Flada Blog

Not about everything, mind you.  But he was right about one very important fact.

In most political campaigns today, the candidates are always talking about all of the things that are wrong that need to be fixed.  President Reagan campaigned the other way.  He talked about the things that were right with America.  One of his most memorable speeches came at the 1976 GOP convention–the impromptu “Shining City on the Hill” speech.

Today, the candidates are all talking about the things that are wrong.  Even my own [former] candidate, Ron Paul, spoke a lot more about how we’re in trouble than how great things are.  Granted, if things don’t turn around we could soon be in a lot of trouble–but that should emphasize how important it is to focus on the positives and come up with ways to achieve even more positives.  In most of his speeches and writings, that’s what my [former] candidate did, even if the press marketed him as a grouchy old man.

But the two remaining candidates aren’t talking about ways to acheive positives.  And on the rare occasion that they do, their only answers are to spend more of your hard-earned money.  That’s where Dr. Paul became grouchy–every time he saw another candidate promise to throw away more of your money.

Of course the biggest (and easiest) way to save money is to bring our troops home and shut down our Empire’s foreign bases.  According to Chalmers Johnson at The History News Network, we have well over a half million Americans employed overseas by our military.

Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations. To dominate the oceans and seas of the world, we are creating some thirteen naval task forces built around aircraft carriers whose names sum up our martial heritage — Kitty Hawk, Constellation, Enterprise, John F. Kennedy, Nimitz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John C. Stennis, Harry S. Truman, and Ronald Reagan. We operate numerous secret bases outside our territory to monitor what the people of the world, including our own citizens, are saying, faxing, or e-mailing to one another.

Even during the Cold War, we weren’t spread this far and wide despite the fact that we faced a real threat at that time.  The Soviet Union was a powerhouse that could readily match our military and technology.  Not like today where we are asked to live in fear of a medium-sized tribe of guys that live in caves who fight with weapons that we would hardly consider worthy of being peddled at the Army-Navy store.

To make matters worse, that minor threat wouldn’t be a threat at all if we hadn’t constantly been antagonizing them over the past 50+ years.  At least since the CIA orchestrated coup against Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq in 1953 that included dressing as Mosaddeq supporters and firing machine gun bursts into crowds.  This is the kind of thing our government does, and then we’re asked to act shocked when “Islamic extremists terrorists” retaliate.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  We can return to being the “shining city on the hill” if we stop believing all of the propaganda that our government puts out to convince us to let them become larger and more powerful.

Now, back to Reagan.  Things were rough in the 70’s and the early part of the 80’s.  In the 70’s there were long lines for gas.  Gas was relatively expensive (by the standards of the day) on those days that you could get it at all.  A lot of people panicked and worried that the country could never return to the glory days of the 50’s.  And they were right, it never did.  But it became better than it had been in the 50’s–different, and probably not as innocent, but in many ways better.  Part of that was due to having a leader who was an optimist.

That being said, although I still could never vote for Obama’s style of socialism; at least he is positive on occasion, and he has ideas even if his ideas are economically unrealistic.  On the other hand, McCain wants us to continue to live in fear, probably for the rest of our lives, of the boogeymen in the middle East.  He has no answers to the problems we face and most likely isn’t even aware of the questions.  This is definitely not an endorsement of Obama, but he probably is a slightly better choice than McCain–in much the same way that eating Tiger Tricholoma mushrooms is superior to dining on Pinkgills.

Fortunately, whichever clown wins; they will have only four years to screw things up worse.  During those four years, the Campaign for Liberty will do nothing but grow bigger and stronger.  The goal at this point is to get Ron Paul some help in the Congress and hopefully get a few like-minded folks elected to the Senate as well.  With this campaign and the masses that Dr. Paul has awakened from their apathy, within a few years we should have a few well-respected Senators and Congressmen that will make the current crop look even more ridiculous than they do now by contrast

That apex in the distance is looking bright again, indeed.