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The Panhandle Rancher speaks……Prepping and praying and pass the bullets please
Essentials of Prepping: Prepping and praying and pass the bullets please
POLITICS, AND HOPE
Politics, a word made dirty by too many of our elected officials, by desperate office holders seeking to do anything, make any promise, make any compromise, in order ‘keep their jobs’ and get re-elected.
Like our ‘progressive’ income tax where each pays ‘his fair share,’ government has the reward system backwards. I would limit every elected position to only two terms. Or perhaps reduce salary and retirement pension for the third and each successive future terms of office. At least that way we would know our elected officials weren’t there for the money. Better yet, I would additionally require prior government service such with the armed forces as a prerequisite for any elected office. Not likely you say. Well, perhaps.
Too many of us believe we have slim margin for hope – for that glorious republic governed according to the principles of honor and integrity.
I have an answer for each of you who have lost hope. In a previous post, I spoke of my father’s generation of WWII veterans who organized and did what was necessary to protect their families. This is now your responsibility my friends, it is your generation that must organize today in order to meet the challenges of an uncertain tomorrow.
Change begins at home. You have already initiated a measure of change for yourselves and for your families. By becoming a prepper, you have accepted and acknowledged individual responsibility for your future. This is a giant step, especially when all around there are people clamoring for the government to help them, and a people willing to sacrifice their very freedom in exchange for that ‘help.’
I challenge you, responsible prepper. I challenge you to accept an even greater responsibility. My father and those other members of that ‘Greatest Generation’ were certainly involved with their government. Collectively, they had paid a high price for their freedom, they knew not only of its value but of its rarity in this world, and they knew that struggle is always necessary in order for a free people to remain free.
Change in government is indeed possible. The challenge I lay upon you is to get involved with your local political party (usually at the county level). Seek out your party chairman and tell them you want to help. My family did and a decade ago we had a hand in drafting the Republican Party Platform that codified core Party values, those values candidates seeking office under that Platform should strive to uphold. My son was a delegate to the Texas Republican Convention at age 26. You too can become a delegate to a state or national convention. There is no better way to get involved in the process of elected government.
Change happens most easily at the local level of government be it city, county, or state. Don’t like what the public schools are teaching your children – then run for the school board and take personal responsibility for what is being taught. As your knowledge and abilities increase, continue to accept even greater responsibility by running for city or county commissioner, then county judge or even sheriff. Only by taking personal responsibility for our government can we ever hope to ‘make a difference,’ and preserve our fast vanishing freedom. By ever seeking different elected positions, perhaps an office with even greater responsibility, you avoid my label, Professional Politician.
By challenging those Professional Politicians who hope some day to retire after having held the same office for two decades or more, we accomplish much for our community, the least of which is to create a pool of individuals who know what makes things run, a pool of individuals who know the levers of local power, and who hopefully will remain vigilant against abuse of that power by their successors. Folks, do you know that in many states, the only statutory requirement for being county judge or sheriff is just being elected? That’s right, the only requirement for office is holding the people’s trust. Once elected, the state will organize schools to help you understand the technical aspects of your new position. Have courage my prepper friends, stand up and accept responsibility for your government; this is the citizen’s highest obligation.
This mess we have now happened because too few have had the courage to accept personal responsibility and make our communities a better place in which to live.
It is easy to get elected to local office. You heard me, it is so easy. First, live you lives with integrity and honor. There are no higher requirements for any political office, even that of the President, and especially for that office. There are a lot of well-educated and very smart people out there who haven’t the least particle of integrity or honor. Our public offices – just like our jails, are full of this base sort. A good education may help you better manage the tools of office but there is nothing more important to that office than integrity and honor. I rather would have an honorable official with moderate talent over a less honorable official holding a Ph.D. with membership in Mensa. Honor and integrity, those must come first.
So you may ask, what are the mechanics of getting elected? Easy, first live in your community with honor and integrity, join the political party of your choice, and get involved in local party mechanics, perhaps as a poll watcher or election judge. When you are ready for the responsibility of elected office, all you must do in order to be elected, is to personally visit with every registered voter of your political party residing the district governing the primary for the office that you seek. When you win your party primary, then you must visit with all of the other registered voters in the other party(s) of that district. This is a time proven way to be elected and there are no shortcuts. Advertisement and mass mailings can help get your message out to the voters but there is nothing, there is nothing, more effective than visiting the voter at his residence for a private visit. If the voter doesn’t know you, then introduce yourself as an involved citizen, a neighbor of the community, one who is concerned about the quality of local government. Let the voter know you are willing to accept personal responsibility for the elected office you seek and that you are going to run that office with honor and integrity and dispatch. If there is an issue, and it can even be the problems arising from Professional Politicians, describe that issue and your solution to it. Close the visit with a handshake, look the voter in the eye, and ask for his vote. That is the hard part. I found this most humbling – asking for someone to trust me with elected office. I think if you are at all worthy of the position, it will be humbling for you as well. That is all it takes to win your election. I found widows wanting to feed me, dogs wanting to bite me, people willing to argue without listening to my response, even a few slammed doors or ‘no answers.’ That is what the candidate’s card is for – to leave on porch, the windshield, the gate, along with a handwritten note explaining that you stopped by to visit about the position you are seeking. This note asks the person to call you with a time that is convenient for you to return. Most won’t call but they will get the message that you care enough to stop by. It is even better when your opponent never takes the time for that personal visit. This method requires effort. My campaign lasted more than six months and I eventually visited every registered voter that would talk with me. If the office you seek is really important to you, the time will be available. This method works, I know.
Get involved with your local government. You may never change the national scene but you will have the satisfaction of causing beneficial change in your local community. Good government begins at home and ends with political office.
President Franklin Roosevelt closed his January 6, 1941 State of the Union address by describing what he thought were four essential freedoms:
Freedom to Worship,
Freedom from Fear,
Freedom From Want and,
Freedom of Speech.
He said, “…In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression – everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called “new order” of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb…”
In those dark days, England stood alone against the tyranny of the Axis Powers. Shortly after FDR’s Four Freedoms speech, this country would once again be engaged in the pursuit of a business most dire, the business of ending World War II. My father’s generation ended that war in less time than my generation has fought Al Qaeda.
Norman Rockwell captured the spirit of the Four Freedoms in a series of paintings. My favorite of those paintings is below.
The wonder of Rockwell is that we each find something compelling about his paintings. I see a man standing in order to address a town meeting. The agenda of that meeting is in his pocket. I imagine this man may have served in the military but recognize that it would be unusual for him to be home in 1943, but that is only the date of the painting that is intended to represent timeless values. From the expressions of the people looking at him as he speaks, I sense that this man has lived with honor and integrity in his community and that he has learned to walk with responsibility. Rockwell has captured the spirit of good government in this painting. The essence of this spirit is the dialogue between the governed and those who seek to govern.
I hope you can find the courage to become personally involved and take responsibility for your government. If you do not, then you shall certainly have exactly that government which you deserve, a government of political hacks, a government unresponsive to the people, and eventually a government of such unrestrained power that it rules the very people it was created to serve. And if this happens, each of you will know with a certainty, exactly who is to blame.
Humbly submitted,
Panhandle Rancher
© 2014, Rourke. All rights reserved.
Source: http://modernsurvivalonline.com/the-panhandle-rancher-speaks-prepping-and-praying-and-pass-the-bullets-please-2/
