Posts Tagged → love
Frank Biddle, I will miss you old friend
I have attained the age where all of my cohort seem to be skating on ever thinner ice every day. Anything, it seems, can jump the hell up and surprise grab you like a big Nile crocodile, and you have so litle time to react, to know what is happening before the curtain closes as the beast drags you down.
Cancer, heart attacks, car accidents, falling off cliffs (for real), and my own litany of self-inflicted near-fatal accidents while working or recreating in the remote mountains. It just seems that the odds at our age are ever more stacked against us. Which sends the message that we must live every day, every minute, with purpose and enjoyment. Take nothing for granted, leave nothing on the table. Give life and your friends and family everything you have, withhold no love, leave no bridge unmended. Even if we live to a ripe old age, it all flies by anyhow. So, make every day count.
Recently one of my high school + college friends died of something avoidable. GERD or gastric reflux disease is sometimes detected, sometimes silent, and always fatal if left to its own purpose of silently gnawing away at your esophagus or tongue. Eventually, the acid etching creates the conditions where cancer starts. My friend Frank was unable to get in-person medical care in 2020-2021, because of Covid. Doctors could not diagnose him from internet video calls, and so the cancer spread unbeknownst to anyone. By the time he was able to see a doctor in person and get hands-on care, it was too late. It was throughout his body. He died two weeks ago, peacefully, surrounded by his family. This should not have happened.
Frank was one of the most wonderful people I have had the pleasure of knowing. He had an honest charisma from his joie de vive that served him well in business. Handsome as the day is long, to paraphrase one of his own quips, Frank married well, raised two fine young men, and ran a successful business. He worked hard, played hard, was a model citizen, lived a life most Americans aspire to. Frank had more positive character traits that I wish I had than I can list here.
His obituary is here. I cannot attend the memorial service, but an old friend is reading my farewell to Frank. It is for the best, because left to my own time frame and guided by my horrible sorrow, I would regale gathered mourners with endless tales of hilarity, adventure, and friendship starting from from almost five decades ago. Frank and I covered a lot of territory together at the time of your life when you are developing most. After high school, we decided to go to college together because it was close to our central PA home turf and had a good wrestling team. We never stopped being friends, though we ended up living on opposite coasts and mostly staying in touch by text and phone calls.
I have had a few regrets in my life, and not spending more time with Frank is the newest and acutest. People, make time for your friends and family, no matter what. And if you can’t be with them in person, always remind them you love them.
Godspeed on your spirit journey, old friend. You have taken a piece of me along with you.
Frank in a 1960s Ford Bronco with “Bernard” in 1982
Christians are finding out what it’s like to be “The Jew” etc.
Don’t know why I was surprised at the audacious or incredibly uneducated female “reporter” on MSNBC a couple months ago. Because MSNBC in particular is an outlet that nonstop traffics in toxic disinformation, misinformation, outright lies, crazy conspiracy theories, and partisan propaganda, as well as nonstop personal invective and racist hatemongering from its staff (Joy Reid is their chief KKK Grand Dragon). Extremist MSNBC is not a credible source for factual information, but I guess they have their audience dialed in and feeling very high on the hate juice, and so they just keep producing it and serving it up.
What surprised me was how this MSNBC/Politico “reporter,” named Heidi Przybyla, evinced genuine surprise over how so many Americans, especially Christian Americans, somehow, golly it’s so confusing why, believe that their rights come from God and not from the government.
Any American child should have been taught about America’s founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and subsequent amendments. Because American school children do live in America, and do go to school in America, and real basic American history starting in fifth grade does include school room introductions to our founding documents.
But Heidi Przybyla’s wide-eyed appearance on TV is probably real evidence that she honestly has no idea about America’s founding documents. Heidi Przybyla is probably representative of two generations of Americans who have absolutely zero understanding of what America is (e.g. so many young people refer to America as a democracy, when we are in fact a constitutional republic, a big difference), or what America is actually founded on, and how we got to where we are right now. This means that people like Heidi Przybyla have opinions and views that are not just uninformed, they are terribly malformed and pretzel-shaped misinformed. Hence the resulting pretzel-shaped misinformation Heidi Przybyla et al serve up to their Politico/MSNBC listeners and watchers.
Liberty, freedom, choice, small government and big citizen are all overt ideas translated into your personal rights in America’s founding documents. In fact, note to Heidi Przybyla, America is based on the idea that our own individual rights do not come from government, or from bureaucrats, or from judges, or from popular moods, but from God. This is not some “Christian nationalist” idea, but rather it comes right from America’s Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness… goes its preamble.
All people are created equal and get their rights from God, the Creator. This is not some novel idea, or even a Christian nationalist idea. It’s right there in the Declaration of Independence, from the beginning of America.
But mainstream corporate media outlet staffs either don’t know this, or they don’t want their readers and viewers to know this. And why would that be? Other than being misinformed or mal-educated when young by Marxist teachers who hate America, corporate curators of culture and information like Heidi P. are on a warpath.
Mainstream outlets and their talking heads like Heidi P. are Godless Marxists (i.e. evil people) trying to stamp out both American nationalism, which roughly translates as love of homeland and appreciation of capitalist America as the uniquely free and opportunity-driven place it is, and Christianity. And that is because Christianity is the founding religion, ethos, and source of all of America’s bedrock values and identity. Traditional Christianity undergirds and enervates all of America’s institutions. Without it, the institutions become empty shells, ready to be filled with something else, some other driving force and raison d’etre.
When Marxist Manchurian Candidate and then Jihadi-in-Chief Barack Hussein Obama declared his “fundamental transformation of America,” he really meant he intended to tear down our national foundations, our national identity, our national values, our national uniqueness, and replace it with a communist bureaucracy with no regard for personal rights. He has spent all of his years in office as a senator and as president and now as ex-president doing just that – destroying America from inside America – like a parasitic worm.
And chief among his targets was the target that the Marxist teacher’s unions and Marxist college professors had long targeted, traditional Christianity. What a great institution that would be to infest and hollow out and turn!
So here we are, a national war being made against traditional Christians and the traditional Christian values that permeate, undergird, invest, and support a free and tolerant America. The young people like Heidi P. either don’t know about Christianity’s central role in creating the America they enjoy, or they don’t care, or they are outright opposed to it and they are trying to destroy it.
If you listen to Heidi P. and the rest of the MSM assault on Christianity and Christian nationalists, you will notice that they are waging a real war on both. A war meant to destroy and eliminate both. Yes, there are Marxist Jews in the MSM, and in government like Merrick Garland, and Marxist funders like George Soros, and tons of Marxist Jews in academia, but they are a tiny percentage of this war effort, which is really dominated by and populated by ex-Christians, former Christians, sons and daughters of Christians, and funded by our arch-enemy communist China.
And so, dear Christian reader, you are now The Jew.
You the traditional and America-loving Christian are the hunted, the pursued, the irrationally hated, the ridiculously envied, the unreasonably feared Jew. And you are in real danger.
It is a terrible thing, to be hated and targeted for ridiculous reasons, but we see a silver lining here, an important opportunity. We see an enormous opportunity for the Christian community to respond to these dangerous attacks in strength, with a love more powerful than the Marxist’s hate, to reclaim what it has lost, to bring its lost sheep like Heidi P. back into the fold, and to thereby stop the destruction of America and help the suffering American People once again proclaim liberty across their land.
America does need a Great Awakening, and only loving Christians can make it happen.
Shen Yun thumbs up review
Somewhere in the time frame of 1971 to 1974, a troupe of Chinese acrobats and dancers put on an incredible performance at Penn State University’s Recreation Hall. Despite having been a wee lad up in the bleachers that evening, I can still now recall moments of their performance with shocking clarity, such were the amazing skill and feats of strength they brought to the American public.
Lots of male and especially female displays of traditional weapons mastery – spears, swords, knives – whose choreography defies even an aged and highly skeptical intellect decades later, as well as incredible and frankly unbelievable balancing + acrobatic + martial arts acts with tea cups and people, bending iron bars that the audience members were invited to try etc etc.
And now looking back, I realize that those early 1970s Chinese performers must have been the last of their kind, or maybe they were exiles, such was the crushing tyranny of Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” aimed at stamping out through murder, torture, and literal destruction of every single thing that had made China China for the past five thousand years. In any event, in Rec Hall that night I had witnessed history.
Well, fast forward about fifty years, and into the intervening gap steps Shen Yun, a modern show about “China Before Communism.” That is, before all that Mao Cultural Revolution communist crap that has destroyed one of the world’s great nations and culture. Begun in 2006, Shen Yun performances have been evolving and growing for the past sixteen years, and now boasts eight geographically dispersed troupes regularly impressing audiences around America. The Princess of Patience and I saw one such troupe in Pittsburgh, PA, this past Sunday, at the historic and beautiful Benedum Theater.
Looky here, I am no theater or musical show kind of guy. So don’t go on reading further here and expecting to encounter the usual aphorisms and adjectives “professional” art and theater critics regularly provide through their Pez dispensers.
What you are about to read is my own unvarnished layman perspective, as told from the guy who almost always falls asleep as soon as the lights go out and the curtain rises, and who is then awakened either by the sharp elbows of the theater goer to my left or by the Princess of Patience to my right. Apparently I think I am not snoring when I sleep in a theater, but in fact I do snore.
Apparently one play was stopped mid-scene while an actor asked someone to stop me from snoring, such was the distraction. What can I say, few theater performances are memorable to me. Men singing…bad. Men dancing in tights and playing dress-up…really bad. Theater and especially musicals and most especially opera are all a refined form of torture. If a play is any good, it will become a movie, which I might see and during which I probably will not fall asleep. My highly educated and experienced opinion here.
But, such is my love for the Princess of Patience, that I bought tickets and took her to see this updated version of whatever it was I had been mesmerized by fifty years ago.
To its credit, Shen Yun kept me awake. We can joke, but that is actually an achievement.
Shen Yun’s scenes or performances are relatively brief, each probably five to seven minutes long, and also varied. That constant change helps keep the audience’s attention focused. The subjects are about traditional Chinese culture, love, war, good vs. evil, history, spirituality, chivalry, family, and the performers wear culturally appropriate dress in each scene. They also have an act about forced organ harvesting, the current real-time inhumane insane crazy can’t believe this is happening actual action of murdering political prisoners and transferring their healthy organs to the unhealthy bodies of Chinese citizens who are “more equal”* than the 99.99% of the Chinese socioeconomically beneath them.
*(George Orwell, author of dystopian novel and a foreshadowing message about the present political situation in both China and America 1984, coined this phrase more equal than others in his other dystopian novel Animal Farm, where the political leader pigs betray the farm animals’ revolution against the humans and go on to corrupt the original commandment that all animals are equal in order to keep their pig selves in unintended, constant, never-ending more equal than others tyrannical mastery over all the other animals)
Something I had not seen before is Shen Yun’s use of a digital screen as the stage backdrop, instead of the traditional painted screen that would form the background for the stage in each scene. Shen Yun uses different digital backdrops, often several different ones, in each scene. They are crisp, clear, and bright. They also allow for cartoon versions of the actors to soar through the air or run away over the horizon. Maybe this is old technology, but it is a first encounter for me, and I liked it.
Things I liked about Shen Yun: The amazing dance, ballet, tumbling, and acrobatic abilities of the professional actors, the incredibly tight and perfectly executed choreography, the superior talent of the live orchestra members, and the bright and flowing costumes that must be a real b#tch to move around in. I liked all the subject matters. The simpler weapons handling wasn’t intended to be anything like the old days, but it adds a nice change to each story and act. The pleasant combining of traditional Chinese music with a modern European/ Western orchestra is very cool.
Things I did not like about Shen Yun: About a third of the acts are repetitious, despite using different costumes and some different choreography, with the same sweeping “windmill” arm motions of the actors in each one. Consider that the one act that brought the loudest applause was about a traditional Tibetan dance, complete with very different moves and costumes. Another thing that irked me was how MC/Announcer Perry’s suit crotch was obviously rumpled. Probably because I am not a regular suit wearer, my eye was immediately drawn to this unprofessional and uncomfortable anomaly. Come on, Perry, your suit must be cleaned and pressed before each performance. Even a knuckle dragging lug like me knows this.
In conclusion, I spoke with half a dozen members of the audience both inside and outside the theater, and everyone liked it. Some appreciated the simple artistic expression, despite not synching with the political, religious, or cultural messages. Others really liked the occasional blips of overt religious messaging, which if I had to guess is some sort of Bhuddist messianism that most Christians can relate to in one way or another. One audience member I spoke with said that she is politically liberal, but that she was not bothered at all by the political or religious aspects of Shen Yun: “I don’t have to agree with it to enjoy it. This is just their own artistic expression and I am here to see it and enjoy it as it is,” she said to me.
Amen.
Benedum Theater is worth visiting just to see the beautiful interior
Benedum Theater ceiling
Benedum Theater interior
If I had a big social function, I would have it at the Benedum Theater. Tons of cozy little nooks like this
If I can’t get front and center seats, I won’t go see an event that has a stage.
Shen Yun audience had everyone old, young, in between, Asian, black, white, purple…
Some parts of Pittsburgh have not been successful. Around the block from this ancient bar and hotel we encountered what had been a recently built very attractive state of the art Martin Luther King, Jr cultural resource center abandoned in an overgrown lot
Pittsburgh smartly employs vehicles powered by clean burning propane
The entire city of Pittsburgh is stunningly beautiful. This one column is representative of the beautiful hand carved stone buildings from the Victorian Age to the 1940s. Thanks to industrialists like the Mellons, Carnegies, Olivers, and Benedums, Pittsburgh is a world hub for architecture and science
Tamper Resistant Language, Bomb Proof Love
When I was at Penn State in the 1980s, one of my Spanish professors was an older gay man. How did we know he was gay? It seemed evident to us students that this small, shy, demur, effeminate, carefully dressed man was probably a homosexual. That he also lived a quiet life with another man in a beautiful old stone house with perfect lawncare and meticulous flower beds on the historic north end of campus pretty much cemented our conclusion.
We did not care about his sexual identity, and he did not demand or expect that we did care. He never mentioned it, and instead lived and taught in dignity. We gave him our loyalty and respect because he was a phenomenal teacher, who taught 400-level Spanish language literature from a place of deep passion and personal resonance. He could easily have been an English literature professor quoting Shakespeare, exhorting his students to comprehend the subtle nuances The Bard emanated from the stage to his audiences. But instead, he taught us The Aleph, among other deep and inspiring masterpieces of the Spanish language. This professor did not only teach us the most complex spoken and written Spanish, he also taught us to think carefully. About symbols, potential meanings of words, and the whys of writers of all languages; the reason for the idea-conveying purpose of literature, in any language.
His courses required real contemplation and reflection, and they strengthened our brain muscles. As a result, our professor lived on in our lives as a great teacher who greatly rounded us as individuals.
Fast forward to today, and every aspect and angle of human sexuality is daily artificially and forcefully thrust upon all of us, regardless of our age, with demands that we embrace all of it and simultaneously abandon thousands of years of shared human culture, religion, and biological science. This brutal, crass sexuality is the dominant subject of just about every subject, be it science, math, or language. This is a shock-and-awe, beat-you-over-the-head, we-will-destroy-you, revolutionary assault being led by people whom reporter Salena Zito calls the curators of culture. That is, people with careers in academia, education, and journalism. As in, writers of fact and fiction, reporters of human behavior, the (historically speaking) diligent and careful chroniclers of human culture.
Contrasted with Dark Ages monks carefully preserving the written word and human knowledge behind stone walls, and even with academics of the recent past like my gay Spanish professor who was devoted to the rules of Spanish language, these modern day curators of culture are neither diligent nor careful nor deep nor meaningful. Rather, they are rampaging intellectual rapists and murderers, leading a grotesque attack on what had been one of humanity’s most tolerant, productive, and vibrant cultures, ever, America.
The biggest of their sexual assaults is the demand for new pronoun uses, for which the English language, like all languages except Esperanto, is unprepared and thus will never naturally accommodate. For example, you could not write a literary masterpiece using the bastardized pronouns now hobnailed onto daily English usage, except maybe as a farce to highlight the ridiculousness of the self-appointed pronoun police and culture-raping revolutionaries. Like all languages, and probably more so than most, English is a mix of different languages (German, French, Celtic), and has its own long-developed unique rules that render it tamper-resistant.
If you try to communicate in English using the revolutionary pronouns (e.g. they for a woman who self identifies as both man and woman), you fall flat on your face, because this attempt to bodger English just doesn’t work. It can’t possibly work, because all languages are designed to help humans maximally communicate with one another. All languages have rules that maximize their effectiveness so that people may fully comprehend one another.
Which means that this sexual revolutionary assault via pronouns is not really about erasing lines between people and bringing people together. Rather, it is about erecting barriers and causing confusion. Religious Americans have identified the new pronoun mis-use as a modern day Tower of Babel situation, just begging for divine intervention. It certainly seems to be that significant to me.
However, whatever linguistic rules of English may be daily axe-murdered by woke pronounsters, my primary objection to them is that they fail the one universal language spoken by all humans: Love. While deliberately sowing confusion and fierce disagreement about the most elementary aspects of science and human relationships, the revolutionary pronounsters are also trying to destroy (not expand) the concept of love. Love, the truest, most pure universal language which can bind all humans to each other in the truest of relationships, and has been known humanity-wide since the dawn of our species by fidelity, commitment, and truth, is now being exploded by this sexual assault by mispronoun. Every human culture has sanctified love through marriage and commitment, family, honesty, and truth, baseline values all now being thrown out the window and publicly burned at the stake by the wokesters.
Love is a simple thing, and it is the one thing that all humans around the globe immediately understand. Love is bomb proof and it will get us through this turmoil, misused pronouns notwithstanding. Dear child, I am your parent, I created you, and I will always always always love you, no matter what f**king asinine pronouns you have been disinformed and misinformed to use by evil people who are misusing you as cannon fodder in their inglorious revolution against God knows what.
The Wonder of Elvis
Elvis Presley was a wonder in so many ways.
Youthful cutting-edge song writer and musician, he combined mountain folk music with country, blues, and gospel, with substantive themes and meaningful words, creating his own powerful sound with bi-racial bands that captivated people around the world. Come to think of it, in some ways like Ray Charles, a similar creative genius who also went on to make his own unique blues and jazz sound (also drawing upon sacred music) during the same time.
Both men created, captured, and represented certain turning points in American culture in their music.
But Elvis was more than a musician of meaningful songs. He also wrote, directed, and starred in dozens of movies, for which he wrote or performed some or all of the sound tracks. Like his music, Elvis movies are about simple life themes, like love, relationships, community, commitment, family, patriotism, public service, and God. Gosh his movies are corny, with clunky acting, but they carry important and positive messages Americans could sure use a dose of today.
In the 1950s, when Elvis was debuting, American women were married to the scarred men who had returned from the battlefields or the military training grounds of World War II. A lot of these men were tough, hardened either from the Great Depression or from their military experiences, or both. Romantic thoughts or gestures, tender touches, gentle words with their women were pretty scarce then.
Along came Elvis, singing to these women about loving and relationships they could only dream of, representing a model man they could only hope for. In his way, Elvis taught men of his generation how to respect and treat women right, mostly by singing about the kinds of feelings women had and how men could aspire to satisfy them.
Women screamed and swooned, and men wanted to be his friend.
Meanwhile, other entertainers were singing about banging in the back of a car, and most popular music hasn’t moved too far forward since. OK, it is true that later on Elvis developed that hip thrust, but he let it stand on its own without any words to back it up.
He was a good soldier, literally, volunteering for the US Army at a time when most of the people being drafted to serve in combat were less privileged young men without access to lawyers or school deferments. His military service was mostly symbolic, but inspiring. Asked by a reporter in 1971 what he thought about the anti-war protestors, he responded that he was just an entertainer and would rather keep his opinions to himself.
In private Elvis was no Lothario. Reportedly chaste and deeply religious, his child was born exactly nine months to the day after his marriage to Priscilla. No fooling around or cutting corners.
After developing his own sequined and bejeweled stage look, Elvis wore a freakin cape, and yet still commanded the adoration or respect of everyone around him, be it president of the United States or hard bitten businessmen. He was authentic, real. A humble, simple country boy. With a big shiny gold belt under his coat!
He was relatable, because he was real.
“Before Elvis there was nothing,” said John Lennon of the Beatles.
“When I heard Heartbreak Hotel, I was transported,” said crusty Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, no pushover or soppy romantic.
Elvis’ impact on the development of music was unequaled.
Embodying so many unique, separate, divergent, and ultimately convergent strands of American identity, Elvis was a wonder no matter how you analyze him. He represented the best of America, the best of its values.
Elvis is still be the King of Rock and Roll, four decades after prematurely reaching the Promised Land. His generous spirit lives on, albeit appreciated by fewer and fewer. No one since has attained his heights or impact on popular culture.
America could use a pop culture figure like Elvis today. Someone to bridge the gaps between us, to help inspire and unify us, to sing to us about our best qualities, about love and gentleness.
We need and miss you, Elvis.
The things that make life fun
Music, family, food, friendship, art derived from craftsmanship, Nature, aesthetics, and so on are things that make life fun.
The best things in life are free, and aren’t really things: Love, friendship, trust, integrity, honesty. We can have as much of these as we want, and very often they only require giving a little to get a lot in return.
I am not Italian, but when I used to hang out with Italians, I finally learned what “food” really, truly is. Restaurateur Andy Zangrilli of State College trained me in two of his restaurants as a line chef, from salads to sautee, when I was fresh out of high school. Andy owns Gullifty’s and other landmark restaurants around Pennsylvania, and prided himself on making all of his food from scratch, including pickling and smoking his own pastrami and corned beef, as well as making his own prosciutto and some cheeses. It had to be done just right, or not done at all. And when the food was done right, it was like hearing angels sing. As a dad and husband who enjoys cooking, I try to bring some of Andy’s amazing recipes to life in our own home. No complaints yet!
Today’s news was just filled with all kinds of rich targets: RyanCare vs ObamaCare, news that an Israeli teenager has been arrested for committing the lion’s share of the email and phone threats made against Jewish institutions across America over the past months (and NOT “white supremacists”), my old Penn State chum and good friend Seth Williams being indicted for bribery as DA of Philadelphia, and so on.
Never at a loss for words or strong opinions, I would naturally have more to say on these subjects than I should. And you know what, this is also the PA Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs spring conference, too, and I will be going to that. So I guess that is where I am going to let the mind and written word go next.
Wildlife biologist Ben Jones of the PA Game Commission will be speaking tomorrow night, a can’t-miss opportunity for those of us who love nature, wildlife, and conservation. I will be joining a lot of friends and colleagues this weekend at this gathering, and that’s what I am going to focus on here:
Enjoy your friends and family, my friends. Life is so precious and yet so tenuous. At my age, we all too often see good people gone in a blink of an eye. People who brought us smiles, and laughter, joy and love, warmth and companionship. These are treasures, though we cannot weigh them out or count them. Yes, there is a time for ego, debate, values, culture, and possessiveness, and anger, and hurt, and revenge, and so on, but this weekend….for me it’s about friendship.
It is one of those “things” that make life worth living. For a tiny price, it can be had in truckloads.
I love you, America
Writing negative headlines and about negative subjects burns out a person. Tough to outswim the drowning pool of negative politics, negative culture wars, negative attacks on individual liberties.
We naturally want to be positive, to enjoy some humor, to laugh, to be human, natural, not consumed with unhappiness and unease.
Tough luck, as our civilization wallows in materialism and the fantasy that the bank account is always full. Fact: Our national bank account in every way is empty, and the overdrafts are eating us up. Result: Unhappy people, anxious people, worried and fretful people. All they built and contributed towards is being pulled under in the drowning pool.
The fact that a black president is leaving office with a legacy of racist riots he has stoked is really sad. How can we get excited about politics and culture when every day we see this man, Hussein Obama, so full of love for himself, and yet so full of acid hate for America? He hates my love. He hates what I love.
See, I love America. When I see our flag waving passion wells up in my chest and my throat, because it fills me with pride. When I see people so consumed with hate for all I love, well, it leaves me unhappy.
And yes, I categorically reject that most racist of all racist assertions: I am happy because of my “white” privilege. My skin tone has nothing to do with my thinking. The only people who think it does are racists.
Have you seen the video of the Black Lives Matter racists swarming a college library, assaulting Caucasian kids and attacking them for being racist, because they are “white”? That right there is the very definition of racism. Pretty much only one place this can all end, and it isn’t good. Racism is just bad stuff. When the racists themselves accuse others of racism, then it is doubtful that the love can flow. The hate is, well, it is the old racialist hate that is tough to stamp out.
Where the heck is “Let the Love Shine“ from Aquarius, with those big Afros? What happened to Cat Stevens‘ Peace Train?
True, I am add libbing here, taking some liberties with the words and metaphors, but if you are reading this, you know why. That 1970s sense of universal love being just around the corner was pretty strong then.
Loving people know this, and they know better, but they seem to stand by and say little, if anything, while the drowning pool picks up momentum.
I love America. I love my fellow citizens, with all their various skin tones and viewpoints. Genuinely, I love them, because their optimism and hope for a good future is the righteous inspiration America always ignites.
Hopefully, one prays, the old Biblical passages about hate turning to love will come true, soon. America is a wonderful nation, pretty close to a perfect nation, certainly the best nation of all that ever were or ever will be. It is worth holding together. I hate hate; I hate racism.
I love you, America. Good luck, honey.
A man who loves his nation
How refreshing to witness a leader who loves his country speak passionately about protecting his people.
Netanyahu was speaking for Israel, and also for America, which is leaderless.
One just hopes that enough elected officials can get up enough steam to stop America’s current administration from facilitating Iran getting the nuclear bomb.
Otherwise, the next 9-11 attack won’t be about planes into buildings; it’ll be about entire American cities being vaporized.
I love America. That is why I fight for her
I don’t doubt that the people on the left “love” America.
What I also know is true is that their definition of “love” of America is 100% the opposite of mine.
My love of country is frequently called “jingoistic” in online debates, a term once used by America’s arch-foe, the Soviet Union, and their treasonous allies planted on American soil.
The left’s “love” for America is for its rich opportunity to be turned into a fantasy utopia, the likes of which Marxists have been pursuing one way or another for over 100 years.
Leftists would take all of our material success until now, and convert it into state-controlled property, to be doled out sparingly to everyone equally. That policy failed awfully in the Soviet Union, but as someone once close to me used to say, “Communism failed only because the Soviets did not implement it correctly. It is otherwise a great thing and still ought to be pursued.”
The Soviets failed, and the Berlin Wall fell (25 years ago), because a tidal wave of individual hope for freedom and liberty continually corroded state power; eventually, the system just leaked throughout its faulty pipes.
The left would ignore all that and return us to those dark days. Oh sure, they don’t say the days will be dark. Neither did the Soviets, and neither do the Chinese or the North Koreans – they all say things are just rosy.
I love the America that was founded in 1776 and 1787 and 1794 and 1812 and 1867 and 1922 and 1948 and 1954 and 1964 and…….Yes, America as it was founded had the tools built into it to overcome the many challenges the young nation inherited (slavery and abolition) and later worked through (women’s suffrage, Negro voting rights, etc.).
America is not perfect – what nation is? – but America is perfectly designed and built to successfully process all challenges.
The challenge we face now is the same we faced when the Soviets had their agents working to damage us on the home front. We face domestic political opponents who really do not believe in the America as it was founded. They do not really love America, as it was created. They are like little Benedict Arnolds, riding through the countryside at night, doing their utmost to un-do all the goodness.
I and tens of millions like me, however, we do love America as it was founded and as it has progressed since its founding. And we will not sit idly by as our great nation is “transformed” into something unrecognizable. Our fight is as much with liberals in the Democratic Party as it is with liberals in the Republican Party, and there are plenty there, too.
Speaking of the traitor Benedict Arnold, he was caught by two ragamuffin Patriot soldiers, more militiamen than regulars, and he offered them huge sums of money if they would but let him go to his British handlers waiting for him not far away. Our two boys were destitute of money, but not of spirit, and in their ragged clothing they held him at the end of their loaded barrels and marched him back to patriot lines.
Today, people like me, no matter how much money is thrown at us, for or against us in supportive politics or opposition politics, we are going to keep on fighting to bring back the America we once knew – The America that offers full and equal prosperity to all who are willing to work hard and contribute to a society bound by Constitutional obligations and opportunities, and nothing more, or less.
Love your mother, love America
It’s Mothers Day, and you should love your mother. America is our mother. Show her love, support her, fight for her. And if you don’t like her the way she has been taking care of the American family since 1776, then guess what, she’s not your mom and you should probably go find a different place to call home, a different country to call the Motherland. She doesn’t need to be transformed and you aren’t appreciating her.