Where are we?

Thursday August 4, 2011

Where are we?

This is a question that is frequently asked when people are lost or who are questioning a relationship. When someone needs direction they might ask, where are we, especially when they are in a group. In a relationship, it becomes more of a personal question that is usually a one on one type of question. This one on one question should also be asked of government, because you do have a relationship, if you realize it or not.

I believe that many in America are lost. Many people come to me and ask simple questions. They are: What do you think of Sarah Palin? Is Mitt Romney going to get the nomination? What the heck is happening in Washington? Did you hear about the latest spending spree? What do you think about what is happening in the Mid East? I always have an answer. Some might not like what I say, but none the less I have an answer.

These are simple questions with complex answers and intriguing results. These questions are also how people search for answers. That is why it is so important to voice your ideas and your thoughts. Most of the time I answer a question straight forward, but sometimes I like to get a bit philosophical.

Someone asked me a question at the barber shop. Ok, it was my barber and I thought twice about how to answer it, because he held the razor. My barber is a great guy, he works his chair and he works for the owner of the shop. He asked me why there is such a debate over the debt ceiling in Washington and what’s going to happen when poor people lose their aid and all the other help that government programs give. Where is the justice in that? He said we can’t have these people just go homeless.

I listened and then I asked the question, why do you think we need to spread the wealth around? He said: well, the Republicans have all the money and thank God the Democrats are there to decide how to spread it around. He said, “I think they call that social justice.” He went onto say that the rich needs to pay for more, because the poor needs more help, because the Republicans have ruined the economy. He said I agree with the president when he said the people who own corporate jets can afford to pay more. The barber believes social justice will make things even, he told me as much. He went on to say a bit more about how the rich people keep minorities at the level they are at. What I have written pretty much sums up what he said. I waited until my neck was shaved and then I asked, do you think I am a liberal? He said I don’t know. I am just speaking my mind.

I waited all of three seconds to process what he had said. My first words were that his premises are faulty and his thoughts couldn’t be more wrong. I asked how many people he personally knows who fly around on corporate jets. He said one, the Republican Donald Trump. I said you are right, but doesn’t he deserve to fly one around, because he worked for it? Doesn’t he deserve to fly one around because he employs many people? And then I said, you haven’t answered the question, because you don’t personally know Mr. Trump and you don’t personally know any one who owns a jet. I said my point in all this is there aren’t enough jet owners around to tax for purposes of spreading the wealth around and if people like Trump were taxed on that then they might not be able to hire as many people as he does. I said you have bought into another faulty premise. I asked the barber if he had Trump’s money what would he do with it? He said go to Disneyland. I then said, you better just keep cutting hair and not talk politics.

As all of this went down, I was thinking of how I could relate this in a FORUM and still be polite in the words I chose. I was polite and I paid my bill. I will go back and I will give my barber a history lesson and the history what our liberty, freedom and independence gives us if we treat it in the way it was intended to be treated.

After considering this brief interlude into the mind of a liberal or someone that is just not informed it dawned on me. This is the way our government, our leaders and yes the President probably want things. No accountability of real history and confusion over the facts. Keep the people fighting the war on class warfare -distort the truth, because that makes it easier to gain the social justice of spreading the wealth around. Then it dawned on me how many people are like the barber and how many people are like me. I guess it depends on the city and the state you live in or it might be as simple as how they process what they hear or maybe it’s a little bit of both.

I have been reading about some of the modern leaders of the twentieth century. I wrote about one of them yesterday. Senator Everett Dirksen was a compassionate conservative. He fought for fiscal responsibility he also fought for the rights of man. He authored much of the civil rights legislation of the sixties. He never thought that by giving the rights that were constitutionally due to some Americans that some others would turn that into an industry for social justice peddling and an excuse for government to spread the wealth around. A conservative notion of spreading freedom and rights around has turned into a spending spree by the liberals. This spending spree has now crippled a nation and its entire people through entitlements and bloated civic programs that never are accountable until someone makes a demand on social justice to settle the accounts.

In short, poor people are not poor, because rich people are rich. Equal opportunity has to be judged, but it should not be judged and viewed through the prism of equalizing the results to satisfy those that demand social justice in the form of tax dollars from the system.

Dirksen said many things and Dirksen was many things to his country. However, he never intended social justice to be used to rob a nation’s wealth through legislation and with the self appointed power that office holders have given themselves today.

Dirksen said: “There is no force so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” My idea of social justice is how to create jobs that provide the opportunity for every American to grow and prosper. Conservatives know that government can never create the type of job that will make people rich. Conservatives know that social justice when it is used to rob a nation of its wealth will at some point fail to keep the peace and break the backs of those who have played by the rules. The time has come for new ideas based on the principles of unbridled free enterprise, determination, creativity and the desire to succeed with compassion is the best formula for successful social justice to occur.

Dirksen also said, when he was in the Senate, “We are becoming so accustomed to millions and billions of dollars that "thousands" has almost passed out of the dictionary.” The time has come for new ideas that will create a force so powerful that bankrupt politicians can no longer serve, let alone pass the legislation that robs our liberty, freedom and independence. I believe this is called compassion for all.

Dirksen said, “When all is said and done, the real citadel of strength of any community is in the hearts and minds and desires of those who dwell there.” I believe in this quote because America is the community that the world sees as the heart and soul of freedom. It was the desire of people like Benjamin Franklin who wanted to create a place that was free of government rule and policies that stifle freedom. It was also men like Dirksen who kept that fight alive in the twentieth century.

Now how’s that for an idea whose time has come.

Gregory C. Dildilian
Founder and Executive Director
Pinecone Conservatives

A footnote: To answer the question, where are we, it should be answered in this way. The true essence of social justice should be measured by the heart and soul of the compassion that is served with fair ideals and that is based on the freedoms that we have been given to better our selves and our community. We now know that entitlements have robbed us of everything that is good including our ideals and the liberty, freedom and independence of those that want to better them selves. Today, in the hopes of spreading the wealth our national debt is now equal to the countries GDP. More on this tomorrow!