"Well…I attended Julliard…I’m a graduate of the Harvard business school. I travel quite extensively. I lived through the Black Plague and had a pretty good time during that. I’ve seen the Exorcist about a 167 times and it keeps getting funnier every single time I see it…Not to mention the fact that you’re talking to a dead guy…Now what do you think? You think I’m qualified?” Beetlejuice, 1988
January 1, 2014
By: Linda Case Gibbons
As the New Year rings in, it’s encouraging to know that anything’s possible here in America.
We expect to work hard, but that was never a problem for us.
We believe nice things always will happen for us and even when adversities occur, we simply work harder and it all works out.
But in the past five years all that has changed. America is in danger. She’s been hanging out with the wrong crowd and it shows.
Our confidence in ourselves has been undermined, our country denigrated. Racial divisiveness, 24-7 back-biting from a carping, polarized media have us hanging on the ropes waiting for the next sucker punch.
For the past five years our nation has returned to pre-Revolutionary War day standards. Taxation without representation, flagrant disregard of our rights as citizens and deliberate abuse of the Constitution.
Gone are the separation of powers between the three branches of the government. Lawlessness in government has replaced the rule of law and political correctness has replaced freedom to speak one’s mind.
The reason? America-haters are here with a vengeance stirring up the pot of discontent.
Which brings to mind George Orwell’s "Nineteen Eighty Four.”
Orwell’s book describes a country which now is eerily familiar: A country with omnipresent government surveillance, public mind control, a government-invented language called Newspeak, and a privileged party elite in control that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as "thought crimes.”
It is a place where, "Big Brother and the Party justify their oppressive rule in the name of a supposed greater good…”
Yup, Orwell was right, just 30 years off.
So today is the perfect time for some New Year’s Resolutions that show we give a damn about our country. Forget that diet and vowing to walk more. We have bigger fish to fry.
Time to get off your cozy American couch and show you’re willing to fight for the right to be an American. Because the fact is once you lose your rights, once you don’t bother to heed the red flags signaling troublesome times and more to come, it will be too late.
Oh, yeah. And while we’re making resolutions, let’s make some for the president who is too busy snorkeling in Hawaii while we’re losing our health insurance and having our assets redistributed.
Here goes:
RESOLUTION ONE. From this day forward, call the healthcare law what it is: "Obamacare.” It’s his law. He used to love hearing it until now. Now Democrats want to distance themselves from the stench. So make a personal resolution to keep on calling it Obamacare. (Although actually "The Affordable Care Act” is pretty funny, too.)
RESOLUTION TWO . On the other hand, don’t say Obama’s name so much. It’s alliterative, I know, but for some crazy reason I think every time you say his name, it just makes him stronger. Remember Beetlejuice? I don’t know who he was exactly, but repeat his name three times and he was "conjured up,” then, unfortunately, it was "Showtime!” Not a good thing.
RESOLUTION THREE . Let’s vow to pray for Obama in line with the Judeo-Christian tradition of our country so that the next time he passes a healthcare law, he can make sure there are more enrollments than canceled plans. It’s not his call to decide we should have a single payer system.
RESOLUTION FOUR. Let’s resolve not to laugh at The New York Times this year. This week, fifteen months after the attack, the Times reported on the "real story” about Benghazi. It also claimed it had a reporter on the ground who was "talking to the attackers during the attack.” The Times unequivocally asserted its reporters found "no evidence that al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault.” The Pentagon said otherwise, but that wasn’t in the article. Some say the article was an attempt to mega-whitewash Obama and Hillary’s role in Benghazi. Some say it wasn’t. What do you say?
RESOLUTION FIVE. Don’t be afraid to own a gun. It’s okay. It’s in the Constitution.
RESOLUTION SIX. You are allowed to say "While I defend your right to choose whatever lifestyle you want, I don’t support gay marriage,” and "I don’t have to think what you think and agree with you not to be called a racist.” It’s in the Constitution.
RESOLUTION SEVEN. Start voting for "stupid people” who went to not-so-good schools, because, hey, what have Yale and Harvard ever done for us? These were the universities that gave us Obama, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and Wendy Davis. We know what the first three have done. Davis’ claim to fame is campaigning against a limit on late term abortion beyond the fifth to six month term. Not a good thing.
RESOLUTION EIGHT. Don’t let them make you mean. Don’t say Mayor Bill de Blasio’s family is unusual in its composition – and strange looking -- just because MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry made fun of Mitt Romney’s adopted, black grandchild. That’s done all the time at MSNBC.
RESOLUTION NINE. Get out and help with upcoming elections, do negative novenas for, say Hillary. Remind people about Hillary’s Benghazi line, "What difference does it make?” when she runs for president. Point out that she hasn’t done anything except be married to/and put up with Bill and log a million miles as secretary of state, while doing not much of anything right. Make sure you mention her hair always looks bad, too.
RESOLUTION TEN. Urge President Obama to ask himself, WWPD -- What Would Putin Do? After two recent terrorist attacks in Volgograd Russia, Russian President Putin vowed to annihilate the terrorists, deploying 5,200 security forces to the city with a population of a million. Curiously Putin never denied it was a terrorist attack and he obviously didn’t wait 15 months to do nothing at all. WWPD?
RESOLUTION ELEVEN Remember. You can’t have everything you want. And neither can Obama. The president can’t just make laws because he wants to. It’s in the Constitution. He can’t just change laws willy-nilly. That’s in the Constitution, too. And just to remind him and the secretary of Health and Human Services, eleven state attorneys general sent a letter to Kathleen Sebelius telling the chopping and changing that the president’s doing with Obamacare is illegal.
RESOLUTION TWELVE. Resolve to keep tabs on our religious freedom. The government has already persecuted the Denver Little Sisters of the Poor, nuns who care for dying people, people! If the nuns won’t sign off on the contraception mandate in their healthcare, their order will have to pay millions in penalties to the IRS. Isn’t that special?
RESOLUTION THIRTEEN . Decide that this year you will not suffer fools gladly. Speak up with your opinion. If you don’t like it, say so. If you think it’s wrong, say so. And if you can, sue ‘em! Sure they will try to silence your voice by calling you a racist, but "sticks and stones.” Sure they will try to regulate you out of existence, but that’s exactly what you should speak up about! Don’t let them scare you. And sure as heck, don’t let them get away with it.
RESOLUTION FOURTEEN. Resolve to tell Joe Biden and the White House folks, "Loose lips sink ships.” After the White House disclosed Navy SEAL Team 6’s participation in the raid on Bin Laden to make a nice movie and make Obama look good, the helicopter carrying members of the SEAL team was shot down. They all died. After being outed by the White House, the parents of one of the SEALS said the White House put a target on their son’s back.
RESOLUTION FIFTEEN. And do some reading. Read about the rise of Fascism in Germany. An elderly woman, born in 1930, recently called into a radio show and told about her father’s lifelong battle against Fascism in Germany.
"My biggest regret is that I came here and we lived a life trusting that we lived under a Constitution that will always be there.” She added she was always leery about what was happening in the 1960s and of the political correctness movement.
"One should express their thoughts freely,” she said, "and if somebody doesn’t accept them, they can discuss them. But why do we have to change our language and approach to people?...I feel so guilty that I was not active then because my father did that all his life, but I fell asleep.”
So this year do not fall asleep. Be proactive. Be vigilant. Watch what is happening, say in New York. Take a look at that city’s new mayor and the folks who spoke at his swearing in, speaking against the "plantation” that is New York and the "inequality that exists” because of you, not them, but you.
And look at who was there beside the Socialist mayor, Hillary and Bill. And guess what? They fit in perfectly!
And look at who was there beside the Socialist mayor, Hillary and Bill. And guess what? They fit in perfectly!
Listen. Do you hear discordant voices that say you should do what you know is not right, not American? Reject them!
The America that was created in 1776 was an America that has always held out hope to all people. People can come together and there is always hope.
Just look, this week a Chinese ice cutter rescued a group of New Zealand and Australian passengers from a Russian ship stranded in the ice of Antarctica.
They worked together. They helped each other. Things like that happen all the time in our America. Don’t forget that. It’s the American way.
Hold the line, America.