Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

>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?
> 
> 

   </HTML>