2016: a pivotal year

By Cathy Keim

Here I am writing this piece on January 3, 2016, after being absent for most of the month of December. I had a wonderful holiday filled with family and friends from all over the world, and I hope that you had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year too.

My husband and I were just over in Washington, DC, to visit with some family and had the opportunity to go to the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park. It’s a great zoo, but I was trying to figure out where in the Constitution it said that the federal government should be funding a world class zoo. I couldn’t remember where that would be.

The Smithsonian Institute receives about 70% of its funding from the government. This is just one example of how our tax dollars are spent on “worthy” projects that are not Constitutional, yet most of us don’t even think about it anymore. We are used to the federal government encroaching into every sphere of our lives.

I read some of the propaganda that they have gotten children to write, then posted for the visitors to read. One piece was from a young girl that was calling upon us to work harder to save the tigers. It was an excellent example of Common Core English skills using emotionally charged adjectives to drive people to take action. (I have read the lesson plans for just such activities. Common Core would rather have the students use emotion than reason to write a persuasive piece.)

I kept wondering why this young lady was so worked up about tigers when our federal leadership could not take the time to cut the funding for Planned Parenthood despite being caught red-handed selling baby parts for profit. It seems that tigers are much more important than easily replaceable babies.

The inability of our leaders to act upon such horrific revelations as selling baby parts leads to my premise that 2016 is a pivotal year for our Republic. We have sunk to such depths in our understanding of what the American Experiment is about that many are calling this our last chance to right the ship of state.

Over my break I took the opportunity to look through some of these assessments.

Daniel Horowitz listed the top ten betrayals of the GOP elites, all of which Michael and I have covered as they happened.

Phyllis Schlafly shocked people with her statement after the passage of the omnibus bill last month,

This is a betrayal of the grassroots and of the Republican Party. We thought we were electing a different crowd to stand up for America, and they didn’t. We’re extremely outraged by what Congress has done. Nancy Pelosi couldn’t have engineered it any better. I think the people are going to react by electing Donald Trump.

Maryland’s own Ann Corcoran has started a new blog to encourage people to join the fight to save America. She has done yeoman’s work for years at her Refugee Resettlement Watch to bring attention to the deeply flawed Refugee Resettlement program. Her new blog is American Resistance 2016!

They are changing America by changing the people! Will you fight to save it, or allow the greatest nation on earth to perish?

But the quote that most caught my attention was by Diana West. She was responding to a plea by Brent Bozell for conservatives to get behind Ted Cruz because he has been leading the fight for conservative issues. Diana said:

To be honest, if these were the only issues under discussion in this GOP presidential primary season I would hardly be able to make myself pay attention. It’s not that they are unimportant issues. Personally, I support every one of them. But they are not existential issues. They are not the issues on which the very future of the Republic hangs. They are issues that a responsible Republican House and Senate, if they were loyal to their oath and to their constituents, could today begin to rectify all by themselves. (Emphasis mine.)

Our elected leaders could have stopped the funding for Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, immigration, etc. but they did not. That is why the base is done with them. That is why Donald Trump is drawing such support.

I went to Donald Trump’s website and read his immigration plan.

His three bullet points are:

1. A nation without borders is not a nation. There must be a wall across the southern border.

2. A nation without laws is not a nation. Laws passed in accordance with our Constitutional system of government must be enforced.

3. A nation that does not serve its own citizens is not a nation. Any immigration plan must improve jobs, wages and security for all Americans.

It is remarkable that his plan is seen as remarkable. Most of the points on his plan are common sense, but our leadership seems to have lost their common sense.

Roger Simon says at PJ Media:

The rise of Donald Trump is a good thing, not because any one man can easily change the course of history, not because he’s necessarily the best candidate (although he could be), but because his rise indicates that a lot of people who often ignore things are waking up to this extreme situation.

We are in for a rough ride in 2016. Our GOP leadership has given President Obama a pass on everything he has wanted right up until he finishes his term with their funding of the omnibus bill.

Winston Churchill was the man for his time. He spent the years leading up to World War II pleading with his government to rearm and to prepare for the fight ahead. The appeasers refused to listen to him, but when the time came, he was ready to lead. Donald Trump has not spent the last decade in opposition to the government and many of his statements give me heartburn, but on the great issue of our time he is leading as no other candidate.

One thought on “2016: a pivotal year”

  1. If conservatives want to criticize projects funded by the national government that are not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, that is good… but I don’t think starting with the Smithsonian — known as “America’s Attic” — is the smart place to start.

    The Smithsonian is a treasure for the nations families, and I think there is immense cultural and institutional value to the preservation of the nation’s treasures — which they do well, and is one of their missions. (Also, lets not forget that the Smithsonian was donated to the National Government for this very purpose, not by an American, but by a Briton. Cousins, indeed!).

    There is no political capital to be gained by attacking the institution of the Smithsonian, and only a lot of bad PR. Better to stick to things like the Bureau of Land Management, whose corruption has spurred a range war in Oregon.

    Or the Burea of Indian Affairs, which has coordinated a genocide against the Nations for a century.

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