Thanks from We the People to our Military Families

From Vicki:

I haven't written since Thanksgiving mainly because there are so many things going on it has been difficult to select any specific topic.

Today I am thankful for our military families. They choose to serve without mandary requirement; they volunteer. It is so amazing to me that these Americans, like our humble founding fathers, are willing to give their lives to protect the freedoms of all of us. Many put themselves in harm's way every day for our liberty. Many leave dear families behind to stay strong and continue on while they are in harm's way. God bless them.

We are not worthy of their allegiance just because we are Americans.

We are fortunate because we are Americans.

My uncle was a 23-year retired Marine who served in WWII and the Korean War. His sacrifices were great. My grandparents, mother, and aunt gave up the most when their son and brother was serving, yet they understood we must always win the fight for freedom. I remember my uncle fondly and with great respect.

If we allow our elected representatives to misuse, overstep, and ignore our precious Constitution, we are the ones to blame. If we allow these same representatives to forget they are elected to serve, we are to blame. If we allow our government to give strength to those who want to do us harm by not providing enough support for our military, we are to blame.

We have the voice and the vote. We have to speak.

We the people are so blessed

From Vicki:

It's been a busy weekend. I've had many thoughts about blogs and will get to them soon.

Last Friday evening, Tom and I made the trek to Bristol, Virginia to meet Glenn Beck. We were among more than 600 who wanted to see up close and personal if this real Glenn Beck was the one we knew from radio and television. Yep, he was. He was there to promote and sign his latest book, The Christmas Sweater, a tear-jerking, Kleenex-box-emptying novel based on his life. My family members will enjoy this--shh! Don't want to give away anything.

Glenn gave a brief little talk and we shared a heartfelt tear fest about the change that is happening in our United States and how, if the Fairness Doctrine is put back into play (or they sneak in the back door with the localism rules for radio), he won't be there to speak out on behalf of we the people.

We have to be our voice and keep our Constitution from losing its underpinnings. I feel these being knocked out one by one with the bail outs of all troubled companies....capitalism needs to be shored up. I pray we can continue with the free enterprise that made our country the economic and democratic model for the world. I read today that people living in the EU realize how fortunate we've been and how socialistic modeling just doesn't work in the long run.

Back to the Glenn Beck tour: Tom and I were #231 and #232 because Tom made the hour drive up that morning to secure our places in line. We were in front of Glenn within about 15 minutes---he is a speedy one when it comes to signing. Right before we walked away, I impulsively reached over and gave him a big hug. [Southern people do that spontaneously. Not much about me shocks Tom anymore.] I whispered in Glenn's ear that we were the Tom and Vicki of the pitchfork lapel pin...the ones who had probably annoyed and bugged him for a while! There was an aha! moment, then he said the pins are great. I don't know where he gets his energy---I think he runs on adrenaline most of the time. He was in five cities from Tennessee to south Florida on Saturday!

It's late and I'm heading for home tomorrow for Thanksgiving with my wonderful family. Tom has learned that, while there is an overwhelming crowd, the food is always good and the people are always loving, friendly, and welcoming. After all, it's the Jessiehouse family and we're eating the best of the best recipes from the Jessiehouse, Georgia cookbook. I'll write more on that later.


By the way, if you haven't taken the time to read Old Faithful's comment to the November 20 post, please do. Thanks to him and his son for serving in our military. We are free to enjoy this Thanksgiving because of those two and many others like them.

Say thanks when you see someone in uniform. Treat them to lunch if they're in line in front of you at Mickey D's. They are God's special messengers to protect and keep this wonderful country safe. We should be ever so appreciative.

Have a safe and happy holiday weekend. And, if you are in Georgia, please make sure you vote for Saxby Chambliss. I'm for the filibuster and don't feel that either party should have a filibuster-proof Senate. It limits our freedoms. We need Saxby to ensure that doesn't happen.

The many voices of we the people

From Vicki:

Sometimes I feel my voice is so weak and strained, the message being clear but not clear enough, not fresh enough, too trite and overworked. More than a few times in my life have I been told my writing isn't quite good enough---not an easy thing to hear. Yet I keep writing and creating. And I still will, though my spirit is deflated. Maybe I will learn...one of these days.

As I tried to come up with something pithy, original, different, and interesting for the topic, all that came to mind was a bunch of quotes by writers about writing. Here they are:

Writing comes more easily if you have something to say. ~Sholem Asch

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make. ~Truman Capote, McCall's, November 1967

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane

He that uses many words for the explaining any subject doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink. ~John Ray

Mine may be a weak voice tonight. It is still a voice for I am part of we the people with all of the generous First Amendment rights and freedoms and responsibilities. God willing, we the people will continue to speak with our loud, soft, weak, meek, polite, brusque voices. These United States have always been a melting pot of peoples with all manner of voices.

Say a prayer for our soldiers who have volunteered their lives for the express mission of keeping ours free and safe.

Congress met in D.C.for the first time 208 years ago today; Why was the Preamble of the Constitution written?

From Vicki:

On November 17, 1800, Congress met in Washington, D.C. for the first time. Commemorate the day by reading your Constitution. Oh, and I came along 154 years later on the same date! Thanks, Mom and Dad :)

The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This is a beautifully brief, yet powerful explanation for the Constitution. It reminds me of the basic questions to be answered in any news story: who, what, when, where, and why. The founding fathers knew this document for a new country was not for the elite or by the elite. This was for the people and created by we the people, not merely for that period of time, for the future as well.

Our liberties hinge on this document. What a huge responsibility we have to protect these precious freedoms established for us in the 18th century. As a family's history is passed down from generation to generation, so we must pass our American history forward by word of mouth, writing, and living it if we are to maintain our democratic republic as was envisioned then.

I should make a list of the thoughts I have for this blog and try to get to them as they feel right. The military, inheritance, posterity, freedom, prejudice, family, and many more...Mark Twain said one of the best legacies we can leave is our writing. Of course, Mark Twain and others have a lot to say about authors' works as well! For that very reason, I don't even pretend to be an author!

Take time today to pray for our military families, especially those who will be apart during Thanksgiving next week. We have so much to be thankful for.

God Bless America!

Which will it take? A slight or strong wind to truly test our Constitution?

From Vicki:

I have a couple of Bradford pear trees in my yard on my neighbor's side of my driveway. These trees shot up quickly over the past decade and are absolutely gorgeous in the spring. But my neighbors had me concerned: they remembered how fragile a Bradford pear can be, for they had one that split during a wind storm.

Tom trimmed off some branches a couple of years ago to help relieve the top-heaviness. Still I worried about a strong wind ripping through the trees so I had them topped this past summer. Within a couple of weeks we had one of those fast-moving micro bursts. A neighbor three doors down lost a very large Bradford pear that split right down the middle. I was so thankful to have taken preventative measures. I've since paid particular attention to the beautiful pears with their fall colors, especially the ones that have the beginning of a split among the leggy limbs.

Tree topping is frowned upon. I understand this. My Bradford pears looked like newly-shaven poodles. There was very little green left after the landscaper went into the center of the trees and pruned from the inside out, precisely at the place where the trees would split. These were ugly [understatement ugly!] trees for a couple of months until the leaves came back. They are still in that awkward middle school stage. I have high hopes for next spring.

Tonight I heard Glenn Beck talking about our Constitution. He indicated it was at a fragile place where it could split in two unless we the people say, "No! We won't allow that to happen!"

Sometimes repairs need to be made to strengthen or shore up the foundations. It's like opening a wound. There's nothing pretty about it, yet it has to be opened carefully so it heals the right way.

Are we at that place with our United States Constitution? My son said, "George Washington is probably looking down on us and asking, 'what have you done with my country?'" He's got a point. What have we done? Or, better yet, have we been complacent and what haven't we done?

We really do take our country for granted. Until there is a ground swell of emotional Americans who take up the cause to keep our Constitution as the foundation...

God blessed us with these United States. We need to protect and respect what we've been given. Prayers, mighty prayers, can help a crumbling foundation or a fragile tree that is trying to split apart. God can heal our nation if we'll allow Him.

God Bless America!

Cynthia Dunbar and First Amendment Rights

From Vicki:

Tom is to blame for my mania, my voracious need to read all of the articles listed on Lucianne.com each day. When we first started dating three years ago, he asked if I kept up with current events. I told him at a moderate level. Later, he told me that he wondered just how much was a moderate level. What I didn't explain was the every-four-year frenzied-level. I think he's figured it out.

I was going to post about my uncle and the military today and I still might. In the meantime, I read this article on Lucianne.com about a lawyer in Texas who wrote an opinion column and posted it on the Christian Worldview Network website. She was simply exercising her first amendment rights. She is a believer in our United States Constitution.

The title line is a link to the article I read about Cynthia. The following excerpt from her opinion column was at the bottom of the Star-Telegram article. I felt it worthy of sharing. If we don't speak up now, we might not be able to speak up later. The most wonderful thing about our Constitution: the freedoms we enjoy, not to denigrate others, but to be individuals and express our feelings. God bless Cynthia for her stance and her work to educate others about this United States.

Cynthia Dunbar’s comments

Excerpts from her Nov. 2 post on the Christian Worldview Network Web site. The column has been removed.

Can we truly even imagine an America under an Obama Administration? I sincerely believe that an Obama Administration would ultimately mean one thing . . . the end of America as we know her. First, I cannot understand how we can potentially elect a man who most likely has violated the Constitution in his very attempt to serve as Commander in Chief. "No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President," U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1."
If Obama were a natural born citizen who never lost his citizenship through his adoption while living in Indonesia, then why does he obstinately refuse to present valid documentation? The fact that a Federal Court judge did nothing should not surprise any of us. After all, we know all too well the attack this great Country undergoes on a daily basis from our own militant leftist Judicial Branch. Can you imagine how much worse this will get with Obama Appointees?

There is one glimmer of hope in all of this. . . . If in fact Obama is not constitutionally eligible to be president, this is not something he can ever cure. His election, his swearing in and oath of office, his service of three days, three months, three years does not ever truly convey to him the authority of President of the United States. It is void at its inception and, as such, is open to a valid legal attack at any time.

So we can imagine the blatant disregard for our Constitution, but what other threats does an Obama administration pose? We have been clearly warned by his running mate, Joe Biden, that America will suffer some form of attack within the first six months of Obama’s administration. However, unlike Joe, I do not believe this "attack" will be a test of Obama’s mettle. Rather, I perceive it will be a planned effort by those with whom Obama truly sympathizes to take down the America that is threat to tyranny. What nobody seems to be discussing is the fact that if such an attack takes place, what about Martial Law? What happens to expand executive power when a state of civil disorder is declared?

A link to Cynthia's website is on the left side of the blog if you want to read more about her and her beliefs.

If you haven't done so this week, thank someone who is or has served in our United States military. You'll feel good and so will that honorable and respectful freedom fighter whose smile you will remember.

God Bless America!

Government history used to bore me. What was I thinking?

From Vicki:

One of my favorite Ronald Reagan quotes on why we need limited government: “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

Until the past quarter century, I really wasn't very interested in government history because it seemed boring. It is anything but! Now, I'm learning just as much as I can lest I contribute to history [negatively] repeating itself. As I read the genealogy books written by my mom, I have a more vivid picture of my forefathers in their periods of history. I thank her for being interested in and actually preserving our family's history. It is one small piece of the beautiful quilt of the United States of America and its people.

Back to government history: None of the opinion columns and news shows can effectively illustrate what was in the hearts and minds of our founding fathers. We weren't there. We have no concept of living under the rule of a country an ocean away, a country with no understanding of what the people in the colonies were up against just trying to survive. And, you know what? I don't think we ever want to be in that position.

Freedom was hard won. Freedom was not taken for granted. Freedom was governance of the people, by the people, and for the people. Our founding fathers may not have considered themselves brilliant with their thoughts and writings; these were frustrated individuals who needed independence to do what was best for themselves and their families.

I do know this: God had a hand in guiding these rogues who chose freedom. They understood quite well how too much government can actually be a hindrance to a talented, hardworking body of individuals.

We need to keep we the people in our government. We need to keep God in our pledge of allegiance to this free United States of America. When those two basic ideals are threatened, we are priming the country for negative world history to repeat itself. When the government feels we can no longer help ourselves without its help, we need to go back to our Constitution; we need to read it and live it or chance losing it.

I thank President George W. Bush for being a prayerful president who has worked diligently to keep our soil free from another 9-11 for seven years. I thank God for positioning George W. Bush at that place at that time.

It was one of the most difficult periods for any of us in our United States of America, especially the generation born after WWII. It took leadership to live up to our Constitution and face up to those who don't like our US of A.

Say what you want about President Bush; in my book, regardless of how he handled the business of our economy or anything else in the realm of the presidential job description, he'll always be a hero who stood up for our country's freedom. He'll always be a president who teared up at the loss of American life because he and their families understood the [ofttimes terrible] cost of freedom. I will miss him, the imperfect human being he is, as are all of us. We haven't walked a mile in his mocassins, so we can't know just how much he's done for all of us. God bless his family as he moves into the private sector.

And God Bless America, the land of the free and the home of the brave!