Recently, a friend of mine was at the doctor’s office to get a colonoscopy and overheard a couple of nurses having a conversation about the Civil War. They were questioning one another about who was President. One said, “I think I remember something about Gettysburg.” The other emphatically said, “Grant was President.” One of them said, “I studied science and math because it was concrete. History is always changing.” Now, this particular friend and I happen to be equally passionate about the world’s current state of affairs and, more importantly, that of our nation. We are also just as equally concerned. I asked her if hearing that made her backside pucker; I know it would have had that effect on mine.

I must admit, when I was in my twenties, and even halfway into my thirties, I didn’t have a lot of interest in what was going on around me. My biggest dilemma was what city I wanted to schedule my layovers, how well or how often I wanted to play golf, or what shoes and purse would best match my outfit. I was living the life of Riley and that life was basically all about anything that concerned me. The first time I was old enough to vote in the General Election was an exciting milestone.  I knew President Carter had been a disaster and President Reagan was doing a great job. I cast that vote for Reagan establishing myself as a Republican. I didn’t really know what it meant, nor did I care; I just blindly wanted my team to win.

Growing up, I remember my mom recalling stories of the Cuban Missile Crisis. She, my dad, and older brother (I wasn’t born yet) lived in Tampa, Florida. Their home was located near the intersection of Dale Mabry Boulevard and DeLeon which was home to the McDill Airforce Base. She would be awakened in the middle of the night by the ground trembling and the loud sirens that were mounted on the huge military transports hauling missiles from Tampa to Miami to stave off the threat of the Soviet-owned Cuban-based missiles that were aimed at the U.S. She shared stories about her being terrified that she would be at work if a missile was launched. How would she get to her one-year-old son at day care?

In school, I remember that tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States were nothing to be overlooked. It was something that was taught and discussed.One thing that I DID love about Reagan was that he showed so much resolve against the big, bad U.S.S.R. There was never any flinching or signs of weakness. Little did I know that what goes on around our nation and world should concern us all. Unfortunately, AND frustratingly, it doesn’t. After Ronald Reagan famously cited, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!”, we thought the Cold War was over, and we were lulled into a complacent false sense of security. We thought Communism was dead and that the “Evil Empire” was debilitated and no longer a threat.

It has been so long ago that a large majority of the forty-and-under crowd don’t remember the Soviet Union being such a hostile threat. Pearl Harbor, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and September 11, 2001 have all been frightening times in our nation’s history that bonded us together as a brotherhood of patriots. Now, just as worthy of our collective attention is a government that is no longer representing the will of the electorate.  Sadly, too few of our citizens know, or even care, enough to do anything about it.

We have gotten to a point that Americans, regardless of political party, dispassionately stand by while their countrymen are targeted by the IRS for having a belief system different than their own. I have been to a TEA Party rally. Contrary to how the complicit Main Stream Media paints them out to be, they are mostly military Veterans and their wives. They proudly sport hats or T-shirts emblazoned with their platoon or ship numbers. Many of them have witnessed horrors that we have been lucky enough to have only seen in the comfort of a cushy, climate-controlled theatre while eating popcorn and sipping our Big Gulps. If anyone deserves a say-so in our government it is our Veterans.  The Tea Party is mocked and described as a bunch of racists. They couldn’t care less about the color of a person’s skin! Barack “the Great Uniter” Obama has used the sexually vulgar expression “teabaggers” to refer to this group of patriots that choose to hold our elected officials accountable. Talk about a slur! Their platform is: Lower Taxes, Less Government, Free Market Principles. Wow, what EXTREMISTS! Maybe we all should be assembling with them so we don’t go the way of France. Check this out:

http://www.cbn.com/tv/3255110732001

At their rallies, the TEA Party’s love of country is palpable. Unfortunately, they have become a target of Obama’s IRS-Gestapo. If they try to organize and raise money to support candidates that represent them, they are put through full-blown IRS intimidation and are unable to get their tax-free status to do any fundraising. Groups with “Tea Party,” “Patriot”, “9/12” etc. on their applications were audited and/or placed in indefinite limbo not allowing them to receive donations to combat the large government Progressives (both Democrat AND Republican). Yes, they even have to battle the Establishment Republicans who have been in office too long to be effective or who have become a part of the problem. I recently heard on a commercial that Kentucky’s senior U.S. Senator and Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, has been in Washington since Michael Jackson’s Thriller was on top of the charts! That is too long!!!! Do those on the Left or in power naively think that at some point they might not find themselves on the wrong side of those crosshairs?

Barack Obama is trampling willy nilly on the very document that he, Congress, the Supreme Court and our military have taken an oath to defend and uphold! If our citizens were to take an interest in history, they might learn that other tyrannical despots gained power using similar tactics. The end results are startling: Mao Zedong (50-70 million Chinese died), Joseph Stalin (20 million+ Russians died), and Adolf Hitler (12 million Jews died) are among the most widely known. Did their citizens turn and look the other way? If they had gotten involved, could it have changed the outcome for the better? History is concrete, but sometimes those in power embrace our short memories and alter it to further their agenda.

We have a very weak-kneed, inexperienced community-organizer for a President who is playing marbles while a take-no-prisoners, former-KGB Russian President is playing chess. Putin believes that the end of the Cold War “was the worst geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century” and would like nothing better than to resurrect the stature of the “Evil Empire”.

Since Barack Obama has become President, think of how much our freedoms and world status have eroded while our citizenry is merely existing in a hypnotic, catatonic trance. Have we not learned that history repeats itself? Maybe instead of watching Honey Boo Boo, we could pick up a really good book about history. I don’t know…perhaps something about the first Republican President who ALSO held office during the Civil War…Abraham Lincoln?