Race in America Part 2

This is part two of "Race in America".  Part one was the history of race in America, and this is "where we are today".  Click on the link below or copy it into your browser.  If you haven't seen part one, check that out as well when you get to my site.  Please pass this on to your friends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kl152zvFvo

Race in America - VFM video

Here is the VFM's first of three short videos on Race in America.  Just click on the link below or copy this address and paste it into your browser.  It will get us started with the promise of more to come.  Feel free to pass this on to all your friends, because who ins't interested in Race in America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwcJ0QW_D3U

Governmental Insanity - Quick thought

First, we all have to remember that "THE GOVERNMENT HAS NO MONEY".  All the money it spends comes from me and you.  So, as President Obama takes off in Air Force One on one of his fundraising trips, keep in mind that WE are paying for it.  Oh sure, they'll try their best to sell us on some cock-and-bull "official" business excuse for the trip, like visiting a woman who wrote the President a letter, but we all know the purpose of the trip.  By the way, I wrote a letter to the Pres.  When is he coming to visit me?

Now, they keep Presidential travel costs top secret (probably because it would make us all sick if we saw it) but let's do a quick logic checklist.  You have advance teams, multiple planes, including Air Force One to the tune of about $175,000 per hour, and of course we have send at least 10 doctors with the President in case he gets a hangnail while he is in Austin.  This trip could easily cost us, the taxpayers $10 million so that the President can raise $2 or $3 million for his Democratic buddies.  Only in our government would anyone consider that a wise investment of tax payer dollars.  If this doesn't tick you off, you either have too much money or too few brains, so I hope you're ticked!!

The Errors of Ayers

The Errors of Ayers

The View from the Middle

As I write this column, I’m surrounded by my family on the 4^th of July weekend thinking of how blessed I’ve been in so many ways.  All the holiday activities, historical snapshots on TV and the patriotic “man on the street” interviews remind me that my blessings began when I had the good fortune to be born in this great country. 

While America is not perfect, in my opinion it is the best thing this world has going for it.  It is the only country based fundamentally on the belief that the rights of its citizens are above the rights of the state.  We all have a God-given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that no one can take away from us, and our countrymen have fought and bled and died to preserve that right for us and to extend it to others around the world.

With this backdrop, I watched Megyn Kelly (of Fox News) interview Bill Ayers, co-founder of the Weather Underground, a radical and arguably terrorist group that opposed the Vietnam War in the 60’s and 70’s.  As I listened to Mr. Ayers describe the country that I have lived in for 62 years and read about for most of those years, I felt a profound disconnect.  One of us must have lived in a different America.  So, where has Mr. Ayers gone wrong?

First of all, he focused only on America’s shortcomings.  I readily admit that America is not perfect.  No country is.  So, if you ignore all of the positive impacts that America has had on our own citizens and the rest of the world and just focus on our miscues, you’ll get a distorted view of the US. 

Mr. Ayers played hopscotch with our history jumping from our treatment of the American Indian to the days of slavery.  He then jumps forward to the Vietnam War and then the war in Iraq.  I agree that these are all dark and questionable periods in our history, but Bill offers no solutions, just ridicule.

He hops right over the great risk our Founding Fathers took and the sacrifices they made in the name of liberty, justice and the rule of law.  He leapfrogs over the Civil War where hundreds of thousands of white men and women died to overturn the injustice of slavery. 

He side steps World War I and World War II when millions of Americans gave their lives to save Europe from a ruthless dictator and tyrant that would have surely brutalized hundreds of millions of people had the outcome of those wars been different.  Amazingly, he drew a blank concerning the struggles of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and millions of other Americans of all races who fought for the civil rights of Black America.

We could debate forever the motives of America’s involvement it Iraq.  Mr. Ayers suggests that we spent almost a trillion dollars to fight a war in Iraq so that Halliburton could make a few billion in profits.  Not only is that a cynical view, but Mr. Ayers offers no proof.  He simply points a conspiratorial finger and demands that we take his word for it.  He uses a similar defense when questioned about the murders and murderous plans of his Weather Underground during his fugitive years.

I would suggest that we had a nobler motive in going to Iraq.  First, we went to protect our own country from another terrorist attack similar to the one we suffered on 9/11/2001.  I believe that we went to rid the world of another heartless dictator who had brutalized his own people and threatened the stability of the Middle East and the world.

Mr. Ayers also overlooks the pure generosity of America.  Whenever there is a tsunami or an earthquake or a hurricane anywhere in the world, who does the world turn to for help?  It is the United States government, followed closely by the American people. 

Abraham Lincoln once said, “If you look for the bad in people, expecting to find it, you surely will”, and I guess the same applies to countries.  To Mr. Ayers I would suggest that he take his political blinders off.  America is not perfect, but we are working at it.  We will continue make this country better unless we allow people like you (Mr. Ayers) to dismantle it.

In America we are all free to put forward new ideas on how to make our country even better than it is today.  Even you, Mr. Ayers, are free to spew your one-sided vitriol about America, only in America.  Try that in Russia or China and see how that works for you.  I’ll buy your ticket – one way.