Follow Us
Become a Fan
What About Their Future?
Self-survival is an ingrained human instinct. Too bad (in some cases) that nations don’t cultivate that same collective instinct.
This survival response makes a baby blink at a loud noise or, under stress, evokes the so-called “fight-or-flight” response with measurable physical reactions; increased heart rate, blood pressure and adrenaline as the body prepares to challenge or flee from a perceived threat.
But for successful defense threats first must be perceived. If the threats are insidious and gradual they may be ignored until the hour is too late.
Family Thoughts
During the recent Christmas and New Year’s holidays I was prompted to consider this notion of threats of an even greater nature and how to counter them.
That’s because I was fortunate to be with most of my family, including three of my four children, their spouses, and six of my eight grandchildren, (two acquired by marriage).
I spent Christmas with my daughter Victoria, who lives with her husband, Dane, in sunny Palm Coast, Florida. The next day the three of us (plus Angelina her Jack Russell terrier) flew to frigid Grand Rapids, Michigan, where my older daughter, Genie, and her husband, John, and their two children, Ondine and Finbarr live (with another Jack Russell and a horse named Elvis).
We all were joined for two days by my youngest son, Jim, who lives in Burlington, Vermont, along with his three sons, Conor, Patrick and Daniel and Max, an impressive 16-year-old German exchange student who is living with them for a year. They were driving back from Chicago to Vermont, brave souls!
Missing were Jim’s wife, Kathleen, who had to return home early for work and also my oldest son, Ted and his wife Josie and their daughter, Kabelo, who were in Virginia visiting his mother, Carol and her husband, Frank.
Despite frequent email and phone calls, because I am not with the family I love most of the time, this holiday with a house full once again reminded me of just how lucky I am — and how much they all mean to me.
A Lifetime of Worry
Most of us, to the degree we are able, do all we can to protect and help our children and their children, and even when they have become adults you always worry.
You never are, (at least I never am) completely confident that some mishap, accident, illness or unwanted event will harm them or destroy their happiness. Looking back I know the odds are that they will survive even after I am gone.
But I also know just how random fate can be.
Readers of this blog know that I survived a plane crash unharmed when I was 10-years-old and as a 15-year-old page boy in the U.S. House of Representatives just missed being in the line of fire when five Puerto Rican nationalist sprayed the House Chamber with scores of bullets.
Then there was that fateful night when I was a congressman that I fell asleep at the wheel driving home from Washington to Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Only the sound of crunching roadside gravel awoke me in time to avoid crashing down into a steep ravine. Then too, there were a couple of FBI-investigated death threats from angry folks who didn’t like some of my public utterances.
But all those personal events, as unexpected as they were at the moment, evoked that aforementioned response and I miraculously did survive, no doubt with some help from above.
Diminished Liberty
What concerns me about my progeny’s future is their loss of freedom and liberty, their diminished constitutional guarantees that, as an American citizen, I have enjoyed most of my life. How does one best respond to that?
Unlike the specific, unforeseen, threatening events in my own past, what has happened and what is happening to America, is a slow and too little recognized systematic process of destruction of our rights by our so-called “leaders.”
Even as I write today’s news reports that the current president of the United States has defiantly and arrogantly violated the U.S. Constitution by pretending he has the power to make “recess appointments” to federal offices while the Congress is still in session.
Readers of this space are well aware of the many obstacles, restrictions and even criminal penalties Obama and the Left have imposed on the freedom to conduct offshore financial activities, assuming we are all guilty of tax evasion.
The wider list of radical policies and vicious assaults on our freedoms by Obama and his fellow travelers is long and sickening in the extreme; a law allowing arrest and indefinite detention of U.S. citizen without charges or trial; the constant surveillance of our persons, our papers and our lives; the claim that the president has the absolute and unquestionable right to order the murder of U.S. citizens he labels as terrorists; the violation of our homes and our personal and financial privacy.
Need I go on?
A Patriot’s Job
The truth is that the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution are being gutted and their sacred guarantees rapidly are being destroyed – and far too few Americans realize this.
To once again borrow the words of our dear friend and Sovereign Society founder, the late John Pugsley:
“The defining attribute of a patriotic American certainly could not be that the individual should kneel and unquestioningly accept the authority of the Nanny State – paying any tribute it demands and obeying all its edicts just because it wraps itself in symbols – the Stars and Stripes, or the Presidential Seal…
“Real American patriots will stand true to the principles of the American Revolution, and refuse to kneel before state power. If this means protecting their assets or their freedom by putting them beyond the reach of a tyrant, that is what, in good conscience, they must do. In that act, they would follow the lead of the millions of immigrants who fled state tyranny in their own countries in search of liberty in America.”
Rational Fear
I do fear for my family’s future, a fear I am certain you share for your own loved ones. But equally I hear for the future of my country, because the two are inextricably bound up together.
A half century ago I was absolutely certain that world Communism would fail, a view the soon to be president, Ronald Reagan, personally expressed it to me. That was a discernible external threat Americans understood and were willing to combat.
Are we willing now to do what must be done as citizens and as parents?
This American election year of 2012 should provide a portentous answer to that question. On behalf of all our families and the millions who have gone before us, I sincerely pray the answer is the right one.
In the meantime, Happy New Year, and please know that we at the Sovereign Society are here to assist you in any way that we can.
That’s the way that it looks from here,
Other Posts from the Author
- Are You Among the 23% Entitled to a Second Passport? - May 14th, 2012
- The Real Problem With the French Elections - May 4th, 2012
- The Life of a “Sovereign Individual” - April 24th, 2012
Interested in More Articles Like This? Sign up for The Sovereign Investor today! (It's FREE!)
Greetings and Happy New Year Bob,
It’s impossible for a vigilant person to NOT recognize your angst. Speaking on… I spent New Year’s day assessing the recently signed into law, THE NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT, updated to include some of the most virulent and insidious additions to this act. You know what they are—and if you don’t people, WHY? And yet, although there is some indication of Americans addressing the horror of giving (via Congress) the POTUS and the military unconstitutional advantages, I, at this time see little to indicate a seditious uprising! Nada, bupkes! The American Collective, the hive mentality, etc. seemingly rests in a state of lethargy! The American government-controlled school system is a raving success! The voting booboisie remain little concerned about the strident shriek of the U.S. government’s efforts (national security, fighting terrorists!) to avail themselves of the real truth to the all-encompassing fetters and to render zombies of the remaining “critical thinkers.” The Patriot Act is paralleled then superseded via the NDAA. I hear or see little to indicate otherwise, “I’ll wear the chains and do as I am told.” Angst? I should think so!
———————
What you now see in America I saw more than a half-century ago. I was ever-so sensitive to the onslaught of the growing, insidious government that I made way to LEAVE the U.S. (Action!) and ultimately renounce citizenship! (Best thing in my life!) I could NOT convince family or close friends to do likewise. Now, I get e-mails from those same friends asking, “What do I do to get out?” I no longer advise. Now, being just underneath 80-years of age, looking back I have absolutely no regrets. NONE. By the way, I spent 26-years (six active, 20-active reserve) in the U.S. Navy, an aviator finally recognizing that I was seriously duped into believing the poppycock that led me to the Vietnam Conflict! I’m way too smart to ever fall for such crapaganda now. Need I say anything more about that? So, if I was giving a young lad or gal living in the U.S. advice today (which I don’t!) it would be to get out NOW while you still can! The moral turpitude of the American Collective is and will gain momentum. Individualism in America is a thing of the past. Few will heed this advice. Think not? Think again! C’est la guerre.
Capt. A.
Principauté de Monaco
UTC 1:00 CET