1 Pierce/Cleveland 2012!!! ;-) And wow, yes... how far we've come...

2 It really does seem that we've come to the point in our republic that we are witnessing the dying days of the country. The USA will probably outlast our meager lifetimes, but it really seems that the trend is already set where the populace is already willing to destroy the principles that are the foundation of freedom in order to gain a few 'free' trinkets.

History moves faster these days with the advent of lightspeed communication, will the downfall of the US take as long as the downfall of Rome, or will our demise move faster given the speed of the modern world?

I for one am glad I know how to produce my own food, and am a crack shot with any firearm you put in front of me.

3 My husband wrote this petition for our local group to use. We are still groping for our mission statement, etc. I think it is a very good start for them, I hope they will use it.
http://rockportconservatives.blogspot.com/2009/08/please-read-print-study-and-consider.html
It is basically, let's make them get back to the constitution.

4 I simply cannot imagine why we as a country, today in 2009, would like to encourage such destructive sentiments as those espoused by these dead selfish hypocrits who actually argued against public charity!! Why does anyone feel good about that? How can anyone feel good about that?? Would you want your neighbor to ignore your child being kidnapped? Or your spouse being brutally beaten? Or your own house being ransacked?? Then why argue against doing anything for suffering citizenry out of the funds we all contribute to in an effort to keep us all afloat? Pure Capitalism's goal is its own self promotion, self propagation, and if the people engaging in its activities do not take measures to check its progression it will destroy all who fall under its tread. That is a fact. When we "allow the market" to do as it will, we have The Jungle, we have poisoned lands that cannot be used for hundreds of years because of pollution, we have rampant death and destruction. Why? Because the strictures of Pure Capitalism and the Market make no provision for human beings. In the perfect market-driven end game, we would all die, leaving about 10people alive who have all the money and reside on the fraction of land not completely inutile. I worked in urban planning and studied urban developement and sat in on the meetings: trust me, the uninhibited end is always the same. The dying days of our country will arrive if we continue to believe that there is no need to care for the needs/health/wellbeing of anyone the market does not tell us to. We will die as a country if we continue to believe that what keeps us going is our refusal to care about what we do to either each other or people in other countries in our effort to improve our own selfish condition. The only thing that will ensure that in 100years people are not speaking of us in the same nostalgic past-tense tones as they speak of the heyday of Rome is if we look around and say "I want everyone to be well so that as a country we are strong. Everyone irrespective of social status, buying power, or anything else." We must abandon the idea that the Only Value of a Person is what they can either provide as a piece of machinery or what they can acquire by virtue of their status as walking ATMs.