Be what you want

What a difference a year makes. Well, not really. Last month was the worst for soldiers in Afghanistan since we started fighting there after the World Trade Center was attacked and 3,000 of our fellow workers died for the corrupted ideals of criminals masquerading as religious zealots. The funny part about the statistic is that this year it was a passing footnote in a news report. Last year, it would have been the headline. Of course last year the media's darling wasn't in office. And we have no bias in media.

Tuesday our President plans to speak to our children in school and ask them to pitch in and help. He is going to tell them that we should listen to our elected officials without question. He is going to tell them that if their parents do not support his agenda, then they should find someone else who does. Does that scare you? It should. It's what Hitler did before he started World War II to create the Nazi Youth movement. It's what Stalin did in the Soviet Union.

I grew up questioning authority. I remember several "discussions" with my father in which I questioned authority. A badge, an office, a title does not make someone "right" in what they say. We are all human. We are fallible.

What will it take to anger all of us into action? When will you stand up for the morality and the principles upon which this country was founded? The hour is drawing close, my fellow Americans, when we will be called on to make a stand or watch what our forefathers and mothers sacrificed and scrimped and toiled burn to the ground in a literal and metaphorical sense.

Our children are being indoctrinated into blind belief in their government and sacrificing their ambitions. There is a difference between compassion and forced assistance. Charity is and always has been a voluntary action, not a mandate of the state. The government has no business telling me or my family what is right and wrong. They have no business dictating to me what to believe about abortion, euthanasia, elder rights, religion or anything else.

The front page of the paper this week discussed the results of uniforms in schools. What I read were children who parroted the same arguments and academic psychobabble the administrations and school boards used to justify their positions. And to the official who suspended that child on the first day of school because her shoes had bows on them and your office called the wrong number. Shame on you!

Of course, uniforms make it easier to get dressed in the morning, but does it really stop bullying? I highly doubt it. I don't believe children stop bullying because everyone dresses the same way. I was harassed all the way through school by certain peers and it was never due to how I was dressed.

They will tell you that dressing the same has nothing to do with stripping individualism, but I believe it does when you are at an impressionable age like children. The military relies on that to make everyone equal and without status, but we are talking about grown adults here being taught to kill and survive. Children need to be challenged to be individuals and to strive for achievement and to deal with adversity. My humble opinion is that by removing all adversity from their lives does an injustice to them and makes it harder for them not easier.

Do I support bullying? Of course not, but speaking from experience as someone who spent most of his childhood in school being teased and taunted by certain people, I believe it made me a better, more determined stronger person. It's wrong to teach children that everyone is equal and that we should not strive to be better. Life is not about making limiting everyone to make them equal. Life is about offering an equal opportunity and letting the sky be the limit.

Being an American is about being free to choose. You want to be a selfish jerk. You have that right. You want to be an amoral politician who switches parties for political expedience. You have that right. You want to be a leader who uses the spoils system to the point of corruption. You have that right. You want to be a selfless person. You have that right.

This country is not about supporting those who DON'T want to support themselves. This country is about standing on your own two feet and depending on no one. As my superintendent said the day I graduated from high school, "IF IT IS TO BE, IT IS UP TO ME." This government and these bureaucrats have no right to tell our children not to listen to us as parents, but they should listen to their leaders instead. Our children have a right as Americans to choose how to live their lives and you, oh fearless leaders should butt out of that right. Period.