AH, THE GOOD OLE' DAYS

Ah, the good ole' days. With this age old phrase being issued new life by a revitalized left assaulting the Constitution, I wonder how many of us realize just how recent the good ole' days were? If it seems like only yesterday that the leftists' pet programs and the goiter riddled expanse of government dreams of those who would dismantle the Constitution, were held somewhat in check, it was. How nice it must be for those oppressed, well-intentioned, we know better than our Founding Fathers, everyone else is blind, socialists, now that they can throw all their wants an desires into a bill, call it a 'stimulus' package, and an irreversibly dumbed down America will buy it. How I long to go back to only having to worry about the pseudo-conservative Republican parties' methodical, deliberate, devouring of personal freedoms and rights, while the impatience of the Democrats largely kept them Constitutionally spayed and neutered.

To the disinterested observer of America's disintegration, and anyone who is not anesthetized by the conjured-up illusion of two parties at war, one would have to conclude that the ultimate goal of both Republicans and Democrats were one in the same, with the only difference being their chosen methodologies as to how to get there. Thankfully, republicans, in the spirit of bipartisanship, will regularly let Democrats test the political waters to see if Americans have been made dumb enough to allow a swifter, larger, bite be taken from the Constitution. Undeniably, this is one of those times.

I fear that the pendulum of American politics is merely a device to divert attention from the ultimate goal of all politicians in power: more power. Whether a freedom-devouring Ebola-like virus is administered by a slow intravenous drip from Republicans or a mega-dose injected by Democrats, the eventual devastation to the Constitution will be identical. Even suckling the debate about whether America is a Republic, or a Democracy is but a mechanism by which politicians distract the people from the power grab essential for this country to devolve into a dictatorship.

I am mystified by the willingness of people to sit back tolerating, or completely ignoring, abominable political practices until the only path of repair is violence. Why does it always have to worse before it gets better? Why must we wait for the kids we just dropped off at the pool, to flee the water in panic, when all we would have had to do to avoid a mess, was snake the toilet from time to time? If apathy and ignorance, even with the tax and health care protests, of the magnitude seen today is man in his natural state, our Founding Fathers must have been in a monumental state of denial to think any people were deserving of the Constitution. There lies the rub, for those on their mad quest for power count on the people they haven't managed to dumb down to stop caring about those that have been successfully turned into hamsters, utterly terrified of the responsibilities that accompany freedom. Politicians count on the fact that any champion of freedom must be fighting for all to prevail. The main class warfare is not the rich versus poor, or haves versus the have-nots, but the government encouraged battle within the hearts of those still willing to fight for freedom between their desire for liberty and the crippling effects of knowing that so many, for whom they fight, are undeserving of their efforts.

The illusions of warfare between the Republicans and Democrats are not limited to politicians. There is James Carville and his wife. While I often find Mrs. Carville's voice to be most rational and reasonable among the presumed champions of Conservatism, there always looms her bloodless yet mysteriously animated husband James. Personally, I could never bring myself to view their bond as merely circumstantial or coincidental. At least the pair does exhibit one relic of the American spirit: any game worth playing is a game worth winning. However, I don't believe that the country is best served by viewing its survival as a game as did FDR. While arguments between politicians over our current economic woes are predominantly contrived, I see three distinct camps within the general public. One small group believes that FDR got us out of the Great Depression, another even smaller group, feels the country got out of the Depressions in spite of FDR, and the vast majority thinks the Great Depression refers to Kirk Douglas's chin. Aside from, or maybe side by side with FDR's policies, the Great Depression was the last really good chance Communism had to overrun America. As a child, I often pondered whether America could be just as bad as China, North Korea, and the Soviet Union were depicted to be, and the only difference was the quality, and proximity of propaganda. Ironically, what would always cause me to reject the notion, was the protective shield of a free press. Now, if President Obama is accurate in his repeated comparisons drawn to the Great Depression and today, the element of American society that I saw as preventing Communism from taking control of America in the thirties, was a free press, which no longer exists today.