I think I know who you are.

After September 11th you thought our country had changed for the better. But the months that followed proved otherwise. We began to divide ourselves and the partisan bickering that was absent from blood lines and church service started all over again.

You sometimes argue with friends about politics, not because you are a political activist, but because you think the issues are actually important. You have strong beliefs, but you also have an open mind and a warm heart.

You try to do the right thing every day. You work hard, you always try to do your best and you play by the rules.

You have credit cards, but you can make the payments. You have a home, but with a loan you can afford. Maybe you bought a flat screen television that wasn’t exactly a necessity, but you’ve never been reckless.

You don’t have much in savings and your retirement plans have lost a significant amount of money.

You may go to church, but most weekends, you don’t really want to—you’d rather sleep in or play with your kids. Besides, it bothers you that people cut each other off in the parking lot right after the service.

You have children and, like all families, you also have your share of problems—but you’re making it. You constantly hope that your kids don’t notice you’re bluffing as a parent most of the time.

You don’t feel like there’s enough time in the day anymore to just be a family. Everyone is always going in six different directions. You know material things don’t matter, but you wonder why it makes you feel like a bad parent if your kids don’t have certain shoes, the newest video games, or aren’t signed-up for five different sports teams.

You didn’t have anywhere near the kind of stuff that today’s kids have and yet you look back on your childhood with a sense of nostalgia and pride. If your family was poor, you didn’t know it.

You turn on the television at the end of a long, tiring day and watch as faceless analysts in left/right boxes argue about things done by bankers that, in retrospect, seem implausible. You’re worried about what’s happening to our economy, but you’re more worried about what it means for your family—and you’re not sure what to do.

You don’t hate people who are different than you, but you stopped expressing opinions on sensitive issues a long time ago because you don’t want to be called a racist, bigot or homophobe if you stand by your values and principles. You believe in treating people justly and honestly but there is a difference between right and wrong.

You go to bed exhausted almost every night, knowing you have to get up the next day and do it all over again.

You thought that the politicians you supported and defended cared about the issues you do. Then you began to realize that you were wrong—they only care about themselves and their careers. You feel used and betrayed.

You don’t think it’s right that while you worked hard, lived prudently, and spent wisely, those who did the opposite are now being bailed out at your expense. You realize now that self-serving politicians and bankers built our financial system on a house of cards that, despite the cheery promises and rosy forecasts, is now collapsing.

Now our government, the instigator of our problems, is telling everyone that they have to start sacrificing. Don’t they understand that I already have been, you think. You weren’t the one spending too much or living on money you didn’t have. You made decisions rooted in logic while others made decisions rooted in greed—yet now everyone must pay equally?

Yet, despite all of that, you’re still willing to sacrifice more because you want America to succeed. But you demand a plan that’s based on common sense and that actually has a chance to work. You’ve called your congressman a few times in the past, but they don’t listen. Now you just scream at the television. It’s about as effective as the phone calls.

The light from the television flickers on the darkened room walls - people at tea parties across the nation fill the screen. You don’t know how to feel. You want to do something, but that isn’t you. You’re not an activist. You don’t make signs or chant: USA! USA! USA! So, you turn-off your light and go to sleep.

Every night it seems you are faced with a choice: do you unplug or do you speak out? Both of those options make you uncomfortable so you do neither…and your frustration continues to grow.

GLENN BECK’S COMMON SENSE

__________________
"Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively and without self delusion---In the long run these are the only people that count." ***** Robert Heinlein

Good Post!

__________________
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.
Thomas Jefferson

* An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia regatur orbis?
o Translation: "Don't you know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?


VIVE LIBERTE'

Seems I was reading these same words about 2 days ago. How do you like it so far?
Maybe we could do a thread together on the subject matter.

I am trying to put a lot of the book into my own words so as to avoid copy right laws.. 300 word limit. I learned while doing a thread on "David cay Johnston's" book Free Lunch..................

Private message me if you want to do it.

__________________
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. - Samuel Johnson.. (1709 - 1784) Faith is what mine is built upon..

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

As you may have noticed it is often quite difficult to "word it better" than Glenn does.
Fortunately;
Glenn is not at all concerned with "copyright infringement" nor "profit" for that matter. He wishes merely to "get the word out" as is proven by his continuous reference to "read it and pass it on"........my only addition to his request would be to advise people to sign and date before passing. E-mail address optional. It is the "linking" that will be necessary soon to save our country.

__________________
"Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively and without self delusion---In the long run these are the only people that count." ***** Robert Heinlein

It was a very good commentary.

Paragraph 12 was the only concerning one:

That is a very loaded set of statements, particularly "but there is a difference between right and wrong". Loaded, yet can mean a plethora of things. It could be interpreted in very negative ways. It's like when someone says "Love the sinner, hate the sin" and people are supposed to feel like it's some sort of loving, caring statement.

Otherwise, a very good commentary. Many many truths.

__________________

Oh thats great news. Thanks..... I'm going to be busy for some days ahead now! I want to put it all together and then post it in sections...

why do you think I am still at the same place, that I caught that.. I have read ahead but find it very hard to replace his words and keep the true meaning using mine.
So lets do it together. Pick a chapter, starting from one. Get the main idea across, using his and our words to a small degree. And getting it made a sticky. You in? Our it will take me and my two fingers a long while.......

__________________
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. - Samuel Johnson.. (1709 - 1784) Faith is what mine is built upon..

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

I think it is appropiate that this opinion piece be placed here. I loathe to start another thread when it isn't necessary.

Common Sense tells me that this nation is no longer a representative republic, we are a socialist democracy and fast slipping into a communist nightmare.

Today while watching the news on FOX it was revealed that Carol Browner had secret meetings with top auto exec's and in the meeting she told everyone to NOT write anything down. FOX commentators asked rightly, "where's the transparency that we were promised?" And, "didn't the democrats get all up in arms about Cheney's secret meetings?"

Obama has been appointing czars at an alarming rate, none of which answers to the people only to Obama. He has corrupted our democratic process and is taking over private business and congressional oversight. And yet, those who support him see nothing wrong in this. Yet Bush was so evil our rights were threatened.

I have to ask who is more threatening to our rights, a president who wants to protect the nation from terrorists, or one who is dismantling our Constitution to the cheers of our enemies?

================================================== ========

Socialist America sinking
Pat Buchanan: Even the CFR is seeing seriousness of nation's decline

Posted: July 16, 2009
8:41 pm Eastern



By Patrick J. Buchanan



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


After half a century of fighting encroachments upon freedom in America, journalist Garet Garrett published "The People's Pottage." A year later, in 1954, he died. "The People's Pottage" opens thus:

"There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom."

Garrett wrote of a revolution within the form. While outwardly America appeared the same, a revolution within had taken place that was now irreversible. One need only glance at where we were before the New Deal, where we are and where we are headed to see how far we are off the course the Founding Fathers set for our republic.

Taxes drove the American Revolution, for we were a taxaphobic, liberty-loving people. That government is best that governs least is an Americanism. When "Silent Cal" Coolidge went home in 1929, the U.S. government was spending 3 percent of gross domestic product.

And today? Obama's first budget will consume 28 percent of the entire GDP; state and local governments another 15 percent. While there is some overlap, in 2009, government will consume 40 percent of GDP, approaching the peak of World War II.

The deficit for 2009 is $1.8 trillion, 13 percent of the whole economy. Obama is pushing a cap-and-trade bill to cut carbon emissions that will impose huge costs on energy production, spike consumer prices and drive production offshore to China, which is opting out of Kyoto II. The Chinese are not fools.

Obama plans to repeal the Bush tax cuts and take the income tax rate to near 40 percent. Combined state and local income tax rates can run to 10 percent. For the self-employed, payroll taxes add up to 15.2 percent on the first $106,800 for all wages of all workers. Medicare takes 2.9 percent of all wages above that. Then there are the state sales taxes that can run to 8 percent, property taxes, gas taxes, excise taxes and "sin taxes" on booze, cigarettes and, soon, hot dogs and soft drinks.

Comes now national health insurance from Nancy Pelosi's House. A surtax that runs to 5.4 percent of all earnings of the top 1 percent of Americans, who already pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes, has been sent to the Senate. Included also is an 8 percent tax on the entire payroll of small businesses that fail to provide health insurance for employees.

Other ideas on the table include taxing the health benefits that businesses provide their employees.

The D.C.-based Tax Foundation says New Yorkers could face a combined income tax rate of near 60 percent.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson called George III a tyrant for having "erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."

What did George III do with his Stamp Act, Townshend Acts or tea tax to compare with what is being done to this generation of Americans by their own government?

While the hardest-working and most productive are bled, a third of all wage-earners pay no U.S. income tax, and Obama plans to free almost half of all wage-earners of all income taxes. Yet, tens of millions get Medicaid, rent supplements, free education, food stamps, welfare and an annual check from Uncle Sam called an Earned Income Tax Credit, though they never paid a nickel in income taxes.


Oh, yes. Obama also promises everybody a college education.

Coming to America to feast on this cornucopia of freebies is the world. One million to 2 million immigrants, legal and illegal, arrive every year. They come with fewer skills and less education than Americans, and consume more tax dollars than they contribute by three to one.

Wise Latina women have more babies north of the border than they do in Mexico and twice as many here as American women.

As almost all immigrants are now Third World people of color, they qualify for ethnic preferences in hiring and promotions and admissions to college over the children of Americans.

All of this would have astounded and appalled the Founding Fathers, who after all, created America – as they declared loud and clear in the Constitution – "for ourselves and our posterity."

China saves, invests and grows at 8 percent. America, awash in debt, has a shrinking economy, a huge trade deficit, a gutted industrial base, an unemployment rate surging toward 10 percent and a money supply that's swollen to double its size in a year. The 20th century may have been the American Century. The 21st shows another pattern.

"The United States is declining as a nation and a world power with mostly sighs and shrugs to mark this seismic event," writes Les Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, in CFR's Foreign Affairs magazine. "Astonishingly, some people do not appear to realize that the situation is all that serious."

Even the establishment is starting to get the message.

__________________
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.
Thomas Jefferson

* An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia regatur orbis?
o Translation: "Don't you know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?


VIVE LIBERTE'

Sounds good to me. After all it was Common Sense that built American.
And a lot of UNCOMMON SENSE to get America where it is today. And others like you have that Common Sense, so let all have a say, it's the American way...

Adept1 I am wondering about the many articles Beck used. Credit must be given to the original writers if it is used. We need their permission to do that.

So I am going to use some of the book but do more of a summary if I get started.... I got a lot of notes. But time I have litte of.

Adept1 That is my main goal..............

__________________
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. - Samuel Johnson.. (1709 - 1784) Faith is what mine is built upon..

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

This is based upon Glen Beck’s book Common Sense, The case against an
Out-Of-Control Government… Inspired by Thomas Paine…With J. Kerry

A note from the author: 235 years ago a British citizen with only basic education set of for life in the British Colonies. Where he saw the effects of the oppression on his fellow colonists, by the British government. … In a short while he pinned a pamphlet anonymously, a work that is 7 months changed the world…Common Sense…

Do we still have any left in America? Think about it, we allow others to make decisions. That affects our daily lives. They admit the system is broken. Yet throw $$$$$ at it, like rain to the stream.

This pamphlet from release in January 1776, and 7 months later the signing of the Declaration of Independence….. Had impact on all who heard its words. Impressive.

Today we find ourselves back in 1776, says Beck. I know others who agree in this extreme thinking. Extreme because any words of revolution are never heard any longer, M.L.King Jr. was the last very outspoken extremist of his day.
We have allowed the fox in the hen house and keep sending them back. While we know that the system is broken… OMG if we really knew the whole truth, think they will share with us? mlurp……

Glen, goes on to say the abuses being perpetrated by our government are obvious. Yet we don’t rise up in a collective voice. We sit idly by and watch our hard won freedoms slowly dissolve into a puddle of apathy, political correctness, and outright corruption.

We feel worn down by the confusing debates over issues played out over the airwaves
daily.
But that’s the lie. The infighting and the purposeful division promoted by our political parties is a simple ploy to keep us from uniting. After all a citizenry that fights among itself over petty differences is to busy to notice the real causes of the problem.

As we together read this book or a summary of it. Know that I will try to keep the line of thought as Glen Beck presents it.
He says as we read the details of the immense harm that both parties have done to our country we might find ourselves wondering what can we do to change this current course or country find itself. Glen suggests several options all which are non violent…. Glen makes the point by saying, Thomas Paine and his fellow revolutionaries shed their blood
So that future generations would have acc to weapons immeasurably better to maintain the Republic. This great gift we allowed to slip away, that others fought, suffered dearly
So we could have the freedoms, the rights divinely given to mankind. Hey that’s what is was about back in that time period.. So just go along as we read, the weapons of speech, of the truths based upon principals we have allowed to slip away. Glen gets to that in a later chapter…

Over the years revolutionaries have used sharp tongues instead of sharp knives.. With great results.. M.L. King Jr. for instance once said to his supporters: The question is not weather we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be.. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

“Nonviolence is the answer to the political and moral question of our time”King said while accepting the Nobel Prize. He continued [man must] overcome oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is Love… I like it…

History has proven King right! Thomas Paine, proved that it doesn’t take celebrity, stature or wealth to make make a difference.

Beck, goes on to ask, if you believe that it’s time to put principals above parties, character above campaign promises and common sense above all. Do not remain neutral, Do not sit idly by, Do not others speak for you. Silence has gotten us nowhere so it’s time once again for our collective voice to make a simple yet powerful demand….

Don’t Tread On me………………….Signed Glen Beck………..

To continue...................

__________________
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. - Samuel Johnson.. (1709 - 1784) Faith is what mine is built upon..

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Warning!

Thomas Paine.

Was a great writer.
Was a "patriot".
His pamphlet "Common Sense" was said to have "instigated" the American revolution.

There is however a big HOWEVER,

Soon after the American revolution he went back to England and fostered some "radical ideas" and actually tended to be in favor of socialistic concepts. Although he is truly an American hero he was not so much in favor of capitalism.

__________________
"Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively and without self delusion---In the long run these are the only people that count." ***** Robert Heinlein