SlantedK: History Screams, are We Listening?

To say we cannot know the future,

is to completely ignore the past.

By DMK, A SlantedK Production

Recently I took a mental vacation. Blacked out politics, left work behind, kept the lap top shut and went to Chicago. My youngest son Mike planned to return to Tucson, so I flew there to drive back with him. The detail of my beverage consumption is not where I am going today.

There is a discussion abroad. A government the people belong to, or a government for the people by the people. Somebody owes somebody else, blah, blah blah. Without government, blah, blah, blah. Without one, the other withers, blah, blah, blah. The chicken, the egg, an argument forever unanswered.

My answer is within many of my “now and then” topics. That is right, history.

We utilized Highway 80 to go west in our departure from Illinois. The wheels turned, my eyes looked across the land, and I could not help but flash back to the end of the Civil War.

There is a surprise, Dave.

Yeah, I know, Wild West is my thing.

Estimates of the Civil War dead are north of 750,000. (When two sides fight to such a point of polar opposites, blood spills.) Many no longer desired the blood soaked land. To the west, the eyes of the people looked. West of the Mississippi was a wild frontier. No roads, no quick marts, no truck stops, hell, no heat, air conditioning, bottled water and McDonalds. Rumors of gold turned to tales of riches and opportunity for all willing to make the journey.

"There are incalculable resources in the human spirit, once it has been set free." Hubert H. Humphrey goo.gl/47Ew1
— David M Karder (@slantedk) September 13, 2012

The point: Human nature and desire drove them forward. The seat on the wagon was a wooden bench. The suspension, leather straps connected to wooden wheels. The roads; no, trails, made of rock and dirt. Their belongings and their bodies covered from the elements of hot and cold, with only a wool tarp and the clothes on their backs.

Flour, wheat, beans, fish and game provided nourishment.

"The human spirit needs to accomplish, to achieve, to triumph to be happy". Ben Stein goo.gl/47Ew1
— David M Karder (@slantedk) September 13, 2012

"To diminish the human spirit is to destroy the fiber of our being." DMK

If the spirit is weakened many problems lay before us. My tale is but a snapshot of many points of history. The world has developed by the hand of the doers, not the takers. We cannot begin to believe that the takers can take enough to care for the remaining. The well runs dry. In the frontier when the well dried, the motivation was to dig another or die from thirst. Those who sat on the side of the road waiting for another to make a well ended up buried on the side of the road.

What happens when the numbers of the people who believe others owe them, outnumber the people they want to have pay?

The graves on the side of the road will be many.

Thanks for Stopping in!

SlantedK