Tell Me, Who Are You?

Here's my daily football reference.  The featured band at this past year's Super Bowl was The Who.  Thanks to CSI on television, their most well-known song is Who Are You.  That's a question we should be hearing a lot between now and November's elections.  

I read a lot of news and opinions from sites as diverse as Big Government and The Huffington Post.  Even more informative than the articles themselves are the comments that follow.  On one site, you will see a lot of "Obama's the anti-christ" type comments.  Of course on the other, they claim that it's all Bush's fault, you racist!  Read enough of the comments, and you really start to worry about where our country is heading, and even more importantly, why our politicians are encouraging the division.  There is very little discussion of the topic.  Mainly a lot of name-calling.  Both sides of our national arguments strongly believe they are right, and that the other side is stupid, evil, or possibly just stupidly evil.

In the past four months or so, I have become a Glenn Beck fan.  The thing that first attracted me to his show was his level-headedness.  He would lay out the facts, tell his listeners to check them out for themselves, and then decide for themselves.  He has never, at least that I have heard, read, or seen, said that our president or his supporters were evil.  Beck has repeatedly said that they have an agenda for the transformation of America.  That happens to be a progressive/socialist agenda and they have been very upfront about their intentions, but only if you are listening.  The progressives truly believe that their plan is what is best for America.  Beck has also said that he believed that when he laid out the facts, the national media would take the story and run with it and the American public would wake up.  Well, the national media has not covered the story.  They seem to be part of the progressive/socialist movement.  So then Beck laid out the connections between the media (GE-owned NBC networks), the president, Al Gore, Fannie Mae, the economic collapse, the global warming hoax,  the cap and trade legislation, and the trillions of dollars the legislation would bring to each of them.  Still no public outrage.

So, for the sake of comparison, say you see flames bursting out of the upstairs window of a crowded theater.  You run inside yelling "fire!!!"  Only a few patrons glance your direction.  So you yell louder.  Still no response.  You run outside, take a picture with your handy dandy cell phone camera.  Run back inside, waving the photo over your head, while still screaming "fire" at the top of your lungs.  When only a couple of patrons follow you outside, you get mad.  Now, instead of trying to inform the movie-goers of the danger they are in, you start name-calling.  "Moron" comes to mind.  How can they not see the peril.  They just must be stupid.  Maybe in reality, they are very cold-natured.  Burning the theater for warmth is the best idea they have.  They truly believe you are a conspiracy theory loving idiot; they are not trying to kill everyone.  A really big fire is the best way to get warm.

Ok, it's a stretch.  But that's where we are as a nation.  While Beck and others are yelling "socialism, you idiots," Obama, Ayers, Van Jones, and NBC are yelling, "we know, you idiots!"  We've got stop the name-calling and birth certificate checking and educate ourselves and those great masses of uninformed about what is really at stake.  Progressive sounds good.  We all like progress, right?  Well, kind of like the change we were promised, we'd better find out what we are progressing toward.  History does not paint a very pretty picture of past socialist movements.  

And history is what we all need to learn.  A big part of the country is waking up to the fact that the progressive movement began to change our history almost a century ago.  The changes to the Texas curriculum could be a start in the change back to the truth.  David Barton was part of the board that made the changes.  Check out his book, Original Intent for the real history of our founders, especially their belief that they were led by God.  As Barton says repeatedly, the founders were Christians.  Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles.  The founders did not believe in government sponsoring a religion, but neither was religion banned from government.  

Another extremely hot topic is race.  So, take a look at Barton's American History in Black and White.  It tells the true roles of black Americans in the formation of our country, starting with patriots who were instrumental in the winning of the revolution.  The 3/5 compromise (slaves only counted as 3/5 a citizen in deciding representation in Congress) was a powerful anti-slavery provision.  That's not Barton's opinion, Glenn Beck's, or mine.  That's the opinion of Frederick Douglas.  Just in case you went to public school between 1980 and today, Douglas was a former slave and abolitionist leader who became great friends with Abraham Lincoln.  At first glance, it looks like the founders believed that blacks should not count as a whole person.  Then think logically.  When counting population to determine representation, southern slave states wanted slaves counted.  Northern states said, they count when freed.  Southern states threatened not to sign the Constitution, so a 3/5 compromise was reached.  Founders such as Jefferson, Franklin, and John and Samuel Adams believed that slaves would be eventually freed in response to the free market and in order to increase southern states' representation.  But counting slaves for representation would only tilt the congress toward making slavery permanent.  When was the civil rights bill first passed?  How about during the Grant (R) administration.  Some was overthrown by courts, then the rest repealed by the Wilson (D) administration.  Who re-introduced it?  Eisenhower (R) re-introduced it.  It never made it out of a Democratic senate.  Kennedy(D) and Johnson(D) both voted against it.  The vast majority of Americans believe that Republicans have consistently fought against rights for minorities and that Democrats have been leaders in the fight for equality.  At least since President Lincoln (R) got it all started.  But we all know that he would be a Democrat today!

Those are just some of the things that were taught at one time.  We need to learn why the texts were changed and make sure all Americans know true American history.  Americans need to make informed decisions at the next election.  We need to know who we are and where we want to go.  We can't again vote for change without asking "change to what?"  Obama's idea of what America is, is not my idea of what America is.

Glenn Beck is very good at distilling issues to their core.  On his television show today, he said Americans need to look to the summer of 1969.  Are we the Americans that went to the moon?  Or are we the Americans who, three weeks after the moon landing, rolled in the mud smoking pot at Woodstock?  As Pete Townsend and Roger Daltrey of The Who (they played at Woodstock by the way) asked, "Who are you?"

Glenn Beck and Al Sharpton --BFF!!??

I saw David Barton on Glenn Beck's show about a month ago and he had him on for the full hour today.  He is an American historian/author whose book, Original Intent, looks very interesting.  He is also the owner of the largest collection of pre-1812 American letters and documents.  Coincidentally, he was also part of the commission that rolled back some of the progressive changes to American history in Texas' history curriculum.

He owns one of the twenty-two surviving copies of the Bible actually published by Congress, with a note on the cover page that states that this Bible is published specifically to be used in schools.  Our founders wanted freedom from a "national religion," not separation of church and state as it has been twisted today.   They founded our country on Christian principles, not a specific denomination, but basic Christian principles.  They had no problem with individual states choosing a "state religion," as Massachusetts did until the early 1820's.  The federal government was prohibited from supporting a specific religion, but it was a right reserved to the states.  Like many other areas, the founders were willing to let citizens vote with their feet.  If Pennsylvania wanted to support the beliefs of Quakers; New York, Judaism; Rhode Island, Puritanism; Georgia, Baptist; and California, worship of the endangered fruitfly; the states had the right to do so.  And citizens were free to move from one state to another in pursuit of their happiness.  

Mr. Barton has the hand-written sermons from ministers from many denominations who led church services held in the House of Representatives, founded and attended by Thomas Jefferson.  Obviously his interpretation of "church and state" was much different than that voiced today.  He also encouraged services that were held in the chambers of the Supreme Court!


Another interesting story he told about Jefferson involved his relationship with John Adams.  He and Adams were close during the revolution and in the very early days of the republic.  They had a falling out over differing ideas about the government.  Jefferson felt that Adams was destroying the nation and defeated Adams in the election to become the third president.  The two did not speak for years.  A mutual friend named Benjamin Rusk, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, told Adams about a dream.  He said that in the dream that he, Rusk, was holding a book of letters between Adams and Jefferson and he felt that it was a message from God.  Adams said that he too, believed that it must be a message from God and he made the first move to re-connect with Jefferson.  Mr. Barton now owns the letters between Adams and Jefferson, many of them about the role of religion in government.  One other cool, or maybe spooky point in the letter, Rusk also said that in the dream he saw both Adams and Jefferson would die on the anniversary of the founding of the nation.  Both Adams and Jefferson died on the 4th of July 1826.


The point of his appearance was again how progressives have changed history to meet their points of view.  He went founder by founder from a painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and showed letters and documents written by the men showing their views on religion.  They believed that America should not have a federally mandated religion; that Americans should be free to choose their own religion, or no religion at all.  It seems that today, the only choice the liberals/progressives want Americans to have is whether to let their baby live.


When you get down to principles, America does have a strong, common foundation.  And yes, it is based in Christianity - the Ten Commandments.  We need to get away from the specifics that keep us divided and get to the foundation that we have in common.   Don't let the people at the opposite ends of the spectrum tear the country apart, but allow the strong middle hold it together.  Unfortunately right now our government and media is way to the left or progressive end of the spectrum and is trying to drag the rest of us their direction.   Yesterday the Reverend Al Sharpton was on Glenn Beck's show.  They both admitted that they do not agree on many, if any specifics, but they do have a common belief in the basics or foundation.  They just disagree in how to get down to the foundation, or where to build from the foundation.  That's where the founders' belief in state's rights comes in.  Let each state decide what services to provide, what taxes to collect, what recreational drugs to outlaw, whether to mandate health insurance and even whether women have the right to kill their babies.  Then let the citizens vote with their feet.  But keep the federal government out of it.  If Al Sharpton and Glenn Beck can find a common ground, maybe there is some hope for the rest of the country.

Photographs, No Politics

I'm going to take a break from current events and politics for a couple of days.  It's getting too frustrating.  

I'm being a bachelor this week, so I spent some time going through my old photo files.  One of my biggest problems in photography is that I take the photograph with the final result already visualized.  If the photo doesn't come out like I expected, I discard it without considering whether it is good, even if it isn't what I planned.

I've always liked this quote, but for some reason, not the photo.  I don't remember what I was trying for, but I kind of like this one now.  I read a biography of Ansel Adams when I first started getting serious about photography.  In the book, there was a story about his first trip to the Grand Canyon.  A lesser known photographer said the canyon was his favorite subject.  He said he had taken hundreds of exposures on his first trip to the canyon.  Adams said he took two.  He visualized the shot and then created it, first on location, then in the darkroom.  I'm not talented or patient enough to spend time necessary on Photoshop to create art, so I need to look more seriously at creating photographs.

Mount Crested Butte

I took this one a few weeks ago.  I never looked twice at it, but Cathy and a couple of other people that saw it on Facebook, liked it.  Now, looking at it, I like it a lot.  I think I will spend some time this week going through my files and see if there others that I have overlooked.  Might need a couple of days.  I think I have somewhere around 5,000 photographs on file.  Not counting the ones with people in them, Mom.

Potato Processing Plant and Reflection 

Monte Vista, Colorado

Old Brazos River Bridge

Near Newcastle, TX