THE NFL AND ITS KNUCKLE-DRAGGING SNOWFLAKES…

We seem to have a growing number of these overpaid Neanderthals in the National Football League (NFL) who now think that it is become acceptable, and/or appropriate, for them to disrespect not only our flag but also the very country that has made it possible for them to become multi-millionaires while possessing little more than a degree in ‘basket-weaving’.  And they make all of this money not by making some grand contribution to humanity but, instead, for doing something as trivial, even silly, as playing a kid’s game.  And in an effort to point out just how ludicrous things have become let’s focus on just two teams, the Baltimore Ravens and the team that has been a long standing joke in the NFL, the Jacksonville Jaguars.

So it was then that as recently as this past Sunday there were seventeen players from these two teams who decided to take a knee during the presentation of the national anthem, in London.  The combined salaries of these players is in the neighborhood of $450 Million.  You see, if we combine the total value of each player’s contract it adds up to a staggering $448,373,425, a figure greater than the gross domestic product of over a handful of the world’s nations.  According to ESPN there were ten Ravens’ players and roughly the same number of Jaguars’ players who took a knee during the national anthem at Wembley Stadium in London.  They seem to be of the opinion that they are deserving of respect but that our country and our flag are not.

The list of Ravens’ players included such men of questionable intelligence as: Terrell Suggs, C.J. Mosley, Za’Darius Smith, Tim Williams, Tyus Bowser, Mike Wallace, Carl Davis, Tony Jefferson, Anthony Levine, and Lardarius Webb.  And the list of those individuals on the Jaguars’ sideline who were of equal, or lesser, intelligence of their Ravens’ counterparts included: Jalen Ramsey, A.J. Bouye, Calais Campbell, Yannick Ngakoue, Malik Jackson, Tashaun Gipson, and Leonard Fournette.  These ‘men’, who were likely former juvenile delinquents, apparently chose kneeling as their preferred way of responding to recent comments from President Trump regarding the ongoing protests of the national anthem at various NFL games all across the country.

It was on Sunday morning that President Trump NFL said owners should either fire or suspend players who kneel during the national anthem, and fans should not keep watching games if players continue to protest. The president tweeted Sunday morning, “If NFL fans refuse to go to games until players stop disrespecting our Flag & Country, you will see change take place fast. Fire or suspend!”  The president’s comments come on the heels of an impassioned speech he gave in Huntsville, Alabama, Friday evening.  He came out swinging in his comments against NFL players who choose to kneel during the national anthem.  But the fate of these players is less in the hands of the owners than it is in the hands of those who pay to watch them.

It was while in Huntsville, Alabama on this past Friday that the president told those in attendance, “The only thing you could do better is if you see it, even if it’s one player, leave the stadium. I guarantee things will stop. Things will stop. Just pick up and leave. Pick up and leave. Not the same game anymore, anyway.” And he went on to say, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He’s fired. He’s fired!”  Now while I may not agree with the language that the president used I agree very much with the sentiment of his statement.  But the fate of the game should be left up to those who watch, because that will a much more lasting effect.

And riddle me this.  What do you suppose would happen to you if you were to go to your place of employment and proceed to do whatever it was that you wanted to do?  Would you get away with that?  Somehow, I very much doubt it!  It’s your employer who gets to set the rules and conditions of your employment.  It’s obvious that the owners who comprise this ‘National Felon League’ hate America, but they sure love all those dollars coughed up by the ‘fans’.  Interestingly, it was the owners who makeup NASCAR who had a different take.  They told their employees, do this and you will be on the next Greyhound bus.  But since I don’t recall any black NASCAR drivers, the chances of any protests arising in the first place are already pretty remote.

Look, millions of Americans go about their business every day and never disrespect a black person.  Many of these same people spend a disproportionate amount of money to watch their favorite NFL team.  Why should the fans be denied an afternoon of enjoyment by overpaid, spoiled athletes who can’t get over the fact that Donald Trump won the election and is now president?  The fans have First Amendment rights too.  If any one of those fans went to work and “took a knee” when their boss asked them to perform their job, they would be fired on the spot!  I don’t deny that these players should be able to peacefully show their displeasure, but there is a time and a place.  And it is not on the field while our National Anthem is being played.

These pampered billionaires are using the fame, bought and paid for by the American people, and a platform we have given them to shit all over our flag and our country.  The stench of entitlement and hypocrisy is so strong it permeates the entire country every Sunday.  And this is not a free speech issue either.  Even worse, disrespecting your country and flag and all those who have fought and died for what it represents by virtue signaling does not encourage debate on the issue, it is simply a divisive and corrosive act.  These “children” who kneel should try kneeling in church and thanking God that they were born in the USA.  Do they really think that if they had been born in any other country they would find themselves where they find themselves today?

WHAT IF BLACKS, AND NOT WHITES, HAD SETTLED AMERICA???

I would like to pose a question.  While we know what America would go on to become, an economic powerhouse and military superpower in just a brief 200 years with whites being in the majority, would the same results been achieved with whites in the minority.  Or, like all other countries where blacks are in the majority, would it never have progressed beyond a third world status.  For instance, let’s take a look at the countries of Rhodesia, known today as Zimbabwe, and South Africa.  If we look back to the time when whites were in control of these countries, what we would see are two countries that were both quite stable and economically strong.  But once blacks assumed control of the governments things began to go very badly, very quickly.  Today both these countries are nothing short of economic train wrecks.  And look what has happened in this country after seven years of having a black president.

Current history shows how it is that America would become the standard by which all other nations would come to be measured when it came to the level of freedom possessed by, as well as the standard of living enjoyed by, the citizens of every other nation.  America would also become the home of nearly every modern invention, nearly every significant scientific discovery and nearly every modern day medical innovation.  No other country anywhere on the planet has contributed more to improving the human condition than has the United States of America.  Add to that the fact that it would also come to possess the most powerful military the world has ever known, a military, I might add, that has never been used to conquer, but to protect others and to deliver freedom to millions.  But consider for a moment, a different history of our country.

Imagine, if you can, that through some bizarre twist of fate the roles played by the individual races were to be somehow reversed.  That if we were to go back in time we would find that those to first set foot in the new world and to colonize this country were not primarily white, but black.  And what if when slavery finally came to rear its ugly head those slaves were, in fact, white and it was their masters who were black.  Would the story as it was originally written end differently?  In the new story would the black majority take the same steps to end slavery or would they be content to maintain the status quo.  Had our ‘Founding Fathers’ been black would they have sought to use wording in the new Constitution as a way of bringing slavery to its eventual end?  Would there even be a Constitution if it had been up to our black ‘Founding Fathers’?  Would they have even seen the need?

And then as we move further through our revised version of American history, would there have been the same level of determination to guarantee that, in accordance with our Constitution, all men were to be free?  For that matter, had our ‘Founding Fathers’ been black would there have been a Constitution?  And let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Abraham Lincoln, or whomever might have been president at this crucial time, had in fact been black, would there have been the same willingness to go to war because of slavery.  Would the Civil War have been fought?  Or would it have been seen as being not worth any potential consequences that might result from it?  So, would there even have been a Civil War.  Or would slavery, with blacks fully in charge and the majority of the population, simply have been allowed to spread to every region of our young country?

And then stop and think, for a moment, about all of the inventions, the numerous scientific innovations and the endless number of medical breakthroughs that have taken place which were it not for the United States would have either never taken place at all, or would have taken many more years, even decades to come about.  And what about things like segregation, would it been allowed to continue with there no need being seen to bring it to an end.  Would there ever have been the policy of affirmative action that would have, instead of favoring blacks, provided to whites the same advantage that it provides for blacks to this very day. I seriously doubt it.  Would whites have ever been allowed to progress beyond being anything more than second class citizens as blacks were able to do?  Would blacks paved the way allowing them to do so?  Again, I seriously doubt it!

And lastly, what would the world beyond America’s borders look like today if the United States had, throughout its history, been a black majority country?  Would there have been any interest in assisting friends in their time of need?  And if the United States were a country with a black majority population, would it ever have progressed beyond being anything more than just another third world country or ever become the world’s lone superpower?  Now I would argue that in all likelihood America would not be the America that it is today.  Now of course this is all hypothetical.  Thank God the Pilgrims were white and most, if not all, of the early settlers were as well.  And thank God those who worked to create this greatest experiment in individual freedom in all of human history were also white.  Because had they not been, I have no doubt that things would have turned out very, very differently.

AMERICA EDGES EVER CLOSER TO BRINGING ABOUT ITS OWN DEMISE…

Are we here in America becoming far more socially liberal, and therefore more immoral in how we go about living out our lives?  Well, if a recent Gallup poll is anywhere near correct, then the answer would appear to be…yes.  Because it’s according to Gallup that 31 percent of Americans now describe their views on social issues as being generally liberal, matching the percentage of those who identify as social conservatives for the first time in Gallup records dating back to 1999.  It’s also the highest figure ever recorded for liberals and the lowest for conservatives.

Some 63 percent of Americans now say gay or lesbian relations are “morally acceptable.” That’s a 23-point jump since 2001, when only 40 percent felt that way, according to Gallup. That jump reflects the greatest shift in opinion to the left of any issue Gallup measured in its survey.  Americans today are also more accepting of having a child out of wedlock: 61 percent said it’s OK, compared with 45 percent in 2001. And some 68 percent of Americans now say sex outside of marriage is acceptable, compared with 53 percent in 2001.

Liberals are giddy, as well they should be. They delight in having been able to bring the rest of us down to their level, there in the gutter.  According to that liberal rag of a newspaper, the Washington Post, “You may not have realized it, but a large cohort of Americans did something brave this month.”  The writer goes on to say, “For years—in some cases, decades—these lonely, marginalized souls had repressed their shameful feelings, hiding them from the world. Then May came along, and they finally decided to come out of the closet. As liberals.”  If so, that is in no way a good thing.

And it was this same writer who said, “On multiple social issues,” adding, “Americans have indeed become more likely to adopt the standard lefty stance.” She cites only two examples—same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization—and then allows that “abortion appears to be the outlier . . . with views bouncing around a bit; ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’ have taken turns holding pluralities in recent years.”  What is claim to be “the standard lefty stance” is really nothing more than the manner in which those on the left refer to their increasingly level of perversion.

And then we have the New York Times, another liberal rag, joining in and providing additional examples, from Gallup’s “moral acceptability” index.  The writer in this instance said, “Acceptance of gay or lesbian relations is up 23 percentage points over that time. Having a baby outside of marriage is up 16 points. Premarital sex is up 15 points. Divorce and research using stem cells obtained from human embryos are both up 12 points.”  It would seem these are odd things to crow about, and they make quite clear just how far we have fallen as Christian nation.

Gallup’s findings on same-sex marriage, which are consistent with those of other pollsters, show a steady and rapid increase in support: 60% this year, up from 37% in 2005 and 40% in 2009.  Now it might be worth pointing out that that this growing support for gay marriage may be based, at least in part, on the fact that a majority of Americans also ‘assume’ that the percentage of our population that is gay to be roughly 25 percent.  The actual percentage is under 4 percent.  Which begs the question, where would people get the impression that the number is so much higher?

By definition, “social conservatives” (and some “moderates”) are the holdouts against, for the most part, same-sex marriage and abortion.  And sadly, it would seem that the holdouts by definition are decreasing in number. This explains how changing opinion about same-sex marriage could—and in our view almost certainly does—account for virtually the entire trend away from “socially conservative” and toward “socially liberal.” It’s a mistake to think substantial numbers of voters have suddenly embraced the entire package deal of “social liberalism” more broadly defined.

It is said that the findings of this poll have implications for the next election.  It is said that Republicans will have to abandon, or at least soften, their opposition to such things as gay marriage.  It seems reasonable to surmise that an aggressively oppositional position, of the sort George W. Bush adopted in 2004, will be as untenable in 2016 as support for same-sex marriage would have been that year—or, for that matter, as recently as 2008, when even Barry claimed to yield to the dictates of his faith and declared himself against same-sex marriage.

Liberals, and some conservatives, doubtless are puzzled that public opinion has stubbornly refused to move to the left on abortion while it has done so with such ease on same-sex marriage.  But it’s unlikely that the abortion figures are stable because everybody’s mind is made up; rather, people change their minds in both directions. Younger people tend to be more “pro-choice” and older ones more “pro-life,” just as older folks tend to be more about family.  By contrast, hardly anyone goes from supporting same-sex marriage to opposing it, movement has been all in one direction.

This increase in “liberal” positions on both abortion and same-sex marriage are said to have come about because of cultural assumptions about sexual equality and freedom. Assumptions that, for better or worse, have become more widely shared over the past half-century or so. There remain arguments against same-sex marriage but they are countercultural arguments and comprehending such arguments requires a fairly deep familiarity with philosophical or theological systems of thought that, while far from dead, are also far from universally agreed upon or even understood.

And while the argument against abortion may be more easily understood, there is still little tolerance for those who oppose it.  The claim is always made that women are in control of their bodies and therefore have the right to determine the fate of that child inside of them.  Little consideration is given to the fact that when a woman becomes pregnant it’s a separate life that resides within her.   One cannot ignore the fact that the unborn child one is carrying is a human being worthy of the very same protections under the law as is the mother, and not merely a clump of cells that can be, or should be, removed.

Now one would think that “pro-life” arguments would be especially appealing to liberals, or at least to that sensitive subset of liberals who find themselves compelled to protest for the equal rights and fair treatment of those animals part of the food chain. Or that group on the left that has little difficulty in arguing that some cop killer deserves to have a second chance more than he deserves to be executed.  That they are not is testament to liberals’ determination to resist any encroachment, in practice as well as in theory, against the ideals of sexual equality and freedom.

And where abortion has been around since time immemorial, same-sex marriage is a relatively new idea, the subject of serious debate only for the past 20 years or so. At the start of that debate most people opposed the idea because it was novel and seemed strange.  For a while, appeals to tradition were sufficient to sustain the opposition, but sadly we have now gotten to the point where appeals to tradition cannot long withstand what is sure to become a virtual onslaught once the philosophy on which that tradition is based has died in the minds of most of the populace.

I think few would argue that America has now been brought to what can be described as being a tipping point and we have been brought there primarily by those on the left.  But that’s not so say that some on the right have not played a role.  And not only is there now an effort underway to push this nation over the cliff fiscally, but morally and spiritually as well.  And if this poll tells us anything, it would seem that those determined to bring an end to this country are achieving as much success morally as they are fiscally.  They do so by using their own immorality as a weapon.

JUST SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS…

Regarding the goings on in our nation’s capital, does anyone other than myself find themselves wondering how it is that we who were once considered to be the freest, and most prosperous people on the face of this planet, came to allow things to spin so wildly out of control?  When was it that things to come so completely off the tracks?  And what must we have been thinking for us to allow our politicians to have now come so completely off the chain?   We had to have known deep in our gut that that was not a good idea.  And yet, we offered so very little resistance.

But then I suppose ‘how’ we came to be at this particular point in time matters very little.  What matters now, I would think, is that we all agree to work together toward finding some way of possibly reversing things.  But the question is, do enough of us still possess the necessary will, or the desire, to even attempt such a thing?   We are supposed to be a nation of laws, with a government of the people, by the people and for the people.  But somewhere along the way that was apparently thought to be far too difficult.  So instead, we chose to relinquish our control.

So whose fault is it that we now find ourselves being so thoroughly ignored by a majority of those whom we chose to put into office as recently as 7 months ago?  Our first mistake was to believe the many campaign lies we were told, and now we’re paying the price.  And likely when the next election rolls around many of these same perpetrators will once again expect us to trust them when they say that they are on our side.  But their actions speak far louder than their words.  They need to be made to understand that once trust is lost, it’s very difficult to regain.

So what are we to do in the meantime?  Resign ourselves to the fact that we now have no control of our government?  It saddens me greatly that the future that now lies in front of my daughter is most certainly not the one that I had envisioned for her.  And I cannot be the only one who feels this way.  And if we are to have any hope of providing a better future for our children than the one that now exists then we must be willing to make certain sacrifices.  Freedom is not cheap nor is it something that comes about without there being a great deal of work involved.

And by work, I’m not necessarily talking about any actual physical labor, because we know that these days far too many Americans avoid that as if it were the plague.  What I mean by work is the getting, and keeping, of ourselves informed of what your leaders may be up to, and to be willing to hold them accountable regardless of political party.  The country must always be made to come first.  And if you are unwilling to do that, then you become nothing more than a part of the continuing problem.  The country must be made to survive.

What we all need to do, regardless of our gender, sexual orientation, faith, or lack of, our race or ethnic background is to come to grips with the fact that there is no other country on Earth where one can, if willing to work hard and play by the rules, accomplish absolutely anything that one puts one’s mind to.  And what we are rapidly losing here is that opportunity, and once it is lost, it will essentially be lost for us all and for generations.  Life isn’t fair, but life ‘is’ what you choose to make of it, and nowhere but here in America can you make so much of it.

I worry that we’re letting things slip through our fingers, with far too few of us seeming to see that as being any sort of a problem.  Freedom is a pretty rare commodity here on planet Earth, and once it’s lost, whether by being freely given away, or with it being taken at the point of a gun, it’s always nearly impossible to ever get back.  But many see that as being no big deal.  But it is a big deal, it’s a very big deal!  Look, I don’t claim to have all the answers when it comes to trying to take our country back, but I do know that we need to recalibrate our priorities if we are to have any hope of surviving.