I Voted!

Well! I voted! It was an interesting experience considering the contentiousness of this election with The Democrats and their mouthpieces in the main stream media on one side shouting hate and "foul" and the Republicans and their mouthpieces in talk radio on the opposing side shouting "stay the course" and praising the economy. Neither party seemed to have anything to say regarding the issues as character assassination and negative ads crowded the airwaves.

I live in an interesting county and state. You liberal Democrats would be shocked to know that by voting a straight Democrat ticket on the partisan ballot you would only be voting for three candidates out of twenty-three. The first of the three were for house district 3 where my neighbor, Tom Hayhurst, was the Democrat opposing Mark Souder. Mark Ruppel was the Republican running against an unknown Democrat (at least I never heard of him before). The third and last Democrat on the ballot was running for Sheriff

There was no Democrat in the race for the US Senate as Dick Lugar was unopposed. All of the remaining twenty candidates for the state, county and township offices were Republicans running without Democrat opposition. As a matter of interest there were five Libertarian party candidates on the ballot in the state including Dick Lugar’s only opposition. There are, in fact, two Libertarian candidates in the state who have a realistic chance of winning. Both are running against both Republican and Democrat candidates. It rather made voting simple, at least for Republicans.

With most voters offered only a choice between the lesser of two evils and the two media extremes digging up and inventing dirt while calling each other names it is no wonder the country is in a political morass. Such is the testimony to the dwindling intelligence of the American public in this one’s opinion. Also in my opinion, American voters will indeed get what they deserve and that will have virtually nothing to do with what the vast majority of candidates have said during the campaign. Apparently Americans are more likely to be swayed by hate filled damning rhetoric than by even a hint of attention to the huge problems facing our nation. I see us as playing political Russian Roulette and our real enemies have loaded all barrels of the gun.

I’m reminded frequently of the following quote:

When the 13 colonies were still part of England, Professor Alexander Tyler, a Scottish historian, wrote about the fall of the Athenian democracy over 2000 years earlier. "A democracy can not exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates promising them the most money from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been about 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence:

From Bondage to Spiritual Faith
From Spiritual Faith to Great Courage
From Courage to Liberty
From Liberty to Abundance
From Abundance to Selfishness
From Selfishness to Complacency
From Complacency to Apathy
From Apathy to Dependency
From Dependency back to Bondage"

There is no doubt in my mind that Republicans are equally at fault in trying to buy votes by handouts "from the public treasury." They learned to do this from Democrats. We are becoming a nation of self-serving dependents expecting the government to fulfill the extravagant promises of gifts from the public treasury. One blip, probably a major oil crises which I believe will come upon us soon, and our economy will collapse and make the great depression look like a tea party. We are certainly now moving ‘From Apathy to Dependency." Can bondage be far away? I see bondage as a Socialist dictatorship and our nation as much closer to bondage than you can imagine.

I often hear the question asked, "Why so much negative campaigning and character assassination during the campaign?" One quick look at human nature and emotional response provides a very telling answer. It is so very much easier to destroy than build. The emotional release from hating and venting is far more motivating than rational discussions of issues and ideas. There is an old question that asks, What is the difference between the men you would hire to tear down a house and those you would hire to build a new one. 9/11 gives us a dramatic example of this difference. Contrast the very few men who brought down the twin towers, crashed into the Pentagon and were trying to destroy the Capitol all in a few hours, with the huge numbers of men, vast expenditure of capital, and years of effort required to conceive of, design and build those buildings. Years of hard work by many skilled men can be destroyed in a few minutes by a few rough men. Character assassination, even if untrue can move far more voters than the best presentation on issues. The use of class warfare is the constant tool of those inept souls who can and would destroy, but have little skill to build.

Statesmen build! Politicians destroy! The public suffers in ignorant control of their emotions!