Being conservative is about courage. It's about courage and integrity in the individual. It's about faith in the individual to do the right thing as opposed to the line of thinking that expresses belief that we need the government to fix it all. When one believes the government is needed to fix it all, or that the government actually can, it is because the individual who believes this has lost belief in them self. They don't believe their own actions matter and they have no faith in their own choices to do right. Because they can't deal with these things in themselves they project it onto a large screen. They believe people in general are lazy and selfish. They believe people in general will always choose actions that will harm others. In the end it is all about believing in the worst in people. It is a pessimistic path and a personally irresponsible path. It is the path of the perpetual child that won't grow up and needs the parent always to tell them what they are allowed to do. It is a path that breeds contempt for those who have faith; faith in themselves and faith in others. It is also a path of mediocrity. If one succumbs to the fear of failure, one tries less; risks less to succeed. If one has attached shame to success, while feeling sorry for those who don't succeed is allowed to thwart one's own efforts, the result is mediocrity. The disconnect between cause and effect cannot be so apparent as it is in relation to long term results of such a belief system. It is a self-perpetuating belief in failure. It is a pessimistic outlook whose results are easy to see. Abortion rates are increasing, test scores in our schools have been on the decline, while prescription drugs to treat a myriad of mental disorders continue to increase. The mental health profession has become a booming business that continues to increase. Why?

The character, the backbone, the mental strength and coping skills built upon the risk of failure and actual experiences of failing are needed for human evolution. We are born with stress. It is the actual stress of our organism as the womb is expelling us that results in our birth. Our physical needs to feed and be touched propel us to learn how to communicate and to move; from bringing our fist to our mouths all the way to talking in complete sentences. How many times does the fist of the babe slam into its own eyeball and nose accidentally connecting with mouth before the pathway in the brain makes a deep enough groove that it becomes no accident but a deliberate action. When we remove the consequence of failure how do we evolve? In public schools across our nation children are subjected to bland general water painted definitions of success. It used to be that if a paper was handed in it was sent back to be corrected. Misspelled words, capitals and punctuation were elements of unacceptable work. For at least the last 15 years ( I have children that led me back into the halls of the public schools) incomplete and unacceptable work has been made acceptable; is right out there up on the wall in the hallway displayed alongside with other papers of varying degrees of acceptability. When a child is sent back to correct mistakes they learn a few things. They learn the proper way of writing, number one. They learn to pay attention to detail. They learn about failure and their brains learn how to improve. Our organism is designed to improve upon itself and its performance. On the little league team, the children ask, ‘Who won?” And they are told, “Everybody. We’re all winners.” The mantra changed from Hard Work Pays and Anything Worth Doing is Worth Doing Right to Just Try. You mean all I have to do is try? A+ for effort. The results of your efforts stopped mattering so much. Effort is very important, however, if we downplay or actually remove an unsatisfactory result, we remove the impetus to grow, change, to re-evaluate and do different. The safety net that prevents actual failure impedes the drive to succeed. What are the results to be expected when we remove the consequences of failure? What are the results to be expected when rewards for putting in an effort are the same as producing excellence? What are the results to be expected when you’ve spend hours practicing, and become a most excellent team player with excellent individual skills, catch that fly, swing that bat with all your might and knock it right out there, slide into home; but you can’t keep score? The reward for giving something your all used to be that feeling of satisfaction with the object of what you earned. And the process of risking failure, because it was still a possibility, and continuing to give it your all, engaged the whole you. You invested yourself. So when you got that A+ and you knew it was going in the hall, you finished feeling like you actually accomplished something. When everything goes up in the hall, it’s as good as nothing going up in the hall. When you don’t have the risk of failure, achieving means so much less. When achieving means so much less, our natural desire to grow dulls. We become soft and unable to deal with the ups and downs of life. We’re disengaged while experiencing an unconscious internal conflict between, oh here are those words, nurture and nature. It is a natural part of the human organism to continue getting better (read ‘evolve’). The systematic nurturing has been a thwarting of the inherent human programming. How much medication needs to be prescribed to address the depression that so much of us are in? Disengaged also means powerless. Powerless also means not responsible. And with no accountability, and no bottom (read failure), with all those safety nets, what do we have? We have kids who cannot compete, either because they have no umph or because they not educated and lacking creative problem solving skills (which, by the way, are developed more fully through failure), our children are growing up medicated, we have colleges complaining about the quality of the students coming out of the public schools (they’re missing not only info, but also self-direction), we have a global economy that we are not keeping up with, never mind leading.

We want to help people. Humans are compassionate. We don't like to see suffering or injustice. We aim to be fair. When good intentions go awry because we go overboard and don't stop, the liberal application of fairness results in what we have today. Affirmative Action legislation is a good example of good intentions gone awry. I don’t know one woman who would prefer to be hired because she is a woman rather than based on her own merits. And I just can’t imagine that a Black person would want to be hired based on the color of his/her skin. I would think that skill and knowledge would be a more preferred reason by the person being hired.

The results of continuously saving each other from failing has created a disengaged generation of victims who rest on their own powerlessness. Becoming lazy in spirit with matching government safety nets put in place results in less freedom for the people, on a myriad of levels. We see the state issuing laws to control every aspect of our lives, just about. I cannot bake a pie and sell it to my neighbor without paying for a government inspection. Licenses for all kinds of activities are being required.  In Maine the seeds to grow food you need to eat are taxable.

On another side of it, we have employers bemoaning the kind of workers they are seeing. “Can I have a raise? I showed up on time for a month.” The result of saving each other from failure is perfectly illustrated when just showing up is the expectation that our kids think is required to get anywhere.

What are the results to be expected from a disengaged populace? The distance between Us & Them is not supposed to be so great. The government was put in place to, in a nut shell, keep order; to allow us to be human beings, guaranteed Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, while causing the least damage to others guaranteed Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

The guarantee is not Happiness. It is the Pursuit that is guaranteed. The expectation in that line of our Constitution is that the individual needs to do something to get Happiness. The individual is guaranteed the freedom to pursue. Happiness is loosely translated as success. What it means to be successful depends on who is asking that question. When success was defined as home ownership and the “we are all winners” people decided to lower the expectations necessary to purchase a home, combined with a disengaged populace whose personal responsibility was lacking due to years of softened consequences and then huge government safety nets were put in place so the bottom disappeared, what precisely were the results to be expected?!

Oh, I know. It’s the greedy businesses. Let’s tax them. Gee, a ¼ of a million dollars is really too much money for a greedy business to have. Let’s take from the rich and give to the poor. Let’s spread the wealth around. That way the businesses can increase the cost of good and services. That way the people can’t buy as much. That way the businesses can lay people off. That way we can have more unemployed folks so we can increase the number of people who rely on the government. That way we’ll share the poverty and become a nation of oppressed poor people. What a great solution to a disengaged populace. Not a future I want anything to do with. No, thank you.

The Liberal Mind speaks worlds:

- we need the government to fix things
-our country is too big for the 9th and 10th amendment
-kids are going to have sex anyway so we should at least teach them how
-its not fair (whiny) that there are poor folks
-tax the rich!

I am conservative for a number of reasons. The conservatives are empowering; they believe in me. The Conservative Mind believes in itself. It has faith in its own ability to create opportunities, to solve problems, to impact its own life. It believes in the ability of others to do the same. The Conservative Mind is the eternal cheerleader whether you succeed or fail. It cheers you on. It rejoices in your success. It tells you to get up after you fall. It tells you to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and keep trucking. It has no qualms with lending a helping hand because it believes you want to let go of that hand. It believes in your natural inclination to want to walk on your own. It believes that you, too, have faith in yourself. The Conservative Mind believes in you. It believes you are powerful. It believes you have a conscience. It believes in your intelligence. It believes in your ability to evaluate your own life and make your own choices. The Conservative Mind believes in your inner strength. Because it does, it believes in your ability to handle the consequences of your own failed choices. It believes in your ability to learn, adapt, grow and become better.

The Liberal Mind believes that we need a parent to ensure boundaries, because, well, it doesn’t trust itself. The Conservative Mind is the parent who creates limited boundaries and evaluates the effects all the while expecting growth and evolving results. I am a conservative because I have faith in my own abilities and therefore I have faith in yours. The Liberal Mind believes in government. The Conservative Mind believes in you.

tr.v. dis•il•lu•sioned, dis•il•lu•sion•ing, dis•il•lu•sions
to free or deprive of illusion.
freeing from false belief or illusions

I guess at some point I will find myself in a place of thankfulness for this state of disillusionment. As I devour documents and historical presentations what is coming into focus more than anything else is my conclusion that nobody's hands are clean.

And right now I am angry.

Is there not one to be found in our history of integrity, of proven incorruptibility?! Man's human condition will always contain a mix of good and evil. To read the struggle of our Framers, the Federalists & the Anti-Federalists, from Hamilton and the tariffs he supported, to Lincoln and his power grab in the ratification of the 14th Amendment. We only have a Bill of Rights because of the Anti-Federalists refusal to ratify the Constitution without it. Yet this group is associated with the Southern Confederacy and with slavery. We must try not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

What I find confounding right now, which I am certain to find other instances that confound me, is this: the Federalists as a political party dissolved. The Anti-Federalists divided into the Whigs and the Republicans. The Whigs died also. The Republican Party became the Democratic Republicans which evolved into the Democratic Party. The heritage of the Democratic Party are Anti-Federalists such as Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry! Hamilton’s federalists thought the interpretation of the Constitution should be loose and Jefferson’s democratic-republicans strict. This is confounding! This is confusing.

During the 1900's the Democrats became huge proponents of loose interpretation, supported new programs that gave more and more power to the central government. Republicans became proponents of strict interpretations. Yet have also become complicit in allowing the expansion of government with more laws and agency creations and expansive intrusions into the private life of the citizens and the sovereignty of the States. Under Roosevelt, a Democrat, came The New Deal Programs; emergency relief programs, work relief programs, agricultural programs, and industrial reform (the National Recovery Administration, NRA), and the end of the gold standard, labor union support, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief program, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid farmers, including tenant farmers and migrant workers AND The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 which set maximum hours and minimum wages. Most of the relief programs were shut down during World War II by the Conservative Coalition, a group of opponents in congress. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the Social Security System, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Fannie Mae are still intact. The Social Security Act, became the Social Security Administration under Truman, a Democrat, who also was a proponent of National Health Insurance. Truman though, appointed 4 conservative judges. Eisenhower, a Republican, kept all the New Deal Programs that remained and enlarged the Social Security program. He put all these into a new cabinet level agency called The Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Kennedy established the Peace Corps and was a huge proponent of expanded foreign policy, to come to the aid and defense of anyone whose liberty is threatened. Definitely not the line of present day Democrats. Lyndon B Johnson, a Democrat, created the "Great Society" legislation that included civil rights laws, Medicare, Medicaid , aid to education with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the Higher Education Act, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the "War on Poverty" (the Economic Opportunity Act) which produced the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), Job Corps (1964) and Head Start (1965). (As a side note here: Johnson continued the wiretapping of Martin Luther King, Jr. that had been previously authorized by the Kennedy administration under Attorney General Robert Kennedy. President Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been used by the Democrats as icons. How many know of Kennedy’s wire tapping and Johnson’s view of King as a “hypocritical preacher.”) Nixon, a Republican signed the Economic Stabilization Act, and while he opposed permanent price and wage controls Nixon imposed the controls on a temporary basis, for 90 days. He also created Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Nixon also was a proponent of universal minimum income and universal health care. He was a Republican. And though not a program, to his credit, I must mention Nixon’s deep passion to eradicate racial segregation. He felt that racism was the greatest moral failure of the United States. All racism. The Equal Rights Amendment was immediately signed by Nixon only to fail in the States. Under Ford, a Republican, came the Federal Aid Highway Act. The Department of Energy, the Department of Education and the National Energy Program and a myriad of other programs within programs were enacted during President Carter’s reign, also a Democrat. I have not found any new programs created during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, yet. I found only an expanded Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).

There is so much I just have to stop now. I have not even touched the 1st Amendment and 2nd Amendment violations or the abuse of the Commerce Clause, which is huge and will be left for another rant. I didn’t go on into 1989 till present; Bush Senior, Clinton or Bush Jr. Or Obama's new abominations. And I didn’t go back further than 1933 into Hoover, Coolidge, Harding and earlier.

The complicity of our lawmakers in the complicating of the government and the law is undeniable. In the 20^th century, the mass majority of programs and agencies were created under Democrat Presidents. However, the Republican Presidents either enlarged them, added to them or allowed laws to be passed to expand them. Ask why the law makers, our representatives, make it so complicated to understand what they are doing? The complicity of the citizens who blindly accept and those that, accept who see, is undeniable. We have allowed ourselves to be governed by an over reaching, over bearing, monster of a government that continues to grow, continues to restrict and continues to invade, to trespass upon the governed. This is alarming. This is disturbing. This is a horrid legacy to leave OUR posterity. I implore you to get involved. My local Republican friends see this. And a number of my Democrat friends as well. More of us are taking action to become a barrier to the encroachment of the FED.  If taking action right now just means going to a meeting, writing a letter, making a phone call. Do it.

The power hungry politician will never go away. It is up to the citizens to prevent the wolves from eating the sheep. And the only way to prevent getting eaten is to stop being sheep.

Thinking about gay marriage led me to studying how something becomes normal. Religious teachings were a primary focus and I understand why. Our diverse perspectives have though, in my opinion, clouded another issue. The proponents of state sanctioned gay marriage state that the issue is civil liberty. I agree.

It is through normalization, sanctioned by the state, that gay marriage is revealed as an issue between civil liberties and unalienable rights. Normalization is accomplished most effectively when promoted through an agenda of mass acceptance. Mass acceptance is reached through education, media and law utilizing marketing on a grand scale. One ingenious route is through compulsory education. Curriculum matter is delivered to our children using teachers who cannot conscientiously object without penalty, through school boards with state dictates accompanying threats of fund withholding if dictates are not implemented. Public school is an efficient marketing tool for social change. Many birds are hit with one stone.

Mass acceptance is also accomplished through the media. Applying a strategy of offense, opponents of gay marriage are portrayed as bigots motivated by fear. The media broadcasts pro-homosexuality presentations. TV shows depict homosexuality as normal from Bert and Ernie to Will and Grace. I know I can shut off my TV. The mainstream news networks, however, tend to journalism as opposed to reporting.

In the world I wish we lived, my labor would not be extorted to fund the Government Indoctrination Schools. You want to talk about rights? Let’s take a look at Parental Authority, an unalienable right. Let’s look at our schools and one example of normalization.

Sexual Ed’s goal was to reduce teenage pregnancy. If this was successful the number of abortions for teenagers would not have continued to rise, even giving time for reporting adjustments. Distributing condoms in school had the same objective including STD prevention. Why are we seeing an increase of sexually transmitted diseases? HPV, human papilloma virus prevalence in teens ages 14 – 19 is 24.5%. That is 1 in 4 kids walking through our high schools. Normalizing teen sex through education increased sexual promiscuity with failure in the specific objectives of the programs. Where are these reports? Sex Ed is normalized. Most people are not aware of these statistics. It’s accepted that Sex Ed is working or they’d be hearing otherwise. We are not hearing otherwise. You have to look for yourself. Sex Ed programs are funded with our tax dollars.

Funding the public schools is done through our property taxes. And we the tax payer, cannot actively object to funding this without confiscation of personal property. “You are allowed to keep your property if you pay us what we demand so that we can teach your children what we want.”  Hmmm.

 As long as unalienable rights are trampled upon through mandatory funding, as long as Parental Authority continues to be under assault, we cannot look at normalizing homosexuality as a divorced topic from the rest. Homosexuality must be re-presented for mass acceptance and it has begun in our classrooms.

The Public School curriculum criterion in Maine in our Maine Learning Results has a required area called Health with a sub-section “Healthy Communities” and another heading; “Mental and Emotional Health”. The School Board approves the actual curriculum. The content is under the discretion of the “Guidance Counselor” who now teaches Health. Do you know your School Board? Or your Guidance Councilor? Do you believe homosexuality should be presented to your child as young as 2^nd grade by a relative stranger? And if you do, what if I don’t? What makes your values more important than mine?

We who believe in the Word of G-d are connected to homosexuality and are made complicit in teaching it to the children. We cannot choose to disassociate ourselves, whether we have children or not, without confiscation of our property. It is bad form for proponents of civil liberties to support that which oppresses, regardless of who the oppressed are.

Furthermore, parents who choose to home-school, using their G-d given or nature given, Parental Authority, have an unfair burden. Home-schoolers do not receive their “per-pupil money” back. They must pay for the curriculum matter while paying their property taxes for the empty chair their child does not sit in. That we should support the education of our communities’ youth whether we have children in the schools or not, should be judged by the education they are receiving. People home-school for a variety of reasons.

The question is this: Can homosexuals have the same guaranteed protections to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (property) without government mandates promoting mass acceptance that tramples upon the guarantee to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (property) for others? Can homosexuals have the same rights as married couples without the shredding of our 1st Amendment? Or the confiscation of my personal property?  And without the usurpation of my unalienable rights?

Not as long as I am bound by law through property taxes to support public schooling that delivers curriculum matter decided by the State and Fed. Not as long as my property can be seized if I actively withdraw my extorted consent to social/value/moral teachings that are in direct confrontation with my religion.

Civil liberties, fairness and equality only apply to promote the agenda of removing G-d? As long as you agree with the promoted agenda, it’s perfectly ok to oppress those who don’t? This blatant hypocrisy cannot be ignored.