The World Turned Upside Down
My intention today was to tell you about me and big Rita. But, slowly returning from a life imposed exile there are other things on my mind. So in the interest of keeping this short, I will cut to the end. Big Rita changed her evil ways. Some other day, I may fill in the blanks.
Recently, I bought a set of biographies called Heroes of History written by Janet and Geoff Benge. I am passing them on to my granddaughters in hopes they will learn about people important to the development of our country and grow to embrace this most exceptional nation. After I read each one, I write a note in it and mail it to them.
In the George Washington biography, it noted as the British surrendered at Yorktown the band played an old nursery tune, The World Turned Upside Down.
If buttercups buzzed after the bee,
If boats were on land,
Churches on sea,
If ponies rode men,
And if grass ate the corn,
And if cats should be chased
Into holes by the mouse,
If the mammas sold their babies
To the Gypsies for half a crown,
If summer were spring,
And the other way ’round,
Then all the world would be upside down.
When the superpower of the day surrendered to the world’s newest country, I suppose the world to them did appear a little upside down.
I live in a country where at its very beginning it was accepted that freedom is God given. It was that rag tag Army of citizen Soldiers that stood, fought and died to secure that freedom and to remain the guardian of it. As an American, I have never doubted that freedom is my birthright. But, if freedom is indeed God given is it not a universal birthright? Should not all people enjoy freedom? The answer of course is that they should. In the history of humankind, there is only one nation founded on that precept and I am blessed to live in it. At the outset, our founders “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions…” and…”with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence” declared and set our country’s foundation. America is exceptional because it is unique among nations of the world in its guarantee of individual liberty.
Even with this in mind, I am saddened. Our nation sits beneath the glow of Lady Liberty’s torch. Our capitol city is filled with monuments honoring many of the heroes of history who gave us this great country and to the warriors who fought and died to preserve our universal birthright.
America has always been about love of God, love of family, and love of liberty and has been willing to defend that love wherever in the world it is threatened – until now. Somewhere along the way we got off track. Freedom derailed, its foundation shaken by people who do not acknowledge American Exceptionalism. As Americans, we are allowing ourselves to be led away from our foundation of individual liberty. All so gradually over the years, but now running at a torrid pace toward a destination where God is abandoned and the freedom he gave us forfeited. Yes forfeited. Man did not give us freedom and man cannot take it away. Freedom can only be forfeited.
More saddening is the lack of urgency in Americans and Washington’s politicians to put us back on track. Everything is viewed in political cycles as in this one will pass too. Well it will not pass and even if it does what will be left to my granddaughters and to your grandchildren will be nothing like the United States of America that we knew. Ronald Regan warned us that America is freedom’s last stand and there does not appear to be many Washington defenders of it.
The leader of our exceptional nation has declared, in his mind at least, that we are no more exceptional than any other nation. He has declared that we are not a Christian nation although a nation clearly founded on Judeo-Christian values whose national motto is In God We Trust. He refuses to acknowledge the Islamists or the Christians they are murdering across the Middle East and Africa. Instead, he talks about the Crusades from 700 years ago implying that we did as badly. Following his logic, what should we be doing now? He declares himself a Christian while mocking Bible scriptures, supporting abortions even to the point of allowing babies who survive abortion attempts to die and embracing homosexual marriage.
Our president is growing bolder in his last years as the nation’s leader. I am no political prognosticator, but I am betting he will eventually jump the shark to the point that even MSNBC will not be able to defend his actions. There is less effort to mask his true persona or what his vision of a fundamental transformation truly is. He demonstrated boldly for anyone who was paying attention what he intends to leave as his legacy. When he embraced Raul Castro, an oppressive murdering Communist dictator, while declaring that he doesn’t know about all of that stuff that happened before he was born his vision for America became crystal clear. Here is a hint. It is not the post-racial, post-political, red, white and blue America he promised. And Mr. President, just for the record, history did not begin with your birth.
So now, the world is officially upside down. American will right herself only when Washington’s politicians are forced to remember their roles.
©Copyright 2015 J. D. Pendry American Journal All Rights Reserved
Category: Politics
There is no extreme position that he could take where MSNBC would not defend him. The left has to defend its acolytes, to say nothing of its leader, in their actions. They are in a propaganda battle for power, and if they admit fault or error their entire, carefully constructed, web of lies might unravel. So they will defend all actions by “the one” as just and righteous.
” So they will defend all actions by “the one” as just and righteous.”
To the bitter end, Brother. To the bitter end.
I respectfully disagree – it seems to me that you guys talk about liberals without talking with liberals. Or, at least, without doing so in a reasonable fashion.
Amongst many of my liberal friends, there’s a good degree of dissatisfaction with President Obama – very, very few defend all his actions as just and righteous. Of course, it also becomes relative if you make it so – start a discussion with, “Obummer the commie-pinko asshole who is destroying all that is good with the world and kicks babies for fun is a bad President” and you’re going to immediately force people to take the opposing argument because it doesn’t leave someone any room to do otherwise. Start a discussion with, “I wish I knew why President Obama did (insert whatever he did here) because the way I see it, (insert your view here)”, and chances are you might find some commonality in your viewpoint, even if not complete agreement.
Want a specific example? Pretty much all the liberals I personally know -I’m excluding die-hards you might find on Kos or DU- are incredibly frustrated with the President effectively ‘phoning it in’ these days, sometimes literally from the golf course. Start a discussion about how we, as a people -as a country– deserve a President that’ll work hard instead of becoming ‘royalty’, in effect, and you’ll get plenty of agreement. Across the aisle. Start a discussion by throwing petty insults at the man, and at any who side with him on any issue, and toss in a bunch of things which have nothing to do with it -‘commie’, ‘terrorist sympathizer’, etc.- and you get nowhere.
Honestly, that’s the biggest problem now, in my opinion, and I say the same damn thing to liberals who do it to conservative politicians. Once we can get past demonizing the person and looking at what they do on a case-by-case basis, I think we’ll be far better off as a country.
Find me a thread on Kos or DU condemning Lois Lerner or Hillary’s e-mail shenanigans and I’ll re-evaluate my position.
But, I’ll bet you can’t find any such thread. I’ll bet you can find any number defending the two of them to the death though.
Challenge accepted – the first few threads that came up when I googled ‘Democratic Underground Clinton Email’ all show a great degree of frustration with this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141027729
Read through those comments. Most are hardly complimentary to Clinton or defending her to the death. I think I won this bet. (I’m sure I can find stuff for Lerne, too – this was literally the first thread I checked.)
I read the thread. I don’t see a lot of outright condemnation-as in “she’s a liar”-but I did see a lot of discussion of the horse race. There was also quite a bit of “but Bush” and more than a few who were claiming she did not break the law.
Interpret that thread how you like LC, but I don’t think it disproved my point.
LC, want a specific example in response to your “specific example”? You say that many liberals are frustrated with Obama phoning it it in “these days”. Therein lies the essential difference between you liberals and the folks who congregate here.
What we have understood and have been complaining about for years now is that this president has been phoning it in for most of his administration, not just “these days”. Had your side bothered to examine his past, as you would any conservative politician, you easily would have discovered that he was an indolent, indifferent, affirmative action student and a lazy non-voting state politician who accomplished little including not authoring his own books.
That it has taken your side so long to recognize this guy for the lazy fraud that he is does not incline our side to want to pat you on your backs for finally getting your heads out of your butts. Rather, being the rowdy, mostly military, crowd we are inclines us more to want to put a jump boot up your dim-bulb butts.
Had you come here five years ago with your political palm branch extended, we might have been willing to engage in rational, reasoned discourse. That it has taken you this long to wake up and do so just warrants a big “Screw You” and your too-little, too-late condescension from those of us who weren’t wearing your liberal blinders. In your eagerness to elect the first black president, you elected the wrong black president and that you are just now waking up to that fact does not endear you to us.
So you see, there probably won’t be too many takers here for your proffered reasonable discussions.
:thumbsup:
Awesome rebuttal and 100% accurate.
Liberals now want to “play nice”, but when they had the house, senate and president, they didn’t give a damn what we thought because they knew better. Now that all of the F-ups are finally unavoidably in everyone’s face, it’s time to work together to get it all fixed.
It reminds me of a sign my mechanic brother-in-law had in his shop – $100.00 for me to fix it, $150.00 if you watch me, $200.00 if you worked on it first. What I mean by that is now that they fixed everything, it’s going to cost twice as much to get it running again.
And, alas, here’s where we disagree, for many of the reasons I listed above – you paint President Obama as an ‘indolent, indifferent, affirmative action student’, and that is certainly not the read I have on him. He is, it seems to me, pretty intelligent, and nobody in the early days of his marathon campaigning could rightly call him lazy.
Further to that point, he’s actually done a fair number of things – go Google ‘Obama accomplishments’ if you wish for a sampling, since repeating them here will simply lead to disagreements… and underscore my original point. When you change the discussion from, “I wish this guy did (insert something here)” to “I wish this lazy, clueless idiot who is an abject failure and is surrounded by idiot followers we call liberals did (insert something here)”, there’s no commonality to be found. And you’ve gone from a sentiment which could have broad, cross-party support to something which is supported by one party.
Again, it’s about the issues, not the person.
LC, I’m not googling “Obama’s accomplishments”. You stand up and in defense of your leader and convince me. Sack up and tell me.
Wait an effin’ minute, LC. You’re the one whose specific example was that Obama is “phoning it in” which is a behavior not an issue.
And you’re still in denial about the guy’s early history, which, as a liberal, you still refuse to examine. If he’s so damned smart and driven to succeed, why was he the first and only editor of the Harvard law Review to never author an article for same? And how many fellow lawyers in his graduating class have given up their law licenses?
There are none so blind…
Well, there’s this one: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12705.html
How convenient: Unsigned, and previously unattributed and just happens to be found “tucked into” an issue of Harvard Law Review.
Good grief! This is bordering on being Clintonesque…
Now there is no call to be crude.
🙂
What you’re example references, LC, is that the leftists are mad because he isn’t moving further left enough to satisfy them. I have several in laws that think that. That’s why they’re dissatisfied with him; not because he’s moving too far left, but that he’s not moving far enough. That he ignores standing law, or that he cuts new regulations out of whole cloth doesn’t concern them, because it’s for our own good (he’s so much smarter than you and I),. The same people that aren’t concerned now will be losing their shit when a republican President does the same thing, only on stuff they hold sacred.
+100 – the hard left thinks Obama isn’t radical enough, not that he is too radical.
me, I’m actually kind of relieved that he’s phoning it in nowadays… God only knows what he would fuck up if her really put his mind to it, instead of to his golf game.
Fact is that every POTUS candidate we get to vote for is not the real person…he (or she…) becomes the creation of the nominating party. They re-invent as deemed necessary. Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Obama…they are all just puppets of the 1%ers who run their party. Attacks on the person are irrelevant because you only know the public persona.
Personally, I welcome Presidential candidates who I feel are smarter than me…Lord knows I wouldn’t want one who is dumber.
J.D. thanks for an eloquent summation of the way that many of us feel. I frequently comment to my wife when we hear something particularly foolish from this administration on TV or read it on the Web, “It’s the world turned upside down.” I think I speak for many of us in saying that we are fervently hoping that we and our nation can endure until this would-be dictator leaves office in January 2017. My personal belief is that were it not for his race, he would have been impeached long ago; perhaps not convicted but at the least formally impeached. The same holds true for that sorry excuse for an attorney general. I further believe that the leftist puppet-masters who control the Democrat party were well aware of that race-conferred immunity when they overthrew the Democrat frontrunner in 2008 and installed this puppet as head of government. And they very wisely reasoned that to undermine American government institutions and principles, they absolutely must have absolute control of the justice department, thus the unprincipled Eric Holder. An administration with a justice department that is truly justice blind would never be able to defy the legislative and judicial branches as Obama has. What I believe is our saving grace is that Second Amendment our founding fathers so wisely included in that all important Bill of Rights. The leftists succeeded in seizing control of governments in many countries around the world in the past century but never in one where the citizenry is as well-armed as we are, which explains the determined efforts of the Obama administration to find devious ways to disarm us. And therein lies my greatest fear if Hillary Clinton is elected, Supreme Court appointments which will stack the court with liberals who will then interpret the 2d Amendment to mean that only organized military has the right to bear arms. Should that come to pass, we are either screwed as a free nation or we stand against federal oppression and refresh the Tree of Liberty as Jefferson warned us would be necessary from time to time. Our saving… Read more »
I call it Bizarro World. If the world just turned upside down I might be able to cope.
As it is dictionary definitions don’t work in real life any longer.
I believe in American exceptionalism. I believe in love of family and liberty. The current political situation appears to be more polarized that ever. Where did our founding fathers wall of separation become so breeched this flood of religious ideology has swept away the Age of Reason. Our founding fathers lived in a time when being critical of Government and Church power was embraced. These were brilliant men who laid a foundation for a government that limited its powers and fortified it from clergy.
The idea that any mention of God means this is a Christian Nation is fallacious. There is no mention of Christ or a Jesus figure of any kind. We are free to believe in Jesus Christ as our personal savior and worship accordingly. We are required by the Constitution to respect and defend our neighbors right to worship differently than we ourselves do. The brilliance in their construct is; our neighbor may not use the government to profess their particular understanding of whatever they conceive God to be on the rest of us.
We have become so polarized that we have lost the ability to defend with passion our neighbors right to their own beliefs. If you believe our liberties were God given that is your right and I will defend it. If you believe it was a Christian God that did it, I will challenge your ability to use the government to profess it by using the Constitution to stop it.
If we believe in a Christian God and worship accordingly then we must be gun toting, Bible thumping, intellectually impaired flag wavers of the ultra white right. If we have no belief in a God of any kind then we must be pseudo intellectual socialist libtards that want government to control everything and burn flags at every LGBT rally held at the local tax funded abortion clinic.
No, the problem is not a lack of government being influenced by religious dogma. The problem is we have lost the ability to have a government the remains mute on religion.
No worries there. The Christian God has been kicked out of nearly everything in this country. The mere mention of Jesus will have you publicly scorned and in some instances asked to either be quiet or leave the premises.
BUT, let’s take a look at where our country is and where it is headed since God is no longer allowed in anything. ( I’m not going to make a list. You all are smart enough to know what I’m talking about. Is it better or worse? No need to reply with an answer. We all already know) before I’m accused of being a Bible thumping Christian, understand that when we kicked God out of everything, morals went out too and now the government finds the need to try to legislate morals back into society through laws. You don’t have to be a Christian or a believer of any higher authority to understand that there are more benefits to having a society that is based in religion than one that is not. Do you have to be religious to have morals? No. But that is the exception and not the rule. Does being a religious society mean that we have to be fanatical about it? No, again those societies are the exception and not the rule.
I simply wish to preserve a place at the table of Democracy that serves us whether Christian, Muslim, or Jew.
Leviticus 25:10 “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof” One does not require a belief in God to embrace wisdom.
That rings true for all beliefs if constrained with temperance. Maybe thats why they cast those words on the Liberty Bell. That we shall all live free.
When were these magical times of high morality that you speak of? Surely not the time we as a nation felt that blacks being discriminated against was an acceptable christian practice and had no laws to counter that discrimination? Surely not when the murder rate was nearly double what it is now….where was that christian god in those days? Helping murderers and americans who discriminate? You can keep that god if that’s what you refer to in your message Blaster…we didn’t kick god out of everything many of us learned a simple reality that is this: god is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance. As that god recedes the crime rate has gone down all over the nation, the stock market has risen to astronomical levels, most Americans are granted equal rights under the laws passed as that god recedes.
I would argue the continued decline of the influence of god/religion is a continued benefit to society.
Many of us here are starting to sound like this guy: “Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”
I know I sure sound like that sometimes and I am starting to think I need to rethink some of that and start to objectively view positive aspects of society in 2015 as there are many.
Well said Veritas…
All I can say is that the Christian God catches all the blame for what people do. As far as the bad things from the past, they were real and committed by men, but most of the slaves, and most black people in this county today, worship the Christian God. They don’t blame him for what man did.
I don’t think that everything in the past was great, but I still think that some of the things that have been pushed away were and the world was better for them.
I am a believer, born and raised that way, but I’m not a missionary and am not trying to recruit people to my way of thinking. I do believe that even though organized religions have been culpable of many atrocities in the past, most organized religions, regardless of heir beliefs, teach morals and the true believers live by those morals. Before you counter this, they are MY beliefs only and I did say MOST. I knout here are exceptions.
When I go to someones wedding, funeral, or just their house for dinner I respect their beliefs. I bow my head if a prayer is said, I stand or kneel if appropriate. Those moments are not about what I believe, those moments are about respect for them and what they believe. If I am having dinner at their house and they make a statement like ” The Christian God has been kicked out of nearly everything in this country.”, I assume they want to engage in conversation about it. The “Christian” God never had a place in our government. I should say, not just the Christian God. You sound like your beliefs in God are important to you. Others hold their belief in a different version of a ‘Christian’ God just a strongly. When you say something like, “You don’t have to be a Christian or a believer of any higher authority to understand that there are more benefits to having a society that is based in religion than one that is not.”, again I assume you are open to talking about it. I just returned from a public meeting this evening, it was supposed to be about an hour long and lasted 4. I publicly debate this topic, I write about it, I have even been invited to Church to present the views of an Atheist. If the only view I ever hear comes from those that hold exactly the same view, I will lean little about my neighbor or my own views. In my opinion, the Christian God is not being forced out of things. A large and growing larger group of your neighbors are stopping ‘The Christian God’ from being forced into places. I will be the first to admit, some people from my side of the isle go too far. When they do I am very vocal about it and when required do everything in my power to correct them. When I see Christians standing next to me at the next meeting trying to stop public officials from forcing some version of creationism into a classroom… Read more »
Dave, I read an article at the Daily Beast today about Marco Rubio’s religious stance that interestingly observes that polls indicate individual religious belief is actually on the rise in America today while institutional religion is on the decline. If that is in fact true then it would appear the country is returning to the kind of religion endorsed by the founding fathers.
While not a religious person myself since the age of thirteen, when I figured out that my preacher and the institution he worked for had no way of knowing for sure what they were talking about, anymore than I did. Since then I’ve mostly tried to live by Christian principles as I’ve tried to puzzle out my own sense of spirituality.
I’ve also always held the belief that the country is a better place for all of us because of the Judao-Christian influence on our laws and culture. I think we can now see the proof of that in the decline of our culture as the left moves to banish every aspect of religious belief from government and business.
But it is heartening to know that individual religious belief is on the rise, if the polls are, in fact, correct. Far better to have religion in one’s heart and head than in any institution.
I’m a simple “Golden Rule” guy myself. I too, didn’t cope well with organized religion.
I’m essentially an artless type. That’s not to be confused with witless. I just don’t play games.
I strive daily to take The Bill of Rights as literally as possible.
Great post. I am very much a believer in Jesus as Thomas Jefferson was. I hold no belief in supernatural events but admire and live by the moral teachings that can transcend to our time. I took the time to look into a rise in religious belief. I find that it has little merit overall. The trend since 911 in particular has been a rise in those who identify themselves as “NONE” when asked their religious preference.
Is is not a small rise, most polling data now shows 25 to 30 percent of people respond in that manner. That does not mean they are all Atheist of course.
The need to believe in something greater than ourselves is part of the human experience. The left seems to be this cacophony of discontent. The right wanting to take the country back to a place that never existed.
When the only exposure we have to our religious beliefs come from behind one pulpit, how can we embrace the rights of all.
I could not agree more that religious belief is a personal experience. You may believe that our government is directed by divine wisdom, we just can not decorate its halls with our personal vision of that God.
I am less concerned with a rise of fall in religious belief than I am with seeing an Age of Reason perish. Jefferson built his wall to ensure tolerance could thrive. It matters not to me what the hoards on either side decide, I will stand on that wall and defend it gates.
Semper Fi.
I have a bit of a different take on what we are seeing right now.
Polls show that most people are aware of the crap this idiot is pulling but are generally afraid to admit it because they don’t want to be called racist.
With the loss of so many libs in the 2012 election and the gaining of the House majority and a majority in the Senate it would appear to any outside observer that we are actually winning.
The libs took over the Dem party and pushed it so far to the left that even the most strident dem voter see’s that the pendulum has swung too far to the left.
They took a gamble and got all these left wing loons into the party but they are not representative of the American public.
What I see happening is libs in denial and squealing like pigs at a castration party. The msm supports him but his support is about an inch deep…
People like Juanboy Williams on Fox news is a prime example of a coverup speaker that nobody believes.
With the guys being tossed from the military left and right they will return home and being doers instead of watchers many of them will get into politics and make a difference.
So I am still hopeful for our country, I do think that we have to continue to fight and fight hard against the powers of the left.
But even they know that their goose is nearing the done point…
+1000
Campaign season is coming up in short order. Chris Christie, the belligerent, in-your-face former GOPer has jumped the fence and declared himself a Democrap. That means he’ll be campaigning against brillary. Fine by me. I think he’d be a helluva lot less harmful than she would.
However, the more moderate people who would vote either party are the very people who stay away from elections and who do not vote because they don’t like any of the candidates. What are we supposed to do with that? What if they held an election and nobody voted at all?
After all, nobody actually needs a massive campaign war chest nowadays. The internet costs nothing. You can have a Twitter feed, a Facebook page, a blog expanding on your position, a YouTube video announcement daily or weekly. In short, the cost of running a campaign can be reduced to near zero by simply taking advantage of what the internet has to offer.
So, if someone like me declared myself as an independent candidate, with no PAC coins coming in to influence me, I think I’d be more likely to draw votes than the people whose massive budgets for TV ads make them look like what they are: greedy, over-weeningly egotistical, power-hungry, and disconnected.
Christie has changed parties? Do you know something we don’t?
It was on MSN’s front page on Sunday morning, but now it’s gone. Sorry I didn’t include the link to it.
I don’t know what the world is coming to. I really don’t.
The big announcement in the world of sports tonight is that Tebow is going to be playing again for a year with Philadelphia.
Between that and the screaming idiots of the far leftward radical dingalings, I can hardly keep things straight any more.
But it’s possible that if a good GOP candidate comes along, someone who appeals to everyone and can flatten brillary without rancor, but WITH a better platform and overall agenda, we may see a slowing and finally an end to the destruction currently underway.
But Tebow? Eeeewww.
He wont survive the fan base in Philly…
But of course, no mention of the passing of Doug Buffone, another of those good Bears linebackers from back in the day.
RIP, Sir.
Here you go: http://wgntv.com/2015/04/20/former-bears-linebacker-doug-buffone-dies-at-70/
Here’s the station link. The news is at 9PM CDT. You know they’ll have something about Buffone on the sports section.
http://www.zap2it.com/tv/wgn-news-at-nine/SH004146580000
Yes,Maam, I’m sure the local WGN will have something on him.
But out here where I am they only have WGN America which does not carry the noon and 9PM news like the local Chicago WGN does.
I met in person most of the old Bears as during the sixties the Bears held their summer camp at St. Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, IN, which is just over in the county next to where I grew up.
We kids used to sneak pops and popsickles through the fence to the players and as you know Indiana can be pretty hot in August.
Anyway, I always put Buffone and Butkus on the same level. It’s too bad they don’t make players like them anymore.
Thanks for the link.
Sorry, that was the wrong link.
This is for the news online livestreaming.
http://wgntv.com/on-air/live-streaming/