A Good Solid B+

That's the grade I'd give . . . to the American people this year.

I started the year ready to give Americans another D- for sitting idly by during those initial months, affording this President, a devout radical and socialist, an opportunity to get his agenda and his cadre of co-conspiring antiestablishment Marxists in place to undermine all of our freedoms.

After not asking important questions, ignoring some of the obvious information and not taking any issue with vetting that never took place by the media or any member of the establishment, voters were allowing themselves to be led into getting it so wrong in the election. Neal Boortz was even more direct in his opinion this week on the topic of our personal political responsibility.

In 2008 many appeared to vote in the same fashion casual gamblers bet on horses at the track; picking by the sound of the name and little more. Due to so many people being lazy-headed, uneducated in the area of civics and their own country's political history and generally allowing themselves to be of the opinion that this stuff either doesn't matter or is too complicated for them to understand OR worst of all, of the belief that any politician could ever deliver on such “audacious” promises; they went to the polls and elected this legislatively inexperienced radical, a candidate that had been groomed by the infamously corrupt Chicago political machine. The man who had voted “present” most of his political career, the one who is still doing this more often than not today, apparently was going to deliver with such sweeping and decisive force once in an executive roll when he had never served in a similar capacity at any level of government nor at any point in his adult life. This was the worst “hiring” decision anyone has ever made (but he said he was a "people person").

My conclusion is that so many of the voters categorized as “Independents” instead of correctly being categorized as "political neophytes" are the same voters that often show up in the later phases of polling as “Undecideds”. Many of them should have stayed home independently and simply not forced themselves to decidedly cast a vote. Hence, the 2008 grade was Americas first D- to which I refer.

2009 began with many of those same voters and the citizenry at large ignoring the signs that were becoming all too evident in the initial weeks. This was shaping up to be the next big misstep, a step in the direction of socialism or at least a sadly diminished and largely dismantled U.S. of A.

Some are bothered by my blog posts, my facebook links, my political discussions to which I say “it is not me who has injected himself into this arena.” It is this lurch towards a statist and highly invasive form of government that has injected itself into every aspect of my life, giving me no recourse but to respond, react and if the will of the people prevails, counteract these forces. To sum it up: I didn't place myself into the political debate, the liberals in our Federal government decided to force me into it by thrusting their elitist agendas upon every aspect of my life or in the words of Jim DeMint:

I wasn’t interested in politics but it was increasingly apparent that politics was interested in me. [This] government wanted more of my money, and more control over my business, my family, my community – my life.
- Saving Freedom, 2009

If and when the government gets out of my wallet, my health care, my work, my family, my freedom to choose, the very essence of who I am, then you may be witness to my silence on these topics. Until then expect to hear from me and a lot others like me.

I've seen and heard from people at the town halls and on blogs and posting in response to news stories. Some admit being a Democrat and even voting for this Obamanible monster only to be forced to completely rethink that vote. More than one has said that 2009 was the year of their political awakening. They became politically engaged because they realized, whether they liked it or not that they were invested in the outcomes of so many of these legislative and executive actions under the current Congress and Presidential administration.

Alexander de Toqueville observed this phenomenon and ascribed it as a unique characteristic of American democracy. When the government is doing their job for the people, running smoothly and governing effectively (and within the wants and desires of the citizenry she serves) there is little call for extraordinary involvement by the people. But when the government is coming off the rails Americans are invested in their government and empowered by its doctrines to become more involved.

Most of us live in a personal condition of sufficient largesse that even when we are subjected to bad governance we are able to endure. People in the Sudan or Somalia or in rural China know hopelessness like we can barely imagine, a hopelessness that even squelches an individual’s quiet desperation and numbs them to the remote possibility of a better existence.

As dark as these times may seem and in the face of sacrifices we've already made and the promise of even greater sacrifices if we have to endure much more of the Obama-Reid-elosi agenda, we still have reason for hope. Certainly none of us needs a politician to give us hope. We are Americans after all. We have real hope born not from the hollow rhetoric of a campaign speech but out of the knowledge of our past history of collective and individual successes. That's America's story. Hope has always been alive here ever since we brought it with us on those first ships across the Atlantic. It is not some spark given to us by this hopeless and cynical President. On the contrary we true Americans have hope and carry it in our hearts every day even in these dark times. Our successes by way of our individual freedoms are well documented in our country’s history. One could say hope is a primary ingredient to the recipe of Americanism.

So B+ because there now appears to be an increasing self reliance and an active hand in American self governance by many who are paying attention to American politics for the first time in their lives, acting on it, calling Senators and Congressman, attending town hall meetings, challenging the Party nominations, voting in local elections and staying engaged and informed in spite of a mainstream media, thus bringing me to an A+ grade for the new media of the internet, talk radio, Fox News, etc. who are providing this resource for us. This is desperately needed because the old guard of the fourth estate has abandoned their #1 responsibility in helping to defend our Democracy. They've abandoned their first principles and primary calling: to provide a skeptical, probing and analytical examination of our government and then sharing those findings with the world. This is all the more reason we have to apply ourselves more energetically to the task and are in need of the new media to provide us that resource.

And please understand that the reason the B+ is not an A is because I am grading for group work. Bankrupt Californians, forgetful New York urbanites, blow-hard Chicagoans and many of the other usual suspects still don't get it and are content to see the country pursue dangerous, reckless, foolish, wasteful and otherwise broken agendas. They are hanging on to false hopes and waiting for a statist regime to deliver some utopian ideal to them and the world at large. They are dragging down the grade for the rest of us. People are leaving those "communities" because their voices can't be heard. They are voting with their feet and these pockets of liberalism will suffer the further loss of their industry, their morality, their community.

The voters in districts like San Francisco, California and New Bedford, Massachusetts will continue reelecting the clown and freak show politicians we see in front of us now. There may be no hope for some of those districts because after all, these are the people that politically speaking would not only steer the bus over the cliff but continue accelerating once in free-fall, hoping to propel themselves into the rocks below with even greater force than the laws of physics would permit (because after all, they are all about ignoring scientific facts as easily as they ignore historical ones). We must continue the fight there and everywhere anyway.

We can bend the grading curve in 2010 and overcome the grade deficits delivered to us by the likes of all Hollywood, the liberal media “intelligentsia” and their weak sisters those establishment pundits, as well as the Party members who want to throw us RINO curve ball candidates, the politicians themselves who would get an “F” on a pop quiz about the Constitution (that 12 page document that they all took an oath to uphold and defend) and that 12%-21% of those polled recently by Rasmussen and Gallup who are happy to profess their liberalism, in other words the D and F side of the American bell curve.

How can America lift their grade above a B+?

By taking our country back from those failures who have been failing us all along.

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