Thoughts from a Native Son

Did you ever ponder upon the changes that society has undergone in the last few decades. Did you ever yearn for the way things used to be. Think about it for a minute. It wasn’t that long ago when men were men, women were women, regardless of whether or not they were good or bad people. One thing you could count on was that gender lines were pretty clear. When a person’s gender was in question they weren’t typically accepted in society and were typically pitied, or laughed at in a good humored way.
Did you ever wonder when exactly it was that children could no longer play on their neighborhood streets without adult protection? When you were a kid didn’t you get to wonder down to your friend’s house for hours at a time without your parents having to deliver you, have positive hand-off to another adult, and then return to pick you up? Would you think about such actions today for more than a split second?
In my youth and even later as a young man words had consequences. You could pretty much say what you wanted as long as you were willing to stand behind what you said. In fact, you were expected to stand by your words. If you didn’t you weren’t tolerated very long. It was to be expected for a fellow to knock your pud in the dirt when you got in his face and were offensive; in fact you were respected if you did and considered to be something less than manly if you didn’t. If a man were disrespectful to a woman all men present stood up in her defense whether they knew her or not. By the same token, inappropriate conduct by a woman pretty much set her outside the protective boundaries of polite society. Today I find that many, possibly most people respect me because they know that I stand by my word. By the same token I’ve been told more than once that adults many fear me because they know I stand by word. The irony is that there seems to be growing numbers at senior levels that fear rather than respect a man of integrity.
In the fifties and earlier moral issues were pretty much black and white, everyone knew where the line was drawn. The difference between then and now is that we still know where the lines are drawn, but in many cases society in general doesn’t care if you cross the line; and in most cases there is no temporal penalty if you cross it. Now I suspect that my generation gets a fair share of credit for much of the change in this area; I mean the sixties surly fall into our collective laps.
Through my formative years as a young half-breed Indian in Oklahoma I was taught that this was the land of the free, home of the brave, a land of promise, and that the “American Dream” was alive and well if one was simply willing to work for it. It seems that the phrase du joir is “entitlement”. It appears that somewhere along the line we’ve lost the concept and expectation that we are expected to “earn” our slice of Americana; and in its place is the idea that “everyone is entitled” to anything-everything without lifting a finger to earn it.
About now you’re wondering where this meandering diatribe is leading. It’s simply this. I believe that voting is both a responsibility and a privilege. Throughout our ancestry in every generation in “all” branches of our family free thinking men of our family, all the way back to your 5th Great-Grandfather who served under General George Washington, have risked there all to ensure you have the privilege, the responsibility to vote. It’s not an entitlement, someone who came before you earned and re-earned it time and again and passed it along to you as a sacred privilege. Don’t squander what they have worked hard to give to you.
As you exercise this gift, think about the things that I’ve discussed above. Think about the fundamental bedrock moral issues, not the trendy hype that all politicians (both republican and democrat) spin into their campaign. Think about where they stand on morale issues like what constitutes a marriage and should a third trimester abortion be allowed. Think about where, when, and how they use the word “entitlement” and determine if entitlements are earned or simply expected as a gift from our society/government. Keep in mind someone has to pay for those gifts. Think about the early years of our nation’s history and just how long it actually took for Americans to first declare themselves a nation, then to in fact make it so. That didn’t happen overnight. Ask yourself, did George Washington and the rest of our founding fathers have an exit strategy when they entered into the revolutionary war? Or did they in fact have only one clear goal in mind, “Freedom” for “all” men. Now ask yourself what that means to us as a nation and you as a citizen of that nation today. When you’ve done that, walk into the Voting Booth with your head held high and vote for the candidates that the combination of your heart and your head tell you to vote. If you do, it won’t matter to me who you voted for, only that you gave it your best shot and in fact acted upon your responsibility as citizens of this Grand Land and a member of this family.