Twenty-two Percent

I was reading the news online yesterday and I saw the following headline:

Poll: Majority lacks trust in government

In reading the article, I discovered that only 22 percent of Americans surveyed say that they can trust the Federal Government some or most of the time.

Twenty-one percent say that they are angry at the Federal Government and thirty percent feel that the Federal Government is a major threat to them.

It is amazing to me that the Government of the United States has alienated 78 PERCENT of the American People!  That means 8 people out of 10 agree that the government cannot be trusted.  

You can't get 8 people out of 10 to agree on where to eat, let alone agree that the government is screwed up.

How on earth did this happen?

Naturally, I have a theory.

From 2002 until 2008, the Democrat party along with it's fellow travelers in the mainstream media has kept up a steady stream of trash directed towards President Bush and, until 2006, the Republican controlled Congress.  Their daily blather of calling the President a liar, and Congress inept and corrupt.  They called Bush Hitler.  They claimed that Republicans in Congress had a "Culture of Corruption".  On and on it went for six long years.  The Politics of trash talking. 

Starting in 2006 they leveraged all of the trash talking and media cooperation into political gains, claiming that THEY would change Washington.  Throw the bums out, and we will change things! 

Nancy Pelosi, Representative from the Peoples Republic of San Francisco, later to become Speaker of the House, said the she "intended to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical" Congress in history.

In 2008, Barack Obama ran on a platform that could be most easily described as "Trust Me!  I'm not Bush.  I will bring change to Washington.  Embrace Hope!"

A majority of Americans swallowed the Kool-Ade hoping that this person, whom they knew virtually NOTHING about, could indeed bring needed change to Washington.

Here we are, a little more than a year since Mr. Obama was inaugurated into office and what do the American people see?

Do they see the change that they had hoped for?

Not a chance.

The change that most Americans see is not just more of the same, but worse.  Back room deals made in the middle of the night.  Laws passed without being read or understood by the Congress.  Scandal, obstruction of justice, cover ups.

Worst of all, when the American people began to say "Slow Down", to question the direction that the Obama administration was taking the country, they were told to 'Sit Down and Shut Up".

The condescension, arrogance and disdain that the elected leaders of this country, both from the White House and the Capitol, was poured forth on the people.

They have been called stupid, racist, ignorant and worst of all, dangerous.  They have been compared to terrorists, lynch mobs and revolutionaries.  

Where the people cannot be ignored, they are ridiculed.

What kind of nation have we become where our elected leaders, people that WE THE PEOPLE put in office can look down their noses at as if we no longer matter.  THEY KNOW BETTER.  We are not capable of knowing what the right thing to do is, let alone take care of ourselves.  THEY will tell us what to think, how to behave, how to live.

I don't know about you, but when people start saying things like that to me, I stop trusting them and stop listening to them.  After a while, it really begins to make me mad.

If you're like that don't worry.  You're in good company with EIGHTY percent of the rest of the country!

Rainy Day Ramblings

It’s raining in West Texas today.  Not one of those big, booming thunderstorms that we get in springtime, but a nice steady rain that has the potential to last all day.

On days like this, things seem to slow down a bit out here.  Farmers spend a little more time in the coffee shop; traffic slows down to avoid the big puddles, and even average folks spend a little bit more time just 

looking out the window.

People in West Texas are more introspective on a day like this.

Today is also Tax Day.  While most Americans have already filed, received and spent their income tax returns, there are still a few who are rushing to beat the deadline of midnight to get something filed.  Having Tax Day fall on a lazy, rainy day like today must be a real challenge to those people.

Anyway, I was reading today that the New York Times conducted a survey of TEA Party participants and low and behold, those people are better educated and wealthier than the “average” American.

All I can say to the New York Times is:  DUH!

Now remember, my thinking is moving a little slow today, so try to follow me on this.

People who are struggling to get by have to WORK.  Unless subsidized by some group, like their Union or Political Party or “Community Action” group like ACORN, they cannot afford to take off of work without pay to attend a rally.  Even if they could, they probably wouldn’t agree with the message of the TEA Party.

Logically, only people who can AFFORD to take the day off, those who are retired, or those who do not HAVE to work would show up at one of these TEA Parties.

It follows that a person, who CAN afford to take the day off, without outside subsidy, must have better than average financial means, right?

It also follows that people who are the most successful financially tend to be better educated than those who aren’t, right?

According to the article, TEA Party participants tend to be “Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.”

Hmmm…   Statistically, aren’t these the people who are in the prime earning period of their lives?  Aren’t these the people who are the drivers of the economy? Aren’t these the people who have a large tax bill?

Imagine that THEY would be concerned that the federal government is slowly strangling them to financial death with higher taxes.  Imagine THEY would be concerned that the massive federal DEFICIT and DEBT is slowly bleeding our country to death.  Imagine that THEY would actually turn out to PROTEST this!

Apparently to the New York Times, this is news.

Out here on the plains, it seems pretty obvious to me.

Remembering the Civil War

Today marks the 149^th anniversary of the fall of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor.  April 12th of next year begins the four year Sesquicentennial of the Civil War.  I wonder, how we will remember the war that for four years tore our country apart.

In the last week Virginia Governor Bob McDonald has been criticized for statements made in regards to his proclamation of April as Confederate History Month.  He was chastised by none other than our own President for not mentioning the role that slavery played in causing the war.  The President said “I don’t think you can understand the Confederacy and the Civil War unless you understand slavery.”

As a historian and Civil War buff, I both agree and disagree with the President.  I think that the problem here is not an appreciation of slavery’s role in the South and its contribution to the origins of the war, but that it has been given preeminence as THE cause for the war.  There the President and I part ways.

There were approximately 5.3 million “free” residents of the south in 1860. Less than 20 percent or 1.06 million owned slaves.  50 percent of those owned fewer than five slaves. That is a statistical fact.  Only 1 in 5 southerners owned slaves.

Most southerners in 1860 were poor, subsistence farmers.  They lived in small hamlets, far from the cities of Richmond, Charleston, Montgomery or New Orleans.  While most had seen slaves, they could not afford the $500-$1500 it took to purchase one.  These people lived day to day on what they grew and harvested with their own two hands.

Whether or not the “rich” Doctor, Lawyer, Plantation Owner or Merchant had slaves was of little or no concern to the average southern white, and they damn sure wouldn’t risk their own death to protect other’s right to own slaves.

So what would make 750,000 southern men, most of which never owned a slave, fight in a horrible war?  How could the small percentage of slave owners convince the majority of the population to fight for slavery?

This is where the teaching of history fails us.  This is where the understanding of the role of slavery fails to provide answers.  This is what the President doesn’t understand and can’t explain.  But, history provides us with the answer if only we will listen.

The majority of Southerners did not fight for slavery.  When captured at Gettysburg they had an answer.  When asked why they were fighting for slavery, they said that they weren’t “fightin’ for no darkies.  We is fightin’ for our rights!” 

At Vicksburg another, perhaps more insightful prisoner, said he was fighting because “you’re down here”.

To put it simply, the average southern soldier was fighting for his home, his state that he often referred to as his ‘country’. 

The greatest example of this was the greatest leader of the South.  Robert E. Lee owned NO SLAVES.  As early as 1856 Lee said “There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil."

The average southerner merely wanted to be LEFT ALONE by his government.  He was fighting for his RIGHT to live where he wanted, how he wanted.  This was not an argument about Slavery or States Rights; this was an argument about INDIVIDUAL rights.  The rights that southerners saw as enshrined in the Constitution.  Right for which many of their ancestors had fought the British for:  Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Abraham Lincoln himself, for the first two years of the war, proclaimed that the war was not about slavery, but about the restoration of the Union.  ONLY when it became POLITICALLY necessary for his administration, did he issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

I am proud to say that I have ancestors who fought on both sides of the Civil War.  They road with JEB Stuart in the Peninsula Campaign, fought at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, and even participated in Sherman's drive to Atlanta.

I am also the descendant of slave owners, something of which I am not proud.

The question is how shall we remember the Civil War?  Was it ONLY as the war to end slavery?  Are we who believe otherwise to be condemned for thinking so?

We have ONE YEAR to make up our minds.  Do we honor those who fought and died for what they believed to be right, or do we paint one side as “righteous” and the other as “evil” based ONLY on the side for which they fought?

As a UNION, we had better figure this out!