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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Obama fans, what say ye?
  • Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:08:46 EDT

>Truth be told, we have had it so easy that we are spoiled. Is
everyone in your area happy with conditions?
-----------------------------and-------------------------------------
>So please clarify. Where do you find such heavy fault, in his observational

powers or conclusions?

My respose to both the above is the same thing. Sure there are discontent
people everywhere, some people's mode of life is to be discontent. The point
is
this, and I am a bit frustrated in trying to express it because it is quite
clear I am not doing a good job ... so let me try, as you say, to clarify...

The point is this ...There are a lot of people who put confidence in their
guns and in their religion. You can count me in that and don't ask what my
religion is because I won't tell you. And there are a lot o people who are
discontent (and you may NOT count me among those). But the two have NOTHING
TO DO
WITH EACH OTHER. Obama's tragic flaw is that he thinks they do. He is
saying
people put confidence in guns and religion BECAUSE they are politically
discontent. That is not only unwise an bigoted, but it is extremely stupid.

Let me recap before I go on. Yes, there are people as he describes who put
confidence in guns and religion, do not put confidence in government, and are
politically discontent. But the conclusion that the one is BECAUSE of the
other is his bias and mindset. And it is deeply offensive.

Years ago, many years ago, I decided that it was better to BE more than to
HAVE more and set out to develop skills and abilities I needed for
homesteading
rather than buying them. This meant learning to do things by hand and with
hands tools. In the case of cutting wood, it meant getting some crosscut and
frame saws, some files and guides, and learning how to sharpen and set the
saws.
It also meant avoiding becoming a middle-aged blob of breathless lard,
developing a tai-chi like movement that would allow chopping and sawing for
an
extended time without exhaustion due to inefficient movement. It meant
studying
trees, studying stoves. Much more than any of those things it meant creating
an atmosphere so that my sons and daughters developed dense bones, strong
frames, and a poise and orientation to pleasureable work. I have time,
sweat,
blood, and a very great deal of effort invested in this turn. Compared to
when I
started this venture (wood cutting being only one example of it) I can
report
honestly that I indeed HAVE less. Whether I AM more will be for time to
determine, but I am not dispeased.

So in the last gig in the industrial world I held, I was talking with a man
exactly my age and grotesquely overweight and out of shape. He was
commenting,
as so many do, that it is insane to not use a chainsaw. In fact, he
proclaimed, it was obvious that the ONLY reason I used an axe and framesaw
was because
I'd had some bad luck with a chainsaw at some point in my past and was
sulking over it.

A whole well thought out change in lifestyle dismissed as insignificant and
only steming from a fit of frustration over some imagined problem with a
chainsaw. It didn't bother me. I wonder if it bothered him that I pointed
out
that we two, the same age to a week, each had a waist line that was more than
ten
inches different from our chest.

LIke that almost every fundamentalist friend and relative I have are sure
that we don't attend a church ONLY because someone hurt our feelings and
ruffled
our feathers at some point in the past.

(Lynda will have heard this one) Like that, we can show that homeschooled and
unschooled children have a tremendous advantage over their government
schooled counter parts. We can recite the history of government education in
this
country, its effects, and why children in those schools are being prepared
for a
world that hardly exists any more. It is a very deeply held conviction in
which we have invested a great deal of our lives. And yet it is routinely
dismissed with, "Oh, you only homeschool because you had some bad episode or
the
other with a teacher, that's all."

Like the people in rural Pennsylvania, I put more confidence in my guns to
protect my family than put in the government. I did so before Obama was
born.
I will do so long after he's a footnote in history. Likewise my religious
beliefs are a better guide to a decent life than all the government
leadership
that ever existed. It was before Obama was born and will be long after his
influence passes away.

Yet Obama has look at those things and said "you only CLING to those things
becaue you are politcally frustrated". His offensiveness is exceeded only
by
his offensiveness.

That's what Obama means by "change". Glad to finally have it in the open.
He means that self reliance, our trust in our own courage and ability and
beliefs, is to be replaced by a reliance on HIS form of government. We will,
in
his estimation, give up our clinging to guns and religion just as soon as he
gives us some relief from our frustration. After all those are not values
that
have been thought out and tested and refined though generations of free
Americans, we only hold those because we are frightened rural half-wits.

Unsuitable for president.

> > That's exaxtly the point, Gene. He *IS* expressing things from his
> > vantage
> > point. He IS expressing what he sees. He looks at people who hold
> > constitutional freedoms of arms and religion as central to their
> > lives and what he sees
> > are bitter people jealous that they don't have more money and
> > grasping onto
> > those things out of frustration.
>
> James, I see and hear people with this perspective quite often, both
> in Phoenix and here in southern Missouri. It reminds me of my years in
> the Army. Bitching is something we Americans are pretty accomplished
> at. Truth be told, we have had it so easy that we are spoiled. Is
> everyone in your area happy with conditions? I will understand if you
> choose not to answer that in the affirmative--I, too, am hesitant to
> brag too much on my preferred area--really don't want a big influx of
> unhappy people seeking paradise.
> >
> > That view of America through Obama's eyes is priceless and we should
> > be very
> > thankful that we have been afforded it. It reveals volumes. A
> > person who
> > looks at the Pennsylvanian and sees that is not fit to be president.
>
> Wow, that is a heavy judgement based on a couple sentences. So please
> clarify. Where do you find such heavy fault, in his observational
> powers or conclusions?
>
>

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