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.
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.
"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!