A Pilgrim’s Odyssey

Finding Perspective In Unlikely Places

Some days, you just need perspective on life, a way to focus and just be thankful for a new day. I found that visiting the Terra Haute Maximum Security Federal Penitentiary. It came from a guitar pick and a young man at the beginning of an over 30 year sentence desperate for some hope and humanity.

A Vote for Independence & Red Blooded Americans

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,.."

Famous words from our Declaration of Independence. These were then followed by a list of grievances toward the governance of the King of England. All of them, destructive to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Our founders did not see government as giving us things, but in protecting the things most valuable to us, our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Government was a steward, not an overseer.

But overtime, government has increasingly seen itself as the custodian of our labor in order to impose on us what it sees as necessary to our happiness. In the early 1900s, federal, state and local government took in revenue equal to about 6 to 7 percent of GNP(Gross National Product). And then the 16^th amendment to the constitution, ratified in 1913, allowed government to create an income tax. The flood gates of confiscation were open. By 1950 this number had grown to 24 percent, and by the end of the century it had grown to 32 percent. Since just 2000 it has risen to almost 45%. Unimaginable to our founders.

On Liberty, Faith, and The Election

As we talked about a few weeks ago looking at George Washington’s farewell address, America was built on Liberty and Faith, and the greatest threat to those values was internal politics causing division and resulting in government becoming the ruler of our moral conscious.

This struggle between freedom and morality ebbed and flowed as our country grew. Morality was a check on our individual freedom, but when morality didn’t provide the check, government stepped in and the result was that it grew bigger and more powerful. Our wandering away from a foundation of faith opened the door to tyranny.

This election is about the crossroads of faith and liberty versus a government that is the judge and jury of both. It is that important.