A Nation of Pansies

I have a few words to say about this insidious attitude which seems to be turning this country into a nation of pansies.

Stop whining, stop licking your wounds, stop feeling sorry for yourself.

Don’t be a pansy.

Toughen up. Don’t be a cry baby, don’t play the victim, don’t expect people to feel sorry for you.

We’ve had too much Oprah, too many grief counselors, too much talking about our “pain.” We’ve turned into sniveling narcissists engaged in one giant, nationwide pity party.

How embarrassing.

What makes me think of it is the report that the Army has started a service wide training program on mental-health awareness. Now, I’m all for mental health. I’m all for being understanding and for getting help when you need it. But I notice that mental illness is catching. The more you talk about it, the more people get it.

It’s like one giant placebo effect, a power-of-suggestion phenomenon of self-fulfilling prophecy. If I give a class on the signs of mental stress, people who thought they were perfectly fine suddenly start showing symptoms of mental stress. After a while, you’re going to have a pack of touchy-feely pansies intent on having the world kiss their boo-boo and feel sorry for them. That’s the last thing that the Army needs.

I’m not sure when it started, but in recent years, American society has been emotionally castrated. We’ve become so comfortable with being “in touch with our feminine side” that we act as if it’s the only side. The traditional male approach to emotional stress – to be tough and shake it off – is ridiculed and rejected. Few things seem more personal than our emotions and how we handle them, yet there is widespread intolerance for how many people do that.

We have chosen an affected emotionality that induces and rewards weakness and breakdown. Like a child whose mother comes running when it falls down and skins its knee, contemporary Americans unconsciously see sorrow and emotional upset as ways to become the center of attention and earn sympathy and even celebrity.

In short, you’re nobody until you cry.

Our culture once admired and rewarded toughness. Americans were strong and stoic. They crossed plains and climbed mountains and fought Indians. They won the wars, endured the depressions, survived the diseases. Now they just cry.

The media feeds into it. If there is a storm or a fire or an earthquake, the camera gets stuck in the face of whoever blubbers the loudest. The steady folks who simply set about picking up and going forward don’t make the evening news.

If there is a bad wreck or a fatal fire or some terrible murder, they put the cops and firefighters on TV talking about how emotionally hard it was for them. Which is confusing, because I thought the dead people were the victims.

With the economic downturn, the nightly news is a never-ending parade of whiners and crybabies, each trying to outdo the other in describing how devastated they are by the downturn. We have become so fond of weakness and victimhood that we embrace it and crave it.

“How do you feel?” has become our national obsession.

And now every soldier in Basic Training is going to get schooled on his feelings. I wonder which real soldier skill they would have taught in the time that is now being devoted to group-therapy claptrap. Instead of equipping soldiers better for the rigors of their duty, it weakens them and opens them to difficulties they likely wouldn’t otherwise have had. So-called “experts” should be honest enough to recognize that their prevention of mental stress actually plants the seeds of mental stress.

Humans are creatures who learn. We are pretty much monkey see, monkey do. And when you tell people that they are apt to have emotional pain and disability, they unconsciously rise to the expectation. Having been taught that emotional disability is an expected result of military stress, they respond to military stress with emotional disability.

If on the other hand, a culture or a class teaches people that they are tough, that they can endure difficulty and stress, surprisingly, they are tough and they endure difficulty and stress.

It is vogue today to mock the old ethic of “suck it up and march on.” It is ridiculed as some sort of unevolved, Neanderthal attitude. It actually was a very useful and very kind ethic. It strengthened people for the challenges of their duty.

Why do you suppose our Army has record-high suicide rates today?

It can’t be because of the stress of their duty. While hugely difficult, it is not unusually so. Compared with the warriors of Vietnam, Korea and the Second World War, even multiply deployed soldiers today are not facing anything their predecessors didn’t face. In some ways, the duty of today is less rigorous than that of earlier generations.

Yet those generations had far-lower suicide rates? Why is that? What has changed? Have the soldiers changed? Are they genetically different? Is there some difference in the chemical make up of their brains?

No. Soldiers are soldiers. They haven’t changed. But their culture has. Whereas their fathers and grandfathers went into the service having been raised in a culture that encouraged and admired toughness, the soldiers of today grew up in a world “in touch with its feelings.” It is not the absence of emotional awareness that contributes to these suicides, it is the abundance of it.

When you raise people in a bath of crying Oprah guests and weeping faces on the evening news, when you warn them that they are going to be emotionally brittle, you cannot be surprised if, in fact, they turn out emotionally brittle.

The touchy-feely psychobabble attitude is not the cure, it is the cause. It’s too bad the Army doesn’t realize that, because it is going to do more harm than good.

Society should realize that. Parents should realize that. We are mollycoddling ourselves and turning into a nation of pansies.

Were You Asking Me a Question, Mr. President?

The answer is NO!

We don't want you to save us, we don't believe in your plan, we don't trust you to do it for us.

We'd rather be free.

That's what they don't discuss on the evening news. Amidst all the sob stories about expensive pills and death panels, completely overlooked is the principle involved -- and that is that government should not compete with or replace private enterprise. Nowhere in the Constitution or in our history is the federal government authorized to take over or run health care. It is not an enumerated power and it is not an inferred power, it is an assumed power.

And we all know what happens when we assume. (TJ - that's ASS U ME).

The problem with a runaway federal government -- the sort of government we've known over recent years and months -- is that it violates the principles upon which our Republic was founded. It's funny, but the most complex problems are often solved by the application of the simplest of principles. When you get the basics right, everything else takes care of itself. If you untangle and encourage the appropriate function of government and society -- if you turn loose individual liberty and the free market -- problems fix themselves and success comes to both individuals and society.

But that's not how things work today, and that's not what the president is thinking.

Instead of limited government and maximized liberty, what the president suggested last night was empowered government and diminished liberty. And it doesn't really matter how many stories he tells to make us feel sympathetic, or how much money he offers us, or how many songs he sings about justice and equality and compassion, the fact is that the government is not an insurance company and it is not a hospital, and it shouldn't pretend it is. To the extent that it does, it will fail and it will take us down with it.

What the president and many in his party fail to realize is that the purpose of the American government is to safeguard freedom. Our Republic is formed around the premise that liberty is our first priority. It is not meant to protect us from every ill, or take away the possibility of failure, or insulate us from our misfortunes and poor choices. It is meant to protect our liberties. Anything that takes away our liberties must not be embrased even if it is done in the name of "compassion" or "justice."

You can't do the right thing the wrong way. You do not liberate one man by enslaving another. To feed one citizen another citizen's bread, you must first steal it from that citizen. Crime in the name of compassion is still crime.

Each enterprise the federal government puts its hands on turns bitter and failed. Bureaucracy, political correctness and ineptitude breed inefficiency and waste. But the greatest waste is freedom -- the freedom to live the way we choose and do our business the way we choose. Health care is fundamentally a private concern. It is not a right, no more than a haircut is a right. Yes, private charity may provide health care -- as it has from the beginning of our nation -- but public compulsion sacrifices a right for a want and must never be tolerated.

The president thought his TelePrompt-tured eloquence could sway the public, that his magic words would sweep away the will of thousands shouted at town-hall meetings. He thought that his glorified touch would make everything right. But he was wrong.

You can't pick up a turd by the clean end, and you can't do nanny government the right way. He is grabbing power for himself and invoking servitude for us.

Government is not to compete with or replace private enterprise -- that includes insurance companies and hospitals.

It is a first principle of our Republic, explained and exemplified by the Founding Fathers and followed by wise leaders since.

It's not about sob stories, it's about freedom. And, simply put, Mr. President, we don't want what you're selling.

Stay the Hell Away from our Kids

I, for one, am pulling my kids out today during the school's mandatory Obama brainwashing of America's kids. Like so many others, we don't want Obama talking to our kids.

Why don't we want him talking to our kids? I mean, Reagan did it in 1988. He addressed Junior High School students and they got to ask the President of the United States questions that ranged from what are the so-called "Reaganomics" to how did he feel about gun bans.

So what's the big deal? Why are things so different now?

It’s fairly simple, really.

Tens of millions of American parents don’t trust the president. The upset over this morning’s presidential address to schoolchildren isn’t about the partisan divide, it’s about the president’s arrogance.

After seven months of crammed-down-your-throat Obama agenda, half the country has had a bellyful. After seven months of being told that they don’t matter, half the country is returning the sentiment.

They don’t trust him with their children not because they’re paranoid, but because he’s not trustworthy. He has shown himself to be an enemy to their values and beliefs – to be hostile to their families and their country – and they are merely saying, “Stay the hell away from our kids.”

This isn’t about Republicans, this is about Barack Obama. Specifically, it is about a president who steamrolled and marginalized those who didn’t vote for him and who now is astounded that they won’t kiss his royal backside. He wants to be a rock star but nobody’s buying tickets.

Here’s the background.

The Department of Education sent out talking points for teachers, outlines of lesson plans intended to precede and follow a then-unannounced speech by the president to elementary school students. Troublesome in the wording was a suggested assignment that pupils be asked to write down a plan for how they could help President Obama.

That ticked people off, but that was only part of it. Not only didn’t parents want their kids being drafted into the Obama army, they didn’t want this particular socialist politicizing the classroom.

When you’ve got a classroom being run by an NEA member and you’re piping in Barack Hussein Orwell, all of a sudden the home-school people don’t seem so kooky. All of a sudden it seems like an unnecessary lecture intended primarily to indoctrinate the impressionable into the cult of Big Brother.

Parents don’t so much mind the president talking to their children, but seven months have taught the country to expect propaganda, not talk.

Further, about half the country simply doesn’t trust his basic philosophy. Like the notion that America’s children need a lecture on doing their homework from the head of the federal government. See, the federal government isn’t in charge of my children’s education – I am. And American children don’t need the president to tell them that education is important – that’s what parents are for.

Every child in every classroom has a parent or guardian who can talk to them about doing their homework and paying attention in school. Every student in every classroom has a teacher or two who can talk to them about working hard and setting goals.

For crying out loud, even Bill Cosby is telling children about the importance of education.

We don’t need the Marxist-in-Chief to think that the nanny government has to get in the act. And, no offense intended, but there are a bunch of us who think that “community organizer” is not exactly the role model we want our children following. For a certain portion of America, squealing for a bigger cut of other people’s tax money isn’t particularly noble and it’s not what we want our kids to grow up to do.

Further, we prefer that people who used illegal drugs not hold themselves out as teachers of the young. We are not impressed by the irony that the guy in charge of the military would be barred – by virtue of his teen-aged drug use – from enlisting in the military.

But the bottom line isn’t politics or philosophy – it’s the way he’s treated us. He has treated half the electorate like dirt and has done nothing, through the first eighth of his term, to make friends or earn himself the benefit of the doubt.

Typically, when someone wins an election, he sets out to reassure and woo the folks who didn’t vote for him. Typically, basic decency makes a politician want to show he’s serving all the people.

The Obama Administration and the Democrats who control Congress have had no such disposition. It has been an arrogance unmatched for decades as divergent views have been dismissed and mocked. Half the country feels that the president and the Congress are condescendingly dismissive of them.

He has had seven months to extend an olive branch. He has chosen not to. He has chosen instead to attack people and philosophies different from his. He has chosen to play fast and loose with American tradition and principle. He has practiced scorched-earth politics against the people whose taxes support his grand dreams. He has dismissed anyone who doesn’t agree with him.

And tens of millions of Americans don’t want a person like that talking to their children.

And I’m one of them.

Town Hall Meeting with U.S. Congressman Brian Baird

This is off of You Tube and the descrition of this guy's channel

I, David William Hedrick, a member of the silent majority, decided that I was not going to be silent anymore. So, I let U.S. Congressman Brian Baird have it. I was one questioner out of 38, that was called at random from an audience that started at 3,000 earlier in the evening. Not expecting to be called on, I quickly scratched what I wanted to say on a borrowed piece of paper and with a pen that I borrowed from someone else in the audience minutes before I spoke. So much for the planned talking points of the right wing conspiracy.

Utah Believes in the Second Ammendment

Did you know that you can get a Utah concealed carry gun permit that is good in 30 other states in the Union?

I’d like you to join me in applying for a Utah concealed carry permit.

Let me explain why.

In Utah, we believe in the Second Amendment, so much so that we repeat it and expand it in our state constitution. And our laws reflect that.

For example, if you have a concealed carry permit from anywhere in the country, it’s honored in Utah. And that openness has resulted in an interesting phenomenon – Utah’s concealed carry license is itself accepted in most parts of the country.

Specifically, 30 states will honor a Utah pistol permit. If you have a Utah permit, you can carry in those states.

Now here’s the interesting thing. You don’t have to live in Utah to get a Utah permit. You don’t even have to visit Utah. You can do it all through the mail. You will have to take a class, but you can probably do that where you live, and the rest can be done long distance.

And two months later – if your background is clean – you will have the closest thing there is to a national concealed carry permit. Ironically, it may even be quicker and easier to get a Utah permit to carry in your state than if you went directly through your state government itself.

Now, here's an example of one of the states that does not understand the Second Ammendment – New York. New York doesn’t accept any other state’s permit. And, consequently, few other states accept New York’s permit – even though it is one of the most difficult and time-consuming to get.

And the odd thing is, a New York permit isn’t even good in all of New York. If you go into or through the New York City area, your permit is no good. If you cross a county line you stop being a law-abiding citizen and become a felon.

So a New York permit is good for driving back and forth to work and for around home. But if you’re taking any sort of a road trip, or going on vacation to another state, it’s useless. For holders of a New York concealed carry permit, the Second Amendment ends at the Pennsylvania state line.

Fortunately, though, they can be saved by the Utah legislature. And so can you. A Utah license will instantly create 30 more states where the Second Amendment will apply. It won’t be in all of America – we haven’t won that battle for liberty yet – but it will be 60 percent of the way there.

And while I’m grateful for that, I’m disappointed with a Congress that has failed to protect our constitutional right to keep and bear arms in all 50 states.

Here’s what I mean.

New York drivers licenses are honored in all 50 states. Ditto for marriage licenses and birth certificates. A divorce decree, or a name change, authorized by one state would be recognized by the others. Virtually all state-issued licenses and documents are honored by the other states – there’s a clause in the Constitution about that – but not pistol permits.

It is ironic that the only one of those things specifically protected by the Constitution is the only one of them not recognized.

What America needs is a national concealed carry permit. It is a keen disappointment that the Republican-controlled and NRA-backed Congress has not supplied that, and we will keep working on eventually getting one.

But until then, Utah is the next-best thing. It doesn’t cover the entire country, but it covers most of it.

Some will see this as a gun-nut loophole, that somehow Utah is opening the door to handgun ownership and carry to a slew of goofballs from all across the country. Some will see this as taking advantage of Utah. I don’t see it that way at all.

I see this as a situation in which the legislature of Utah has a keener understanding of American freedom and a greater regard for the American people than the legislatures of most other states. I see it as a service being provided the country by this freedom-loving state. I’m not taking advantage of it, I’m celebrating it.

I’m holding it up as a good example. I am applauding the politicians and government of Utah for doing what their counterparts across the country should do.

I feel the federal and several state governments have failed to honor the Constitution. Where they have failed, however, Utah has not. And I am grateful for that.

And I’m going to get a Utah concealed carry permit.

And I’m going to be grateful to my state and its leaders for helping more Americans to be free.

Cash for Clunkers Could Lead to Government Bulldozing Homes?

FORT LEE, N.J., Aug. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Inflation Association today released the following statement to its http://inflation.us members:

"The United States government's "cash for clunkers" program, which was just expanded by $2 billion on Thursday, exemplifies the stupidity of politicians in Washington today. It's insane to think that destroying perfectly good and valuable assets, cars that people can drive, will help save our economy. This program is digging our economy into a deeper hole that we will never be able to dig out of.

We do not have an automobile crisis in the U.S., the average American household already has 2.3 cars. The automobile industry needed to collapse in order to build a new viable auto industry from the ground-floor. By artificially boosting car sales, the government is preventing the free market from cleaning out the excesses in the industry.

During the Great Depression, millions of Americans couldn't afford to buy food. With food prices falling and huge surpluses of food building, the government decided to pass the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 which forced farmers to destroy crops and livestock in an attempt to artificially drive up food prices. The plan backfired and led to millions of Americans starving, prolonging the Great Depression for another six years.

The current financial crisis in America was caused by both the U.S. government and American people getting into too much debt. Not only is the government getting deeper into debt by purchasing used cars for $4,500 and destroying them, but Americans are being forced to get deeper into debt to buy new cars. The used cars being purchased and destroyed were owned by Americans outright. The free market would've encouraged Americans to drive these cars until they stopped working, while rebuilding their savings. The government is preventing this from happening and doing greater damage to the economy.

Four out of the top five models of new cars being purchased as part of "cash for clunkers" are foreign cars. Therefore, very little of this newly printed money is going to the bailed out U.S. automobile manufacturers. We are increasing our trade deficit with Japan and other foreign countries at a time when we should be manufacturing cars that we export to the rest of the world, so that we can shrink our trade deficit.

With all of the new government employees being hired to administrate "cash for clunkers", the true cost is over $6,000 per car. Most modern day economists featured by the mainstream media say "cash for clunkers" will be a huge boost to the economy, because it will help lower unemployment and increase our GDP. It's amazing how they can phrase the program as a success, when it is only leading our country further down the path of hyperinflation. The misguided and irresponsible phrase in the mainstream media will encourage politicians to come up with more stupid programs for other so-called crises.

Real Estate prices in America still haven't fallen to below year 2000 levels because the banks that are foreclosing on properties are sitting on these properties and not selling them. After banks get the required infrastructure and manpower in place and begin selling them, Real Estate prices will fall to unimaginably low levels. Will the government repeat their mistakes with the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 and "cash for clunkers" and begin purchasing these houses from banks only to bulldoze them?

There have already been isolated cases in places such as Victorville, California, where banks have destroyed nearly complete new homes instead of completing and selling them. In Flint, Michigan, local government officials are promoting "the concept of shrinking Flint in order to make it stronger", by bulldozing 40% of the community. What is to stop the federal government from destroying already built existing homes, to prevent them from becoming listed on the market? It sounds like insanity, and it is, but if the government destroyed food and is now destroying cars, houses are likely next."

Please spread the word about NIA and have your friends subscribe for free at http://inflation.us

About us:

The National Inflation Association is an organization that is dedicated to preparing Americans for hyperinflation. The NIA offers free membership at http://www.inflation.us and provides its members with articles about the economy and inflation, news stories, important charts not shown by the mainstream media; YouTube videos featuring Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, and others; and profiles of gold, silver, and agriculture companies that we believe could prosper in an inflationary environment.
Press Release
Source: National Inflation Association
On Friday August 7, 2009, 2:24 pm EDT

There's Something I Want To Share With You

There's something I want to share. Something personal and private, something close to my heart.

I had thought to keep it private, to let my family face this alone and unknown, but I couldn't. My wife and I decided that perhaps our experience can help others, that maybe the road we are called to walk down can be of use to someone else. I'm not one of these people to wear ribbons or host telethons or get a colonoscopy just because Katie Couric said to, but sometimes these things just hit so gosh darn close to home that you can't keep quiet. You have to speak out.

So I am speaking out. If my family's experience can shine the light of public awareness on my daughter's affliction, if we can help just one other child, or make the way easier for a single family, then our pain and loss of privacy will be worthwhile.

So here goes. I have something to announce. My daughter has dysrationalia. We have been suspicious for a while, and it was confirmed last week.

We are a family with dysrationalia because when one member of a family has dysrationalia, it impacts everyone. Since the diagnosis, our house has been turned upside down. Every part of our life has been impacted.

Further, dysrationalia is genetic, and when one member of a family has it, there is a very strong likelihood that others in the family will have it as well. And though I don't want to go into too much detail, when our daughter started showing the signs of dysrationalia, I was quick to recognize the familiar tell-tale traits such as the fits and emotional break-downs.

For children in the early stages of dysrationalia there are many signs of what appear to be emotional and psychological disorders. The crying uncontrollably for no apparent reason. Flareups of anger over nothing. Sometimes she will lash out at us. It's hard.

When they get older, when the dysrationalia is more advanced, it can lead to more severe bouts of anger and frustration, as well as poor judgment and decision making. With dysrationalia parents sometimes feel helpless and out of control. Often, they are as frustrated as their affected children. It is a devistating condition.

And this is what our daughter has. Our little girl has dysrationalia.

I'm not saying this to get sympathy, or to collect money. Heaven knows there will be plenty of time for those things later. Right now, I'm just about awareness. It's like when that one TV guy's wife got irritable-bowel syndrome and she told about it on "Oprah," there are times when you show your pain and your vulnerability if it will help other people face the challenges of their lives. We're all human here, and we all face our trials and challenges, and when it's family it's family, and family helps family, and I hope my family can help yours.

Sure, I live a pretty decent life. I'm an IT Professional, I have a network of computers, and I've found I have a talent for cooking (which my wife thoroughly appreciates). I've kind of got it made in the shade. But this sort of stuff happens even to people like me. At the end of the day, we all put our pants on one leg at a time.

And I want my daughter's story to be heard. I want people to know. I want to raise public awareness.

I'm tired of people having to suffer in silence, and if my daughter's story gives one family the courage to stand up and say, "We have dysrationalia, too!" then I will be happy.

It's time for those of us touched by dysrationalia to stand up on our own two feet and make our voices heard. It is time for the government to pay attention to our children, too. It's time for an uncaring society to feel our pain. It's time that we stopped looking the other way when someone with dysrationalia passes. It's time that dysrationalia stopped being the invisible diagnosis.

We waited and wondered for a year, watching for signs. Countless silent families have done the same. Countless silent families have met the same fate.

But we're not going to be silent anymore.

My daughter has dysrationalia.

And I will not hang my head in shame any longer.