his base self and verbally counter punched women who he felt had attacked him. He called the women unflattering names. Trump calls everybody unflattering names. These were women who when it benefits them want to be considered equal but when they are called names just like the guys are called names they become blushing wall flowers needing to be treated with kid gloves. Trump's core loved it.

Then a Trump tax return miraculously turned up at a far left newspaper (insert any name) that showed Trump did not pay any more taxes than he was required to pay. For some Liberal reason, the Left thought that was a bad thing (even though Hillary did likewise). Trump's core loved it.

Then the coup d'etate, they caught Trump talking "dirty" a decade ago. They even had an audio of it. When they realized how flimsy that was, given the actual actions of their candidate's husband while sitting awkwardly at the desk in the oval office, they went out and scrounged up women (one from 30 years ago) for a "he said, she said" circus. The DPW actually said that made Donald Trump unqualified to be President even with documented proof of, to be kind, "womanizing" by sitting (or is it laying) past Presidents. Just in my lifetime: FDR, JFK, LBJ, Bill Clinton, and to show infidelity is not solely a Democrat thing, we'll throw in Ike, have slapped and tickled in the White House. Trump's core loved it.

Full disclosure--I would not want to have a beer with Trump. He is not my kind of person, but I would not even want to be in the same bar as Hillary. I will do what I would hope many people would do and that is to vote for the political philosophy they feel is best for the country, the philosophy they would like their children and grandchildren to live in and not to let themselves be mentally diverted by nonsense.

My main objective for this last political post is not to get Liberals to vote for Trump; but it's to get Conservatives to vote for Trump. To dislike Trump as a person is not that hard to do, but to dislike him enough to give up your principles and the principles upon which this country was formed to show a personal dislike, is detestable and short-sighted. I agree it's scary to vote for Trump and not know for sure what he is going to do, but I personally find it scarier to vote for Hillary knowing just what she is going to do.

A POLITICAL SOPHIE'S CHOICE

After the last presidential election, I came to the conclusion that what I would like was an election between two political philosophies, not two political personalities. I thought maybe if we had two people who represented the extremes of the Democrat and Republican parties, we could ditch the personalities and focus on what each party would do for/to the country. I envisioned the likes of Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren. While they would follow the standard political procedures of name calling (Unlikable Ted and Fauxahontas) and stay away from any in depth discussion of the topics, at least they would be relatively transparent in that we could see through them to the beliefs of their respective parties.

As they say, "Watch out what you wish for." I got two very different candidates. The Democrat Hillary Clinton, a far left ideologist who has never let principles get in her way and will go in whatever Liberal direction she feels she needs to and still get elected (Against same-sex marriage, then for it. For the Iraq war, then against it.) On the other side we have Donald Trump who is really no political party or particular ideology at all but is representing the Republican party. Both Hillary and Donald are so polarizing and have such negative and positive forces surrounding them, we voters are having a hard time getting through to what they actually represent, and what they represent is what we should be voting for. It seems for every one issue discussion, there are nine slings of mud. They both may be adults, but they are adults playing kids in the school yard.

Let's take another look at lil' Donnie and Hilly:

As a Conservative, here is my take on Hillary. She has been in public life for almost three decades. She has been the wife of an Attorney General, the First Lady of Arkansas, and First Lady of the United States. She has been a State Senator, Secretary of State, and has run twice for the Presidency. Pretty impressive resume! There is an old saying in business, "Does a person have 30 years experience, or one year experience 30 times?" With a resume like Hillary's, there should be pages of her accomplishments at the ready, but sadly they are not easily available or maybe she is just humble and doesn't wish to publicize them. There are a couple of reasons we should look carefully at Hillary and her qualifications to be President. 1) We are paying her salary. 2) President Obama has said, "There has never been a man or a woman more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as President of the United States." ( Take that Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy and Reagan). This is a curious statement given that in 2008 Obama said, "(Hillary) will say anything and change nothing" That doesn't sound very positive for the most "qualified" man or woman to be President. If you wish to find out what her accomplishments have been, you can check out the small print in Wikipedia.

Today the surveys show that 70% of the population is dissatisfied with the direction of the country.

This does not reflect badly on Hillary because your previous research, I'm sure, will have revealed that she didn't do much to help or hurt the country. I wonder who then is causing this 70% dissatisfaction? If it wasn't Hillary, and Obama's approval numbers are 54%, possibly the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development is dragging everybody down?

Hillary said in 2001, when she and Bill left the White House, "We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt," and after a stolen furniture mix-up with the White House, they must have settled down to maximize their earnings. In a mere 15 years The Clintons are now worth about $111,000,000 from paltry book sales and a few $250,000 20 minutes speeches to primarily financial institutions. I assume the speeches were very good because of what she charged. (Why else would an industry pay that kind of money?) But, I guess we won't know because the scripts seem to have been misplaced. Could she have emailed the scripts to herself on her private server?

I don't think it is any secret that many women will vote for Hillary because they identify with her. She leads Trump with women 59% to 35% . I understand the significance to women of the first woman President. Women have had the vote for 96 of our country's 240 years. It's about time, but let's not blow it. Hillary is a woman in chromosome numbers and appearance only. Internally Hillary has shown to possess every manly trait all politicians who have reached that level possess. She is ruthless, plays very loose with the truth, is conniving, calculating, shrewd, ambitious, arrogant, foul mouthed, and untrustworthy. Now, I am not saying that Trump isn't all of these things and maybe more, I'm just saying when the pro-Hillary folks say it's time for a woman in the White House, I think they mean it's time for someone who thinks like a woman to be in the White House, a President who has all the good traits of successful past Presidents plus charm, kindness, compassion, and is supportive, loving, considerate and nurturing. If she doesn't bring these generic female attributes to the table as it relates to getting the job done, a man will do just as well. Let's not waste the first woman President on someone with more baggage than O'Hare at Thanksgiving.

As a Conservative, here is my take on Donald Trump. It would be fair to say that he was not my first choice as the Republican Presidential nominee. I thought he was good to shake up the primaries but that would be it. I did not properly gauge the discontent of the folks. With 70% of the country dissatisfied, and most people with an understating of the concept, "you keep doing what you're doing you keep getting what you got," I guess none of us should be surprised. Trump has a message that resounds with many people, it's the messenger people have trouble with. He has, to say the least, a "unique" personality. He is a loose cannon with a malfunctioning filter, but he's what we have.

An important thing to remember, when analyzing Trump's approach to politicking, is that he never directed his life towards politics. He was a business man in Real Estate and he did what he needed to do to succeed in his chosen field. Hillary chose politics and did what she needed to do to succeed in a very different profession. Yes, he failed big time in certain ventures. You only fail big time if you try big time ventures. When discussing Trump's failures, let's not forget HillaryCare. (Apparently the media has.)

Trump has been called racist when ever he says some thing about another race, true or not. He is called a misogynist when ever he says something uncomplimentary about a woman, true or not. He is called a bigot when he has an opinion differing from the PC crowd, true or not. He is accused of being a liar, and with that it's hard to tell him from his opponent. He is accused of being a narcissist which I'm surprised people even notice after eight years with Obama.

The establishment of both parties belittle Trump's "basket of deplorable" at their peril. From Obama's evaluation that small town America is" bitter and cling to their guns and religion," and just recently in an Article by Garrison Keillor where he wrote about Trumps following of "angry white people" saying "Maybe instead of selling luxury condos and golf memberships, he’ll (Trump) have to turn to trailer parks and tattoo parlors. " Isn't that sweet!

My vote is primarily for who can deliver the Conservative philosophy. Therefore I am not happy to be basically called a gap-toothed ignoramus for voting for Trump. Who else would I vote for? What the Left is forgetting is the deep passion the poor, uneducated, angry, white people have for their country, traditions, military, police, old people and heroes. The committed Left is moving the country away from all of those elements of life the common folks hold dear, and Trump has tapped into that.

I've just been re-watching the movie Patton. The beginning is classic. George C. Scott, playing the general, is standing in front of a giant flag and giving a pep talk to his troops. This movie played in 1970. In the 46 years since this movie opened, the US has changed, and in my opinion, not for the better. If that scene were played today on a college campus, half the audience would run screaming from the theater looking for their "safe place." (I'm sure it would be OK if the scene were replaced with one of the General humping his secretary.) This kind of change I lay in the lap of Liberalism.

Remembering all the major issues we're dealing with today, issues such as ISIS, the economy, immigration, budget, crime, debt etc. is important because Trump has had nothing to do with any of it. Hillary has been in on all of it, and 70 % of the public is dissatisfied. Trump would provide new eyes on the problems, the eyes of a successful, experienced business man. I personally believe the executive branch needs to be run as a business, but I have heard a progressive radio host say the government is not a business, it's more like a family. If that's the case, maybe Trump wouldn't help, and we would need to put ourselves in the loving, caring hands of Momma Hillary. With differing beliefs like that, it's a wonder we get anything done.

As a Conservative, I vote for Conservative political principles. The name representing those principles can change every 4 years. Our Hillary and Donald options this time around are flawed, but we owe our country our vote. As a Liberal, the way our system is designed and if you are happy with the direction and the philosophy of Liberalism, you should vote for Hillary. If you are a Conservative and see your vision of America fading away to the detriment of your children and grandchildren, you should vote for Donald. (If you are not really sure if you lean left or right, check out my previous Blog entry dated 9-2-16 titled, Let's Get Into The Weeds.)

With these last 8 years of attempting to put down America to a place equal with all other countries, I'm looking for a cheer leader. With these last 8 years of gridlock, I'm looking for the art of the deal. With these last 240 years of politicians, I'm looking for a real person. So, with reservation but optimism, Donald Trump (this election cycle's name for my political philosophy) will have my vote.

LET'S GET INTO THE WEEDS

Men and women are more alike than different, but boy, do those differences make a difference. Liberals and Conservatives are more alike than different, but boy, do those differences make a difference. Both Left and Right have deeply conflicting, but equally heartfelt visions of what we want our world to look like. What we will do on November 8th is vote for that philosophy we would most like to see guide our country. To get that philosophy we have to attach a name to it. This election cycle the names are Hillary and Donald.

Where did we get our social, moral and political philosophy? Where did we get our view of the world? Were we born with a world view (nature)? Did we learn it through life experiences (nurture)? Did we just figure it out all by ourselves (Rationalism)? How we get our philosophies does not seem to be "settled" science. All we know is we all have one.

Much of this article is based on the writings and research of Jonathan Haidt in his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics And Religion. Haidt claims in our human nature, we have six psychological systems. They are:

CARING-- caring for the vulnerable, sensitive to signs of suffering, despising cruelty, and caring for those who suffer

FAIRNESS-- It's about equality and proportionality but primarily proportionality. It means people getting what they deserve and not getting what they don't deserve.

LOYALTY--challenge of forming and maintaining coalitions, sensitive to team players makes us want to reward team players and punish those who betray the group.

AUTHORITY--being sensitive to rank or status, forge relationships that will benefit us in the social hierarchy

SANCTITY- Feelings that some things, actions, and people are noble, pure and elevated; others are base polluted and degraded.

LIBERTY--make people notice and resent any sign of domination, the urge to band together (freedom fighters) Thus the Declaration of Independence.

Haidt, a professed Liberal, came to the conclusion that Liberals have a three-foundation morality: Caring, Liberty, and Fairness.(Fairness at the bottom). Conservatives have all 6.(Care at the bottom). This is not good nor bad, it just is.

When two people engage in political discourse, the secret of success is to see the other,s argument from their point of view. We don't do it often because both people readily shift into combat mode, and off we go. What I hope to do is give you Haidt's evaluation of the driving philosophies of both Liberals and Conservatives and maybe both sides can see the other side is not wrong, just different, and maybe we treat other people's political views like we treat other sexes. We may not understand the views but we still love the people.

Here are Haidt's study conclusions. Of course, we all don't match everything, but I feel it's pretty darn close.

LIBERAL: being Liberal is seen as, (their brand is), being cool and righteous. Obviously ethical, They march for peace, civil rights, workers' rights, and secularism. Liberalism simply wants to help people . They concern themselves about fairness and social justice. Income redistribution is based on fairness. Fairness implies equality. The Left's idea of equality is equality of outcomes. Small examples of equality of outcomes are; participation trophy, no scores for youngsters sporting events, elimination of games like dodge ball and musical chairs etc. More significant examples of the equality of outcomes are: equality of outcomes cannot be obtained in a capitalist society. Capitalism is in the end, predatory--a moral society will be socialist i.e. people helping each other. This is why Liberals favor higher taxes on the rich, high level of services for the poor and sometimes a guaranteed income for everybody. The Left has a morality that protects individuals and their rights. The Left's loyalty is to individuals without regard to national or other allegiances. A Liberal's motive is neophilia (attraction to new things) openness to experience. open to new people, music, and ideas. The idea of Chasity is set aside as outdated and sexist. Liberal society would be peaceful, open and creative place where diverse individuals would respect each others' rights and band together voluntarily only to help those in need or to change the law for the common good. The Left generally celebrates diversity, supports immigration without assimilation. ( Immigration will bring in new people, new ideas, goods, and technology.) Liberals oppose making English the official language, don't like to wear flag pins, and see themselves as citizens of the world. Liberalism is Egalitarian-- all people are equal and deserve common rights and opportunities; there is no hierarchy. The Left is very concerned with the rights of certain vulnerable groups (race, children, animals) and they look to government to defend the weak. Environmentalist, almost exclusively found on the Right, revile industrialism, capitalism, and automobiles not just for pollution but for degrading of humanities' original nature. As Haidt concluded, Liberals have a three-foundation morality: Caring, Liberty, and Fairness. The Left is basically ambivalent about Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity.

CONSERVATIVE: Being Conservatives is seen as, (their brand is), the party of war, big business, racism and evangelicals. The Right's idea of equality is equality of opportunity. For the Right everyone’s outcomes should not be guaranteed, but their ability to pursue those outcomes should be guaranteed. That, to the Right, is fairness. The Right believes people should be rewarded proportionally to what they contribute even if it means unequal outcomes. On the Right you are likely to see more relationships, institutions, contexts, and groups. Conservatives are not so interested in protecting individuals as they are the whole. Utilitarianism could define the Conservative-- always aim to bring about the good of the greatest number even if a few people may get hurt. A Conservative motive is neophobia (a fear of new things) prefer to stick with what's tried and true and care about guarding borders, (immigrants can bring in plagues, epidemics, and new diseases thus threatening the whole). They care about boundaries, loyalty and are strong on traditions. Those on the Right are more likely to talk about the sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage. They view the body as a temple. The Right seems to have a near-monopoly on appeals to loyalty (patriotism, military, parents, teachers, elders, police). The basic social unit for a Conservative is not the individual but the hierarchically structured family which serves as the model for other institutions. The Right values self-control over self-expression, duty over rights and loyalty to one group over concerns for other groups. Conservatives tend to invoke the name of God (not necessarily Jesus), glorify American Heros, quote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and desire to pull diverse people into one tent. Conservatives are more concerned about their groups rather than all of humanity. They revere the word liberty rather than equality. The Rights' view of Liberty is the right to be left alone, free from government interference and resent it when the Left uses the government to infringe on the Rights' liberties in order to protect the class the Left wishes to protect.

My purpose for this Blog posting is two fold:

1) I'm getting the impression both Conservatives and Liberal, given their druthers, would pick a different candidate. So, maybe if we can identify which of the parties best represents the world in which we would like to live, we can vote for that party. If the characteristics of a Liberal best describes you, hold our nose and pull the lever for Hillary. If the characteristics of a Conservative best describes you, use your one free hand and pull for the Donald.

2) This is the most important. Consider a world run by only Conservatives or only Liberals. There is a reason our human nature gives us so many psychological options. We may feel strongly about our world view but it won't stand up without a smattering of the other. I have often used the comparison of Liberals being the heart of a society and Conservatives being the head, a person cannot live with only one of those (excluding the Headless Horseman), nor can a nation. The question is how much of each is best at this time in our evolution.

Jonathan Haidt laments,"Extreme partisanship may be literally addictive." It needn’t be. We don't generally carry the differences between the thinking of our spouses or partners to the extent we do politics. As a Conservative doing research for this piece, I began to understand the thought processes of the Liberal. I understand why they, as a heart, would stand up for transgender bathrooms for example. I, as a head, disagree totally, but I understand. If I thought about caring/individuals the way they think, I would also come to that conclusion. Understanding does not stop either side from fighting for what they believe is right. That does not stop us from working and voting for the way we want America to look but it should stop us from viewing the "others" as people to dumb to spit downwind.

The Whole Truth and Nothing But.. (REPRINT)

The following is a reprint of the 2/9/2013 Blog posting entitled, The Whole Truth and Nothing But... I am reposting it because the closer we come to the election the more frustrated we become with the logic of the "other side." (Not me certainly, but some people.) It will be a long three months if we can't a least get some feeling for why people may believe as they do. The following explanation of wealth distribution has helped me look through opposite eyes. Not changed, just looked.

The characters

Reginald and Vanessa
Reginald inherited his wealth. He’s a trust fund baby. He thinks of no one but himself (not even his trophy wife Vanessa). His main life’s objective is finding ways in which he can enjoy his wealth. He has all the toys money can buy. He has the private jet, yacht, homes and cars all over the world.  He feels he is head and shoulders above the common man. He is a man of privilege. What’s his is his to enjoy every day of his life.
Bob and Sydney 
Bob and Sydney started their business in their garage, second mortgaged their home, went thru tough financial times (which tested their marriage). After one bankruptcy they reorganized and came out the other end smarter and ready to go. They have since hired 250 people and are now one of the most profitable up and coming companies in the US. Bob and Sydney have a nice home in an upscale neighborhood, send their two children to good schools, have a trust fund set up for their kids' future and still work 40 plus hours a week. They know they have a good life, and they also know how much blood, sweat and tears they put in to it. They have started a foundation to aid new entrepreneur couples.
Frank and Sally 
Frank is a high school graduate, Sally has her GED. They have 4 children and just getting by with Frank’s hourly salary and some extra cash they pick up by Sally’s baby sitting. Frank lost his job through downsizing at his company. He has very actively searched for jobs for over a year. They live on his unemployment check and Sally’s baby sitting extra cash. He doesn’t want "charity," but cannot feed his family without it. When he is not walking the streets looking for a job (he had to sell his car), Frank attends the community college to pick up some new skills to broaden his job potential. This is not they way he wanted his life to be, and he is determined to do everything he can to get himself and his family back on track.
Peaches Williams 
Peaches was never married, has six children, with five men. She has never worked. She lives off of welfare for herself and her children, three of whom live with her mother who is also single and on welfare.  Peaches has a car, cell phone, flat screen TV, and she and her current boyfriend eat well off of food stamps. She and her family are devoted members of the professional poor.

When Liberals contend that we should tax the rich to redistribute the nation’s resources, that it’s unfair that some folks should have so much while others have so little in this land of plenty, they use Reginald and Vanessa as an example of the rich and  Frank and Sally  as an example of  the poor.

“You want to let those people who have more money than they can ever spend and have no idea what the rest of us are experiencing, partying in their penthouses with their servants, big top hats and cigars while we have hardworking people out in the world who are living in tenements and ghettos and can hardly put food on the table?”

Republicans when describing the tax breaks for the rich describe the working rich (Bob and Sydney ) and the non-working poor (Peaches Williams).

“You want to take money from people who have sacrificed so much and given back so much in the way of innovation, creativity, good jobs and charitable donations and give that money to people who have voluntarily contributed nothing and whose main job is looking for who they can get something from. You really want to take money from the productive and give to the unproductive?”

Both are true.

HISTORY IS WHERE YOU STICK IT.

When I was born I was a baby straight from central casting and had the same bodily control as any others of my age. I was a 5 letter man in high school, received a football scholarship to college where I won 6 letters. I was a First Lieutenant in the Army (ours), married with 2 children, a manager in a Fortune500 company, retired early and started my own business, a professional speaker, and author of 4 books and 2 Blogs. I ran a Labrador Retriever rescue, and am now fully retired.

If someone were to describe me, would they say I'm the kind of person who poops in his pants? Would I be a jock, a military officer, a husband and father, corporate manager, entrepreneur, speaker, author, animal rescuer, or just some old guy who spends too much time on the Internet?

At some point in time, all of those were true. Who I am just depends where in my life you wanted to start my history.

The same is true with the United States. There is a certain element of our society who keeps trying to "fundamentally transform " our country because they believe, or they are at least trying to get the folks to believe, America was founded on the strategy of theft. We stole independence from the Blacks, and we stole land and life from the Indians therefore we were founded on the two legged stool of racism and genocide. So, we should feel guilty, spend our lives in a payback mode. (I guess some of that "stealing" may still be going on--redistribution of wealth?)

Let's think that "country founded by stealing" thing through.

Look at slavery. One of the most consistent activities in human history is slavery back to Egypt, Greece, Rome, West Africa and still exists around the world today. We must also remember that slaves were captured in Africa by Africans. Slavery was never personal; it was economics on both ends.

Columbus "discovered " America in 1492. the first boatload of slaves arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 so we were 127 years slave-free. If we start our history in 1500, we were slave-free. If we start in 1620, we were a slave nation. So, the US was a slave-owning country from 1619 until generally 1808 when the US Congress outlawed the African slave trade. But between 1774 and 1804 all of the northern states abolished slavery. So if we started history in what was to become Wisconsin in 1780, we were slave free; in Alabama, we were a slave nation.

How about history telling us who, Republicans or Democrats, were/are the African-American friendly party? In 1863 Lincoln (the first Republican) signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The 13th amendment passed in 1865, backed by Republicans, officially ended slavery in the US. About 1865, the end of the Civil War, the KKK sprung up around the South acting as a "strong arm" for many local Democratic politicians during Reconstruction who weren't too happy with Abe's decision. In 1880 the Jim Crow laws were enacted by Democrat legislators of the "Solid South" that legalized segregation of blacks and whites

Since slavery was a major sticking point in the Civil War which costs the lives of 620,00 young, mostly white men (40,000 black) one can imagine there were some lingering racism and discrimination issues. Those generation to generation feelings will eventually lead to the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s which with the 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act and followed by the Equal Rights Amendment signed by a Democrat President (a higher percentage of Republican in Congress voted for these bills than did Democrats). These bills would achieve the greatest political and social gains for blacks since Reconstruction(1865-1877).

The civil rights bills were on the books but they did not sit well with the Democrat leadership in the south. In 1965 Democrat Governor George Wallace ordered his white supremacist, democrat commissioner of Public Safety, "Bull" Connor, while he was not busy covering for the KKK, to use fire hoses, police dogs and tear gas against peaceful civil rights demonstrators. These images were broadcast throughout the nation and are still shown today to demonstrate how racist our country was and why the blacks are victims and why they should be accorded special treatment today.

Getting back to my point. Where do you want to start our racist history? Back when there were no slaves? At the height of our slavery period? When Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation? When President Johnson signed the Civil Rights bills? When Governor George and his Bull beat the snot out of peaceful demonstrators or when we elected an African - American President? You can also use the same "starting-history when it's convenient," theory to argue which party is most race-friendly.

Some random thoughts on race.

-- Back in the heyday of slavery, slaves were not considered "human," or at least fully human, by the real believers. Slaves were considered closer to "equipment" needed to work the plantations. A racist is described as "a person who believes that a particular race is superior to another". If the slave owners saw their slaves as equipment, I doubt they would have considered their cotton gin a "race," therefore since the slave was equipment and not a race, the slave owner could not, by definition, be racist. A slave holder may then be ignorant, uncaring and coldhearted, but not a racist. So, I guess during those times we, as a county, were not racist.

--Our government seems to feel this obligation to the African-Americans and will allow behaviors we might not allow from other groups of people because we took them away from their families, brought them a long way from home and treated them dreadfully. Maybe we could consider the fact that over 390,000 white Northerners died in the Civil War that obtained their freedom. Might possibly the African-American community at least consider us even?

--A few of the more radical Blacks have demanded reparations. While none of those requesting blackmail were ever a slave, and unless they have a randy old Grandpa, their grandparents were also not slaves. I wonder if they understand that if their ancestors were not scooped up and brought here, they could today be inhabitants of Sudan? I personally believe any African-American feeling the need for reparation should, at the expense of the US tax payer, be given a first-class, one-way ticket (I believe it would be worth it) to West Africa and revoke his/her passport.

( As an aside, I read that the slave owners did all they could to make their slaves completely dependent on them. I'll let the readers do with that as they will.)

For a very detailed CHRONOLOGY OF SLAVERY AND FREEDOM IN AMERICA check out http://www.trans-video.net/~rwillisa/SlavtoFree.htm

Now, how about us being a damaged country because we stole the Indians' rightful land.

I'm trying to think of a country that wasn't founded at some point by force and conquest. The Indians roaming the plains of the soon to be the US were not born here. Research shows that most American Indians DNA places their origins in Asia, so they must have come here across the Bering Strait before the continents drifted apart and surprised whoever or whatever was here.

The Indians in the west then evolved into two groups; the "dominant" tribes (Sioux, Comanche, and Apache). and the not so dominant tribes ((Hopi and Pueblo). The dominant tribes got their land and possessions by defeating the smaller and weaker tribes. Theses tribes were either sedentary or hunting. Sedentary were mostly farmers. Hunters roamed, hunted and often "roamed" over the farmers' land and took it over for as long as they chose to stay. Apparently in Indian culture, possession was 9/10 of the law. So, when the white settlers came over, the same thing happened. We settled on seemly open land. Did we steal Indian land?

The Sioux claim the Black Hills was stolen from them by the US government reneging on a treaty, which I guess is legally true, but since the Sioux took the Black Hills from the Cheyenne, who did we really steal it from the Sioux or the Cheyenne? Where do we start history, with the Sioux or the Cheyenne? Also, could we really "steal" land from the Indians who always claimed that no one really owns the land, that land is common property? Can't you only steal something from somebody who legally owns whatever it is you have supposedly stolen? I don't think property rights were a big thing with the Indians at that time. Possession was their law.

So, America started out by doing what every other country and subgroup did, we used force, we had slaves and we occupied the land. So what? The question is what are we now?At what point in our history do we "jump in" to define us?

We have a government today that does not believe we deserve the status we currently enjoy in the world, a government that wants to fundamentally transform us, a government who collectively choke over the term, "American Exceptionalism." I would ask those who tend to feel that way to kindly stick the probe of history in another place.

WHO SHOT THE SHERIFF?

Black policeman shoots a white person -- possible local reaction

Black policeman shoots an Asian person -- possible local reaction

Black policeman shoots a Hispanic person -- possible local reaction

Black policeman shoots a black person -- possible local reaction

White policeman shoots a white person -- possible local reaction

White policeman shoots an Asian person -- possible local reaction

White policeman shoots a Hispanic person -- possible local reaction

White policeman shoots a black person -- the 10 plagues of Egypt descend upon the land, and within 12 hours thousands march the streets; shops and cars are destroyed; the pre-made sign business booms; and Anarchy flourishes.

As they said on Sesame Street, "One of these things is not like the other." But why not?Same thing happened--police shot a human being, but for some reason, a certain segment of our society got in their collective heads that in police/public interactions color makes a difference, but only color in a certain "direction." All but one of the above combination of colors is just the price of doing business, of being a human in today's society, but some how white shooter and black "shootee" is a color combination that we cannot abide, and society must be torn asunder until white police stop shooting blacks. Where does the responsibility rest to make that seemingly impossible situation happen?

Is it the responsibility of the police?

The police are taught to shoot when they fear their lives or the lives of others are in danger. They are taught to shoot to kill, not to shoot the gun out of the bad guys hand like an old Roy Rogers movie. This "shooting the bad guys when in fear of losing the lives of the good guys," is a procedure, I believe, that makes sense to most logical thinking people. The problem with this policy is the fear level of the individual policeman or woman. Some police have the nerves of a Navy SEAL, some others the nerves of a college student who just saw a Trump poster. This needs to be dealt with in psychological testing given upon entry into the police academy.

A policeman stops a white male dressed in a suit in downtown Manhattan. He is stopped for a slight traffic violation. He asks for the man's ID. The man reaches for the glove compartment. Where might the policeman’s gun hand be?

A policeman stops a black male dressed in a black hoody on the south side of Chicago. He is stopped for a slight traffic violation. He asks for the man's ID. The man reaches for the glove compartment. Where might the policeman’s gun hand be?

Let's assume that hand might be twitching a bit more during the second scenario. Why?

Despite making up just 13% of the US population, blacks committed half of homicides in the United States for nearly 30 years. DOJ statistics show that between 1980 and 2008, black people committed 52% of homicides. In 2013, black criminals committed 38% of the murders. Whites accounted for just 31 %. Forty percent of killers of police are black.

Might the policeman just be playing the odds?

Now, here comes a real wild thought, and one that were I running for office would have me branded as a bigoted, racist. Might some of the responsibility, dare I say most, of the responsibility for the number of black deaths fall upon the previous actions of the black community? How does any race develop a stereotype? Who is responsible for changing that stereotype?

I realize how suggesting our country put the responsibility on the blacks for their own conditions and stop treating as victims our perfectly capable, undervalued black citizens, must sound to the heart (Liberals) of our society. As a head (Conservative) I'm willing to risk giving the African American race full responsibility for their own future. I only wish the heart would also.

When will somebody of influence in the media have guts enough to ask the black leaders, such as they are, what responsibility does the black community have in these deaths? What can the black community DO to police itself and reduce its crime rates so that when a policeman approaches a black young man in the dead of night in South Central LA the policeman’s gun hand rests quietly by his side.

THE FORMULA FOR MURDER

"Another mass murder? That's terrible. What's for lunch?"

 Maybe mass shootings are going to be a way of life in the world today. Maybe they are nature's way of culling the herd. Maybe we could expand our perspective.

 Let's take a macro view of the ingredients of a mass shooting using the following formula:

 Belief--Action--Result

 Belief : "I've been bullied" and/or "I must kill infidels."

 Action: Kill all infidels or kill those I hold responsible for my pain.

 Result: Dead innocent people, often including the shooter, and recognition for the shooter in this life and in the "after life. "

 It should be obvious to everyone that we are too far down the gun trail to do anything about the Action portion of that scenario. We have some 300,000,000 guns (and rapidly growing every time our President opens his mouth) in circulation now. Why can't the heart (Liberal) portion of our society understand that? THAT SHIP HAS SAILED. It's time we take on the Beliefs and Results.

 To take on the Beliefs, we need to more actively pursue mental illness, and we must diminish the romantic/ideological appeal of ISIS to the "lone wolf," by putting our top marketing people on the job to belittle ISIS and make them the punch line of jokes. While laughing at them at home we decimate ISIS itself in the Middle East. Why is addressing killers' Beliefs harder than the fantasy of "gun control" for the heart? From the heads' (conservative) standpoint, we would have to brand and institutionalize many more people than we do today. We would have to accept the fact that all people are not "normal." We would have to specifically designate out loud, who our enemy is and kill them. These non PC activities are very low on the heart's list of solutions.

 To take on the Results we must take away the glory of "martyrdom." Let's take away from them whatever upside they feel comes with their acts. Let's, at the very least, stop publicizing the names of these miscreants. In the unfortunate situation where the shooter is not killed, the head says let's stop two and three year trials to determine if a guy who comes into a movie theater in full combat gear and kills twelve people is nuts. He's nuts! It should take less than a week to decide that. Killers don't care about themselves; what about their families? Confiscate their homes and deport the family members to their countries of origin. Hang on to your hats for this one---how about taking a shooter who is yelling "Allah Akbar" while mowing down innocent infidels for the glory of Allah and his acceptance into the arms of the seventy-two virgins, (like for example the Orlando shooter), hang his dead body upside down, naked with pig parts stuck in his mouth outside the Pulse nightclub and leave him there for a week. Maybe that would negate some of the upside? As wild as that seems I believe that could fit under our constitution better than gutting the second amendment.

 So, with all that goes into a mass murder situation, the mental illness or homicidal ideology that promotes the massacres and the perceived rewards that the shooter gets out of the killings, our President decides to put the country's efforts on controlling ...the gun.

 Let's talk a little more about that curious decision.

 If I am a degenerate nut case and want to kill as many people as possible and I find it hard to get them all in a cage so I can burn or drown them, or find it too inconvenient to negotiate the logistics of chopping their heads off with a machete or loading them in an airplane and flying them into a building, I will go with the most convenient and proficient way possible, a legal, semi-automatic rifle.

Eliminating the semi-automatic rifle is the conclusion of our leader, and for those who think like our leader, to reduce mass killings. To the heart it makes perfect sense; the semi-automatic rifle goes, so will the mass killings. Problem solved.

 What might be the logical gun progression if the semi-automatic rifle is ostensibly off the market? When it was made very difficult to obtain a permit for a fully automatic weapon we go down the gun chain to the semi-automatic rifle because it provides the most fire power we can legally purchase. It would seem that once the semi-automatic rifle goes the way of the automatic rifle, those folks, for whatever reason good or bad, will go down the gun chain to the next most high powered gun, semi-automatic pistols? Eventually we'll work our way down to loading people in a cage and burning them. You work with what you got.

 Hey! Banning semi-automatic weapons worked in Australia! Australia has about 23 million people with 650,000 semi-automatic rifles which were bought back by the government funded by a tax increase. We have 319 million people with close to 4,000,000 semi-automatic rifles ( Hunter's Warehouse sold 30,000 AR15s in the week after Orlando.) which would cost the US taxpayers billions to buy back. We would then see which direction the public and politicians would go, gun control or increased taxes.

 Can you imagine the skill of salesperson who could convince the good law abiding folks, much less the Crips, Bloods, the denizens of the South side of Chicago and LA, MS13, Barrio 18, Aryan Brotherhood, Mongols Motorcycle Club, The Mexican Mafia, Barrio Azteca and the fast growing Trinitarios, to sell their guns to the government? Even if the Government agreed to pay $1000 per returned gun, it would not be worth it to them. So, the only other alternative would be, since I'm assuming asking them politely to turn in their gun might not work, would be to confiscate them by force. With the reduction in the numbers of our military, I doubt we would have the capacity for that bloodbath to occur.

 This is why Trump resonates with so many people. While it would be nice if he had a filter, he is willing to address the Belief part of the equation and that makes sense to people. While the President is willing to spend gobs of money and time doing additional background checks on American citizens who have a constitutional right to own a gun, he is letting/inviting into the US, with minimal vetting, those folk whose belief may lead them to illegally use a gun which he can then blame for the atrocities.

 Why, when there are so many potential fixes to try to reduce mass murders, does the President so doggedly stick to controlling a piece of metal. Does he really want to reduce the number of lives lost or does he have another agenda?

A SOLUTION LOOKING FOR A PROBLEM

The 10th Amendment to the US Constitution states The federal government  possesses only those powers delegated to it by the states or the people through the Constitution. (1791) .

It would seem that today, 225 years later, the states have bestowed upon the federal government the title of "Toilet Sheriff," and granted Washington bureaucrats the right to determine who can use a state's men's and women's washrooms, locker rooms and showers.

I have a concern that if the states cannot determine who uses their bathrooms without interference or blackmail by the federal government, what does the state have power to do on its own. What then does the 10th Amendment even mean?

The power-hungry federal government does not appear to have a limit. They are shameless with their power grabs. What they have used as justification for sticking their noses in the states' heads this time, is Title 9.

Title 9 of the Education Amendments of 1972 states, No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. Basically, educational programs and activities that receive federal funds must operate in a nondiscriminatory manner.   

Fair enough, but my guess is that 44 years ago, the concept of sex was based upon the sex a person is, not the sex he/she (proper grammatically and contextually) would like to be.

How then did we get here?

I have said before I believe our society is made up of a heart (Liberals) and a head (Conservatives). Both are required to keep the body politic alive. I just worry that the heart sees no limit --no limit to the problems there are to solve, no limit to the underprivileged, no limit to those who do not experience equality. The head agrees there are problems, underprivileged and inequality, but the head believes there must be limits.

Whenever we decide to do something, we decide not to do something else. When we decide to go out for a run, we also decide at the same time not to sit on the couch and watch TV. When we decide to potentially make life easier for the 96,000 transgendered among us, we also decide to potentially make life harder for the other 317,900,000. Given those numbers, the head will fight the heart, and the head will be called heartless.

So what? Isn't this just a big deal over nothing? Just another governmental, '"Wag the Dog"? I'm sure it is that, but it is also more. What we are seeing here is a good example of the old bug-a-boo, the "slippery slope."

When a government or a movement wants to drive its people from A to Z, the trip is more effective to go from A to B to C and before they realize those lulled to sleep are sitting firmly on Z.

Consider the initial ban on smoking. It started on airplanes with a smoking section in the back. Today you are looked at as Beelzebub if you smoke anywhere. If the powers to be had banned smoking almost everywhere right out of the gate, there would have been riots.

My disapproval of same-sex marriage has never been that two people who want to be together for the rest of their lives should not be, but I believe the word marriage has already been taken and defined. Anyone who thinks that marriage will not take a ride on the slippery slope and remain only two people only need to look at smoking.

In a 1975 article in the Washington Post uber-Liberal Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg, when addressing concerns that Tile 9 would "require unisex restrooms in public places" wrote, Emphatically not so. She continued, Separate places to disrobe, sleep, perform personal bodily functions are permitted, in some situations required, by regard for individual privacy.

Today the federal government is saying basically that any person can use any washroom, locker or shower they desire. We’ve hit the bottom of the slope. I wonder how the Supreme Ginsberg would respond to this now?

It's time to get the head in the game, and some state governors and school board officials are leading the charge. They, to fit the narrative, are being called haters and bigots. They will have federal funds cut off but have their principles intact.

The heart says the head's primary objection to open bathrooms is worry over transgenders attacking innocent people in washrooms and points out that has never happened. So, there should be no concern with letting any a person of any self-declared sex enter any washroom. OK! let's go with that. Does anyone feel changes in the law allowing people to self-declare and go into any washroom will make the public safer? Or, is there a better chance that it has stirred up the perverts among us and will make the public more vulnerable?

I don't know how this change in bathroom laws ever got started. Who is leading the charge? It seems like maybe the heart is running out of causes. To be fair, I have never heard any transgender person's side of this issue. To me it just seems that we have had a man's and a woman’s separate facilities for probably more than 100 years, what did the transgender folks do for the first 99 1/2 years? My guess they went to the restrooms commensurate with what they were wearing that day and used the stall. They showered with those born with the same equipment. That, on its face, doesn't seem so bad. It sounds even logical.

The heart and head have to be working together for maximum success, but for what I can see, the heart is an Ethiopian just finishing a marathon and the head is resting comfortably on a pillow in a fully reclined Lazy Boy. The heart appears to be scavenging the world hoping to find some class of people, who in their opinion, is not being treated "fairly" (as if life itself is fair), then nit-pick the Constitution or some obscure law to use as justification.

Say heart, while you're on a roll how about finding something in the Constitution that says we should insure vets' jobs upon return to civilian life that pays at least $15 per hour (they will have actually earned it) and free education. I recognize vets are not as sure a vote as the LGBT community, but they will have deserved it.

GUNS AND GENERATIONS

There were two guns in the house, one in one drawer, one in another.

Dad was a policeman. One gun was his service revolver, the other one was for off-duty wear. I'm sure somewhere along the line I was told to stay away from them, and for the most part I did. I do remember once picking up his 38 service revolver and thinking how heavy it was and putting it back immediately. After all I was told by my dad to stay away from it.

I have heard stories about kids who grew up in rural areas coming to school in their pickup trucks with their rifles secured in the seemingly required rifle rack and even comparing their rifles with their teachers' rifles.

Today, if a gun is not kept in a safe, the parent could face charges. Any kid bringing a rifle within 3 miles of a school would require the deployment of the closest SWAT team.

Same pistol, same rifle, different times.

The times have changed and yet a certain segment of society (the heart), rather than looking at the changes in society, seem to believe the problem is with the gun, which is the same hunk of metal it has always been, just today the gun lives in a different world.

The element of American society which, I believe, produced the activator of gun violence is the continuing decline in our respect for authority.

I respected my parents. I trusted them to lead me in the right direction, to have my well being in their every action. I, of course, never articulated that, but looking back, it was who they were. Even as young people we knew, at some level, when we were doing right or wrong, good or bad. We knew if our actions were acceptable or not acceptable. We trusted our parents to verify those beliefs by demonstrating their love to reinforce, or by "punishment" to express displeasure and redirect future behaviors.

Did anything in that last paragraph tweak a nerve? If so, let me guess--the word "punishment." We have reached a point in our society where anything that would make our children "uncomfortable" must be strongly mitigated or completely eliminated lest children begin to think of themselves as fallible. The more "heart centered" (Liberal) among us may say, "When a parent removes love from a child for doing something "wrong" that means the parent,s love is conditional to be applied only when the child does what the parent wants." That’s stated as if it's a bad thing. We "head centered" (Conservatives) believe the parent doesn't actually stop loving a child for attempting to stuff a cantaloupe down the toilet but does remove an expression of their love regardless of the potential of hurting the child's delicate feelings. When a horse you are riding is headed off a cliff, you correct by pulling on the reins. I'm sure the horse would just rather keep galloping in the direction it's heading and feels the pulling of the reins a "punishment," but unless the rider and his trusting steed are interested in doing a Thelma and Louise, there is a time for punishment.

In a Ted Cruz campaign stop in Indiana, a 10-11-year-old boy shouted from the crowd, "You suck!"

Cruz responded, Hopefully someone has told you children should speak with respect. ... In my household when a child behaves like that they get a spanking. Social media lit up. How dare he suggest punishment, and a physical one at that. (Pulling the child's reins?) In my wildest dreams I couldn't imagine doing something like that boy did. If his "parents," and I use the term lightly, have a gun in their house, I strongly suggest they get an industrial-strength safe.

I didn’t play with my father's gun. I didn't play with it because I knew what was right and wrong and the ramifications of that knowledge. The gun had nothing to do with it.

Guns are guns; society transformed (After all "fundamental transformation" is the objective isn't it?) and "loosened" up. The heart side of our society sees that as progress. The head side of our society, not so much.

Over the years younger people's respect for authority has been severely undermined. This set back in societal evolution has come initially, and unfortunately, from children's ultimate authority figure, his/her parents The heart's desire for equality is mistakenly imposed on the children. The child is not the equal of the parent. The child is not the buddy of the parent. The child has enough friends, but only one set of parents. In schools we have children who are going free-range MMA on teachers with just minimal, if any consequences. The authority of police has been sabotaged by no less than the President of the US, and we have religion scorned and laughed at in the media and suppressed in actual practice.

We're growing a generation of children who do not respect the authority of parents, teachers, law enforcement and/or clergy. Where are our young people getting their role models? Will today’s marching orders, "If it feels good, do it," or "They are going to do it anyway," serve them well in the real world?

The head knows we are not all equal, but the heart is so mistakenly obsessed with equality that any activity that smacks of competition is stifled. Try to find a good old game of Musical Chairs. We have kids' rooms with shelves full of participation trophies. What happens to those ships that "never leave the harbor," when they get into high seas? What happens when our younger generations meet real physical adversity?

What happens when they can't win an argument of words? Why would they be able to engage in friendly discourse when they are rarely exposed to dissenting views, and if a dissenting view might be lingering in the air like the smell of rotting flesh, they can hopefully make it to their "safe place" until evil dissent is gone. If they can't effectively debate the issue, they could try getting physical to get their point across. My guess, with so little practice in the art of pugilism, (because that usually results in winners and losers) that won't end well. Knowing they have never lost in their lives, how is it possible other people don't see the world as they do? Time to move on to throwing rocks and bottles believing that will prove the validity of their beliefs. If they still can't get their way there is always a gun. A gun is a good final choice. They believe when they get caught, or if they off themselves from this meaningless world, the media will publicize them and their plight and will portray them as poor underprivileged kids that America (founded on racism and genocide) has failed. They will be famous, thereby justifying their over-inflated self-esteem.

We have to understand a gun is only a problem if it's in the hands of someone with a problem. What social structure are we establishing for a person to make an intelligent decision concerning their place in the world, understanding their personal pros and cons inventory and experiencing a realistic belief of what they have to offer and what they have to give? Where do they go for the truth? Are we, under the guise of helping, setting up our young people so the only way they can find validation and a sense of self-worth is in shooting up a school, church or movie house?

Let's stop wasting time trying to "control" guns. A Glock, in itself, is as dangerous as a Glockenspiel. Let's work on the environment the gun exists in. I'm confident if we refuse to ride the horse in the direction it's going and do our personal best to regenerate respect for parents, teachers, law enforcement, and clergy, the guns will control themselves.

IT'S MY PARTY AND I'LL CRY IF I WANT TO.

Lent is over so I don't listen to any more Progressive radio. When I did (and I'm going straight to heaven), a host, whose name I didn't catch, was a guest host. He was giving his ideas as to the difference between Liberals and Leftist. In general, he was saying that a Liberal wants to change things and will change through the voting booth, judicial system and modifications in the law. Whereas the Leftist wants to change things but will do it more "actively" through protests and the like. I can buy those distinctions.

Then he got more specific and spoke only about Liberalism. He gave a few examples of what Liberals are about. I was only able to catch the first couple because they got me thinking so hard, I didn't hear the rest, but the following two are plenty. They are:

Liberals are tasked with "Caring for the countries most vulnerable."

Liberals believe in "Live and let live."

A few thoughts on those Liberal tenets.

Listening to Mr. Host, you would get the impression that Conservatives don't care for the "most vulnerable." This fallacy is because of the successful branding done by the Left. We Conservatives don't seem to care because we don't jump on the band wagon every time a Liberal wants to "help" the most vulnerable. As a matter of fact, we may even attempt to unhitch the horses and hide the 101 trombones. Why would we attempt to sabotage Liberal initiatives if we actually cared?

Picture a family at Christmas time taking their four kids (6 to 11 years old) to Toys-R-Us. They are happily walking down the aisle and the kids start asking for all the toys that would make them happy. They are just at the end of aisle "A" and the kids have already asked for $1000 worth of toys. Mr. and Mrs. Middle-Class America do not have that kind of money, and they know that if they gave the kids, and we know kids are most vulnerable among us, everything they wanted it would not be good for building their character. No matter how much they got now they would only want more real soon.

Somebody at this point has an adult decision to make.

I remember hearing an interview with Newt Gingrich where he said something to the effect that we have two political parties, one wants to implement programs then look for where to get the money, the other looks at what money it has to determine what programs to implement. Do the kids at Toys-R-Us get the $1000 worth of toys they want and the parents take out a third mortgage, or do the parents lay down a budget of $100 because that's all they can afford? We know the $1000 parents will be loved by the kids in the short term and elected again as parents, but the $100 parents have made the unpopular decision and did what’s best for the family(country) in the long run.

What appears to be implied in the "caring for the most vulnerable" is attempting to achieve some parity among the people of the country. Here is a factoid that everyone knows but a certain segment of our society has trouble grasping--PEOPLE ARE NOT EQUAL. The difference in intelligence, physical attributes, drive, passion, etc. is evidenced every day. Danny DeVito, at 5 ft. tall, while a good actor is never going to play in the paint for an NBA team. If he really wanted to play in the NBA and put in 100% effort, I'm pretty sure the best he could get is a participation trophy. But I bet there are some members of our society who would want to drop the NBA basket height from 10' to 6' so "little people" would not feel so bad and would have a better chance to make the team. (There is a proposal out there to raise the basket from 10' to 12' next season and I suppose there will be protests by Little Lives Matter over that.)

As a country, we do not have enough money to give everybody what we, Left and Right, would like them to have, and everything they would like to have. That's why we have a Republican party. Somebody has to be the bad guy. Liberals have little problem spending other people's money because first of all, that's all they have to give, and secondly their desire to "care for the most vulnerable" is greater than their concern for the mundane (like money).

Let's give everybody "free" education, "free" healthcare, 40% minimum wage raise, additional maternity/paternity leave, increased unemployment benefits, forgiven student loan debt, paid family leave, and when Republicans do not go along with those proposals, they are considered haters and SEALS fighting the War on Women. If a person would look deep into why some of these great-to-have life changes are not approved by Republicans, it comes down to where does the money come from? If every new proposal came to the floor of Congress with a funding source, other than taking it from the productive members of our society, like a new proposal in our family budget has to have, maybe we could all live more like a family. A financially secure family.

One thing I know Mr. Host didn't say about the objectives of Liberalism was to be a steward of the public's money. We can't thrive, our system will not work, with just the constipation of the Right or the diarrhea of the Left. That's why the two parties exist to challenge each other to come up with the most effective programs at an affordable price.

The concentration on caring for the most vulnerable doesn't always involve money. The Liberals tie caring with the "live and let live" tenet. This philosophy covers life situations such as same-sex marriage, drug use, and use of a washroom du jour. The most vulnerable are most often the minorities. So the Democrat party, to be consistent with its values, has made a connection with the minority communities. Even though history and the present, other than saying they are for the minorities, has provided no visible proof minorities are any better off with Democrats, there is a symbiotic relationship of the Left and minorities. The Left has obviously done a better PR job with minorities than the right has, so in that regard, we should give the devil its due.

Once the Left has demonstrated its caring for the vulnerable LGBT community by guilting the 96% of the population who are not LGB or T to being OK with changing the centuries-old definition of marriage, the Left's work of finding some way to care for the gay and lesbian members of our society is winding down. Now they are going after helping the 0.03% of the population, who consider themselves "Ts," use whatever washroom/locker room he/she feels like using that day.

What's next? The Left believes this country need fixing (fundamental transformation). Now, what other groups of American citizens has this country, (founded on racial hatred, genocide, discrimination and bigotry), been keeping down? What else can the Left do to achieve greater equality among all men and women? They can bring up the bottom or bring down the top. If they bring up the bottom, that would require minorities to put in additional work by graduating from high school, trade school or college, learning more usable work and personal skills, and showing up to work every day on time. I don't know if that scenario fits in with the Left's vision of "caring for the most vulnerable." But, the bringing down the top through protests and redistributive tax changes just might work and that would put the least negative pressure on the minorities while at the same time providing them with "free" stuff thus reducing every shred of self-esteem they have.

So, who is there to stand up and appreciate the less "vulnerable" members of our society, those who today are feeling under attack?. Who is speaking up for; the hard working, church-going, married, English speaking, patriotic, straitlaced, self-reliant, white, educated, respectful, middle income, gun owning, politically moderate homeowners? In other words, who is standing up for (according to census figures) the majority? Who is watching the bank?That's why there is a Republican party.

The Republican party is the head, the Democrat party the heart of our country. We wouldn't be the country we are without our "parts." We often find our own personal "heads" in conflict with our own personal "hearts," and we are always able to work it out. Let's hope we can get that done for the country before it's too late.