Kindergarten Socialists

Remember the first day of school when you were a kid.  It was exciting.  Not only did you get to see all your friends after the summer, and meet the new kids in town, you got to go shopping for new school clothes and supplies.

We always made a trip to Fletcher's in Gruver for new clothes and shoes.  Fletcher's had a window display with a water faucet hanging with fishing line from the ceiling.  Water flowed from the faucet into a bucket on the floor.  We never could figure out how they did that.  I also remember how embarrassed mom and Judy were when one of the Lindsey boys came running to his mom crying, holding a mannequin arm.

Being Texans, we got Levis or Wranglers.  My favorite shoes were Trax.  They made you run faster and jump higher.  Talk about false advertising!  I remember picking them out of a big bin.  And digging for the match when the one shoe in my size was not still attached to its mate.  Also finding someone's old shoes in the pile.  I just thought they wore the new ones and didn't need the old pair anymore.  Later as a shoe store manager, I hated finding old worn shoes in our bins or in a box.  It meant someone had stolen from us.

For a boy anyway, clothes shopping was torture.  But we loved going to Spearman to the TG&Y to buy school supplies.  Looking back, I know we were on a tight budget, but it always seemed like we got what we wanted.  In my case, it was pencils with Dallas Cowboy logos on them, and most importantly, a pencil sharpener inside a plastic Cowboys football helmet.  

Most kids today don't get those choices.  Even many public schools today are requiring school uniforms.  Parents accept the idea because it takes the pressure off.  Don't have to give in to the peer pressure and buy high dollar brand names. Everyone wears the same styles and colors.  No one has to feel bad because they don't have the latest fad.


School supplies aren't yours anymore.  They all go to the teacher to be passed out to the entire class.  Since mom knows you won't necessarily get what you take to class, she buys the boring yellow pencils and square pink erasers and red, green, yellow, and blue notebooks.  No more Dallas Cowboys or Smurfs or Spongebobs today.  Everyone has the same blaaah stuff.

Socialism starts early.  Gets us accustomed to giving up choices.

Let's Pretend

As I've said in this blog before, I'm a big sports fan, especially football and the Dallas Cowboys.  So today, let's pretend we own the Dallas Cowboys.  We've got a pretty good head coach in Wade Phillips.  He's a good coach and everybody likes him.  He's a popular choice.  We feel pretty good about our choice.  Wade's the football guy, so unlike Jerry Jones, we are going to let him pick his coaching staff and players.

Wade picks his staff, none of them have been successful and seem to have some funny ideas about how winning isn't important.  We think, well, not who I would've picked, but hey it's Wade's choice.  Now, Wade's going on a tour of the NFL.  He visits Oakland, bows to Al Davis and apologizes for those Super Bowl wins in the 1990's.  Wade then promises that it won't happen again.  He will work hard to see that Oakland wins a Super Bowl soon.  Next stop, Seattle.  Same theme.  Jacksonville, more bows and apologies.  Similar stops in Miami, St. Louis, Tampa Bay, Tennessee, Houston, and Pittsburgh.  He visits 36 teams, won't be able to make it to Phoenix or Washington.  Only one more to go.  Huh?  Time to have a little talk with Wade.

We owners have a meeting with Wade.  He lets us know immediately that he doesn't care what we think about his methods.  We hired him and we knew who he was when we chose him.  We did listen during the interview, right?  He said he was going to "fundamentally change" the Dallas Cowboys.  Could it be that we just don't like white men?  Well, we are basically nice men and women, so we decide that maybe we are being unfair.  Let's just let the season start and see where it goes.  

Well, it doesn't go well.  Wade refuses to play our best players.  "It's time for them to step aside and let someone else have the spotlight for awhile."  Wade holds a press conference to inform the league that our combination of Tony Romo throwing to Miles Austin is too good.  In the spirit of fairness and to compensate for our past success, Romo won't be throwing to Austin, unless the opposing team has a quarterback/receiver combination just as good.   A reporter asks, what if the other team has a great running back and runs up and down the field scoring on you?  Wade says, no exceptions, unless their passing game is as good as ours, we will not pass, period.

We visit practice.  We have to do something about this!  Did you hear that?  Our offensive coordinator just told the team that "you can't expect to be number one in everything indefinitely.  One of the most appropriate responses to this degree of levelization of the playing field is to cooperate more, exchange more."  What?????  First of all, is "levelization" even a word?  What do you mean we can't be number one forever?  Did you hear the line coach?  He refuses to put all the linemen on the field at the same time.  Something about the stadium "tipping over and capsizing!!!!"  These guys are under contract until November!  And we're stuck with Wade for another two years.  Can we afford to wait that long?  We won't even discuss what he's done with the training room! 

Sound familiar?  This week our president has promised not to use nuclear weapons, even if we are attacked with biological or chemical weapons.  If the attacker has nuclear weapons, then we might respond with our own.  The "levelization" quote is straight from the president's science adviser, John Holdren (not to be confused with his attorney general,Eric Holder, who says we are a nation of cowards when it comes to race), in a speech to students.  He's also the author of a book advocating compulsory abortions and for putting infertility drugs in the drinking water, where necessary.  He was quoted as saying that infants eventually develop into human beings.  In his defense, Holdren says he wrote those books in the 1970's and they were only theory.  He wouldn't really try any of those programs.  Whew, I feel better now.  Remember the previous post about President Woodrow Wilson's eugenics program, led by Margaret Sanger (founder of the organization that became Planned Parenthood, quite a coincidence!)?  Holdren is President Obama's Sanger.

I wish I caught the name of the lady on Fox last night.  Commenting on President Obama's stance at this nuclear summit, she said that instead of "speak softly and carry a big stick, this president's policy is to whisper and leave your stick at home."  I wish he would follow that policy on domestic issues too.

Get Back in the Game

Today is the one year anniversary of the founding of the 9/12 Project. I won't get into the details of the Project, just say that if you are conservative and concerned about what is happening to our country, check out the 9/12 Project.  The start of this project was a call in to Glenn Beck's radio program.  A caller said he was so disgusted by what was going on with the government and media that he had just quit listening and paying attention to what was going on.  Beck's advice was to "square your shoulders and get back in the game."

Like I said before, almost everything will remind me of a Dallas Cowboy story.  In case you don't know, the Cowboys won 3 of 4 Super Bowls in the mid-1990's.  The only one they didn't win was won by the 49'ers.  The 49'ers beat the Cowboys in the NFC championship game (the real Super Bowl that year).  In the first quarter of the game, Troy Aikman threw to Michael Irvin on an early drive.  The ball bounced off Irvin's hands and was intercepted and run back for a touchdown by a 49'er.  Next drive, same story.  Cowboys are now down 14-0 and the game has just started.  To make a long story short, or at least not quite as long, three Cowboy turnovers turned into three 49'er touchdowns in the first 20 minutes of the game.  And the Cowboys were down 17 points at half time.  Cowboys' coach Barry Switzer gave the team essentially the same advice Beck gave his caller, "square your shoulders and get back into the game."  It was probably Aikman's best game as a Cowboy quarterback.   He fell short 38-28, but anyone watching knew who was really the best team.  The Cowboys took that loss and used it as the basis for their dominating season and Super Bowl victory the next season.

If Americans respond the way Aikman and the Cowboys did that day, we might lose the healthcare game, but win the larger game and get our country back.

Unfortunately, I am also reminded of another Cowboy story.  In the early 1980's, NFL players went on strike and the owners used strike busters in some of the season.  Kevin Sweeney was the Cowboy quarterback.  He was an effective college quarterback, but at only 5'9" he just wasn't built for the NFL once the big boys came back to work.  The season following the strike, the Cowboys invited Sweeney to training camp, even though he had no shot at making the team.  In the first preseason game, the Cowboys trailed the Houston Oilers by more than 40 points and the Texas Stadium crowd was chanting  "Sweeney, Sweeney, Sweeney!"  After an Oiler punt pinned the Cowboys offense inside their own 5 yard line, with under three minutes left in the game, Coach Tom Landry relented to the crowd's wishes and put Kevin Sweeney in at quarterback.  The crowd went crazy.  Sweeney goes into the huddle looks up at the scoreboard, the clock and the endzone, more than 95 yards away.  He looks around the huddle at the other third teamers now in the game, shakes his head and says,"Boys, I'm not sure I can win this one."  Two sacks and an incompletion later, the Cowboys punt and Sweeney's NFL career is over.

I hope America is more comparable to Aikman's Cowboys than Sweeney's team now.  I guess we will soon learn.

Change the Past Control the Future

In college, I think it was freshman literature, I read a science fiction collection called Last Defender of Camelot, by Roger Zelazny.  My favorite short story in the book was A Game of Blood and Dust.  In the story, intelligent beings play a game where they are each able to change three events in  history.  Then they let history play out and see if human life on earth continues, blood wins, or if mankind eliminates itself, dust wins.  For example, in one of the scenarios, the blood player makes John Wilkes Boothe successful in his attempt to assassinate President Lincoln (implying that originally Lincoln survived).  Anyway, the theme is that with only a few minor changes the course of events is altered.

Our politicians have learned that lesson.  But since they are unable to actually change past events, they are changing how they are reported or recorded or, most importantly, taught.  For example, what do you think of when President Grant is mentioned?  Of course, the first thing I think of is his victory as general of the Union army in the Civil War.  But I was also taught that he was a drunken butcher that only won because the Union had superior numbers and resources.  I seem to remember being taught that he graduated last in his class at West Point.  As President, his reputation was even worse.  Again, he was a drunken executive that overlooked rampant corruption that almost destroyed the recently saved Union.  Take a look at Ulysses S. Grant: His Life and Character for a more accurate view of the great general and President.  While in office, he would get daily visits from his former Union soldiers, coming by to thank him for leading them through the terrible war.  Sound like a drunken commander who forced his men through a meatgrinder at the unnecessary cost of thousands of lives?  Hardly.  As President, he advocated a peaceful integration of Native Americans into white man's culture.  He worried that the only alternative was "a war of extermination."  Again, not exactly what you would expect from a blood-thirsty warrior.  After leaving office, he was greatly respected by most Americans, ranking only behind Washington and Lincoln in esteem.  

So, why the change in the public's perception?  It's not like he did anything after office to change our view.  Could it possibly be that while in office, he constantly supported the position of the individual states over the federal government?  You know, like the Constitution requires.  The Constitution that he and all other Presidents take an oath to "preserve, protect, and defend."  After President Theodore Roosevelt's term, only 24 years after Grant, the focus was on the powers of the federal government.  And since then, with the exception of President Reagan's two terms, the federal government has been slowly and at times, not so slowly, grabbing more and more power.  So, by the time FDR comes into office and begins to accelerate the power grab, Grant is being portrayed as a drunken fool.  

With me, almost everything has a sports, or more likely, a Dallas Cowboy analogy.  When Drew Pearson played for the Cowboys in the 1970's and early 1980's, he was a perennial All-Pro.  Along with Steve Largent, he was seen as the league's top receiver.  And with his big plays at crucial times, no receiver was more "clutch" than Drew Pearson.  Yet, he has never even made it to the final ballot of Hall of Fame voting.  Why not?  Receivers like Lynn Swann and John Stallworth, who have similiar stats but at least in Stallworth's case, nowhere near the longevity or the clutch plays are in the Hall.  Pearson was the victim of some politics by some voters.  Tackle Rayfield Wright finally overcame the same issues just a couple of years ago.  More than twenty years after he last played a game.  To see the true greatness of a player, look at how they were perceived when they actually played.  Don't let years of revision cloud your perception. 

Grant has suffered from this kind of biased revision.  On the flip side, FDR has enjoyed a complete historical makeover.  Historians and economists have quietly said for years that Roosevelt's policies did nothing to end the Great Depression, and actually may have made it worse and more lengthy.  Yet, we are taught in school that Roosevelt was one of our greatest Presidents and was so beloved by Americans that he was elected to office four times!  He was so beloved that only six years after he died, Americans ratified the 22nd Amendment, guaranteeing that no one would ever hold the office more than eight years.  Just to compare, the Equal Rights Amendment was first proposed in 1923, and today, only 87 years later, it still has not been ratified!  Sounds like Roosevelt was truly loved and respected by all.  Or at least all progressive historians.

I'll continue this tomorrow, I've gone kind of long here!

The Old West

The rodeo was in town. Cattlemen's Days in Gunnison draws visitors from all over the world. We had tourists from Germany, Japan, and Switzerland. Not to mention those from nearby Connecticut and Vermont. When we would take vacations in Arizona during the American vacation offseason of May or October, we would hear a lot of European vacationers at the Grand Canyon. Especially German and Japanese travellers. It seems like people from all over the world are fascinated with the American west.