Not In Despair!

I've been re-reading Eric Metaxas excellent biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer "Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy"  This man spent the last two years of his life in Nazi prison before his life was taken.  Yet he never complained nor considered his fate harsh.  He refused to be in despair even in the midst of the most trying circumstances.

Like many of you, I'm disappointed at the apparent loss of this race by Gov. Romney and the spectacle of four more years under President Obama.  I suspect that this may mean the end is nearer than we expected.  However, my hope is in God, come what may!  I'm not in prison and I'm not being tortured for my faith.  So how can I be in despair when others like Bonhoeffer who has suffered those things and worse refused to be in despair? If I'm a child of the king, there is no reason to allow despair in my life!

"We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed... Therefore we do not lose heart! Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." 
II Cor 4:8-9,16-18

Why I'm Voting For Mitt Romney

I recently posted concerning President Obama's record the last four years and why I won't vote for him. However, my vote for president this year won't be just a vote against President Obama, but will be a vote for Mitt Romney.  He was not my first choice during the primaries.  However, since then I've read many articles about his life and his family as well as about his plans of where he wants to lead our country in the next four years.  I've actually come to be very impressed by what I've found.  While there are many reasons why I think Mitt Romney would make a great president, I'd like to give you five reasons why I'm voting for Mitt Romney next Tuesday:

1. Mitt Romney is a proven business leader-Gov. Romney has been a leader all of his adult life.  This extremely smart man has both a law degree and an MBA, both from Harvard.  He  began his business career at Bain & Co., then spun it off into a phenomenally successful start up company named Bain Capital, which has been an investor in or acquired such business as Staples, Sports Authority, Dominoes Pizza, and Sealy Corp.  While Bain Capital thrived under Mitt's leadership, Bain & Co. went into a financial tailspin until they asked Mitt to come back and save the parent company.  He went back to Bain & Co. for two years, taking a salary of $1 while he worked to put his former employer back on a sound financial footing, which he succeeded in doing.  In 1999, Mitt took on the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, which at that time was $379 million short of its revenue goals.  While salvaging the Olympics and making it successful, he returned his $1.4 million salary and additionally contributed $1 million of his own money to the Olympics!   In contrast to Mitt Romney's experience in both the private and public sectors, Barack Obama had zero experience in managing anything before he ran for president-not even a lemonade stand!  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_career_of_Mitt_Romney)
2. Mitt Romney has executive experience in the public sector and knows how to reach across the aisle- Mitt become a successful governor of Massachussetts, taking the state from a $1.2 billion deficit to $600 million surplus. He worked with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature to cut spending by $1.6 billion and to reform the state's  health care system.  Also, during his tenure as governor, his state's unemployment rate dropped from 5.6% to 4.7%. (http://www.mittromney.com/learn/mitt)
3. Mitt Romney is not afraid to address the fiscal and economic crises our nation is facing-The U.S. is facing the daunting problems of staggering debt and an insolvent Medicare program as well as an extremely sluggish economy.  Governor Romney has detailed plans to on how to tackle these issues. (http://www.mittromney.com/JobsPlan)  In contrast, Barack Obama's can't even propose a serious budget.  Under his leadership, the Democratic-led Senate has not passed a budget in over 3 years!  Perhaps even more amazingly, the president proposed a budget earlier this year that was defeated 99-0!  He couldn't even get one member of his own party to vote for it!  (http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/may/16/obama-budget-defeated-99-0-senate/ http://bit.ly/RBR4tV)  Obama's  plan to "soak the rich" will not even begin to bring in the revenue needed to bring us back from the fiscal cliff we are on, and the excessive regulations, including "Obamacare" and "Dodd-Frank" that he has put in place are actually putting a huge damper on our economy, not allowing us to achieve more than meager growth at best. 
4. Mitt Romney shares my values-Why would a Christian guy like myself vote for a Mormon candidate?   Well, if I were voting for a church position, I wouldn't vote for Mitt Romney.  I don't believe Mormon theology and it is questionable at best whether they should be considered followers of Christ, as they reject many of the tenets of traditional Christianity.  However, when it comes to voting for president, I have to choose the candidate that most closely holds my values.  There is no doubt that Mitt Romney holds for traditional family values in a way that our current president simply does not.  Although he once considered himself pro-choice, he has been pro-life since his days as governor of Massachussetts.  He has stated that he would appoint Supreme Court justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas.  He defends the sanctity of marriage and promises to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court.   In contrast, Barack Obama has been by far the most pro-abortion president in the history of our country.  And he has promoted same-sex marriage, undermining the traditional view of marriage as one man-one woman which virtually all societies have embraced for millenia.  (http://www.mittromney.com/issues/values)
5. Mitt Romney is a good man-Much has been made by Democrats about Mitt Romney's tax rate, as if it is unpatriotic to try to pay as few taxes as possible.  (Who do you know who wants to pay more taxes than they absolutely have to?).  However, the main reason that the Romney's tax rate is so low is because they give an enormous amount to charity.  In 2011, his charitable contributions totaled 29% of his income.  (http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/21/tax-records-romney-donated-29-percent-of-income-to-charity-in-2011/ http://bit.ly/VkEuFI ) Concerning his character, many who know Mitt Romney have testified that he is a very caring individual, not only giving enormous amounts of his money but his time as well to others.  One story that Gov. Romney has not used much in this campaign really reveals a lot about his character.   The story is told in detail here and it's worth reading: (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/pressed-for-anecdote-romney-recounts-tale-of-missing-girl/) .  In short, one of his partners at Bain Capital had a daughter who went missing after a party. Out of concern for her welfare,  Mitt essentially shut down the company for several days while they combed the streets of New York City, eventually finding the young girl.

 The decision that we make this coming Tuesday will affect each of us in America for the rest of our lives. I honestly believe the future of our country hangs in the balance.   I would encourage you to be prayerful about your decision on who to vote for.  I've tried to look at the facts, not at the spin, and I've tried to share those facts with others.  We have a choice of what kind of nation we want to be.   Next Tuesday, I'm praying we make the right choice!


Want to read more?  Here's links to some of my more popular posts:
Lincoln & Obama-Two Views of Welfare
TR on Lincoln-The Great Statesman
A Christmas Story-Put It On My Account
Reflections On 30 Years of Marriage-Part 1

Obama's Record-Where We Are After Four Years

I was asked recently to research where we are as a country after four years of Barack Obama as president. I found that while there is tons of information out there about the Obama presidency, it wasn't all in one place, so I compiled a short summary. While this list is hardly comprehensive (I didn't even get into foreign policy, which actually could be the area of this president's greatest failure), I think it catalogs pretty well the reasons that it would be an unprecedented disaster to rehire this president:

Unemployment

• Under President Obama, the U.S. economy has created a net 415,000 private-sector jobs – less than 0.2% of the 155 million-member American workforce...the workforce itself has shrunk dramatically in size since Obama took office. Labor force participation is at 63.5 percent, its lowest level (excluding 2012) since 1981. In other words, a large chunk of Americans have simply given up looking for work...(The unemployment rate)..would be more than 10 percent if the labor force were the same size it was when Obama took office. (http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/06/fact-check-have-4-5-million-new-jobs-been-created-under-obama/)
• The economy has lost 316,000 jobs under President Barack Obama, though most of the job losses happened at the beginning of Obama’s presidency during the height of the Great Recession...)  (http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/08/report-negative-job-growth-under-obama/#ixzz29sxQoA59)
• Veronique de Rugy, senior fellow at the Mercatus Center... told the Daily Caller News Foundation...“It is the slowest recovery ever,” she added. “I would claim that there’s really no recovery at all...“The last twelve months have seen the slowest wage growth ever. We also have the slowest economic growth compared to any other recovery.”

(http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/08/report-negative-job-growth-under-obama/#ixzz29sxQoA59)

Job Wages

• “...while 60 percent of the jobs lost during the 2008-2009 financial crisis were in middle income occupations, the vast majority – 58 percent – of jobs created under President Obama are low-wage. Those jobs include “retail sales, food preparation, home health and customer service.”

(http://nation.foxnews.com/low-wage-jobs/2012/09/09/study-58-jobs-created-under-obama-are-low-wage#ixzz29syoSuTJ)

• ...Since the economic recovery technically began in June 2009, median household income has dropped 5.7 percent. And since Obama took office in January 2009, the median income has fallen 8.2 percent, from $55,198 to $50,678.

(http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/26/household-income-down-82-percent-since-obama-took-office-study-shows/#ixzz29szsEao9)

Federal Deficit

• . Fiscal year 2012 marked the fourth consecutive year of $1 trillion deficits.  (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/10/federal-spending-by-the-numbers-2012)

• If each … federal taxpayers were given responsibility for paying off an equal share of the new federal debt added since Obama was inaugurated, they would each need to pay about $64,219.88. (http://cnsnews.com/news/article/64000-question-how-much-has-debt-increased-taxpayer-under-obama)

Gas Prices

• Average retail gasoline prices have more than doubled under President Obama, according to government statistics, rising from $1.84 per gallon to $3.85 per gallon. (http://cnsnews.com/news/article/gasoline-prices-more-double-under-obama-184-385)

Welfare

• The welfare reform of 1996 requires that after three months on food stamps, recipients be engaged in some kind of work activity for at least 20 hours a week. Tucked away in the mammoth 2009 so-called “stimulus” spending bill was the suspension of this requirement for able-bodied adults with no children.

The result has been that between 2008 and 2010, the number of these able-bodied adults on food stamps doubled—from 1.9 million to 3.9 million, according to CRS. (Total participation is now at roughly 47 million, or one in seven Americans.)

• Today, the federal government spends nearly $1 trillion a year on approximately 80 different federal welfare programs. If President Obama has his way, spending will only continue to increase despite welfare already being the fastest-growing part of government spending. (http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/19/food-stamp-participation-doubled-among-able-bodied-adults-after-obama-suspended-work-requirement/)

Stimulus Waste

• The 2009 stimulus set aside $80 billion to subsidize politically preferred energy projects. Since that time, 1,900 investigations have been opened to look into stimulus waste, fraud, and abuse (although not all are linked to the green-energy funds), and nearly 600 convictions have been made. Of that $80 billion in clean energy loans, grants, and tax credits, at least 10 percent has gone to companies that have since either gone bankrupt or are circling the drain.  (http://blog.heritage.org/2012/10/18/president-obamas-taxpayer-backed-green-energy-failures/)

Life Issues

• Obamacare Tramples Religious Freedom: The Obamacare anti-conscience mandate requires all insurance plans to cover, at no charge, abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization. Only houses of worship qualify for a religious exemption—leaving faith-based hospitals, schools, soup kitchens, and many others to provide such mandated coverage despite religious and moral objections. (http://www.heritage.org/research/factsheets/2012/06/let-religious-freedom-ring-stop-the-assault-on-our-first-freedom)
• “In March 2009, President Obama issued an executive order to allow federal funding of research that requires the killing of human embryos.(http://www.nrlc.org/Records/obamarecord.pdf)
• In 2011, President Obama indicated he would veto the entire federal spending bill -- forcing a government shutdown -- rather than accept a provision cutting funding to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. (http://www.nrlc.org/Records/obamarecord.pdf)

Religious Liberty

• Liberal Social Agenda Driving Out Good Samaritans: In the wake of state laws redefining marriage, faith-based adoption and foster care providers in Massachusetts, Illinois, and the District of Columbia were forced to close their doors rather than violate their deeply held beliefs about marriage and the placement of children with married couples. In Washington, the White House refused to renew a grant for a faith-based organization effectively serving human trafficking victims because the group could not, on the basis of conscience, refer their clients for abortions.

(http://www.heritage.org/research/factsheets/2012/06/let-religious-freedom-ring-stop-the-assault-on-our-first-freedom)

Lincoln and Obama-Two Views Of Welfare

I recently read a book of speeches and letters by Abraham Lincoln, and one particular letter caught my eye This was a letter Lincoln wrote to his step-brother in 1851 in response to a request for eighty dollars.  He refused the request, but gave him a better alternative, namely work!  Here's the text of the short letter with my comments following:

Dear Johnston: Your request for eighty dollars I do not think it best to comply with now. At the various times when I have helped you a little you have said to me, "We can get along very well now"; but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty again. Now, this can only happen by some defect in your conduct. What that defect is, I think I know. You are not lazy, and still you are an idler. I doubt whether, since I saw you, you have done a good whole day's work in any one day. You do not very much dislike to work, and still you do not work much, merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it. This habit of uselessly wasting time is the whole difficulty; it is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children, that you should break the habit. It is more important to them, because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it, easier than they can get out after they are in.

You are now in need of some money; and what I propose is, that you shall go to work, "tooth and nail," for somebody who will give you money for it. Let father and your boys take charge of your things at home, prepare for a crop, and make the crop, and you go to work for the best money wages, or in discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get; and, to secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you, that for every dollar you will, between this and the first of May, get for your own labor, either in money or as your own indebtedness, I will then give you one other dollar. By this, if you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a month for your work. In this I do not mean you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead mines, or the gold mines in California, but I mean for you to go at it for the best wages you can get close to home in Coles County. Now, if you will do this, you will be soon out of debt, and, what is better, you will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again. But, if I should now clear you out of debt, next year you would be just as deep in as ever. You say you would almost give your place in heaven for seventy or eighty dollars. Then you value your place in heaven very cheap, for I am sure you can, with the offer I make, get the seventy or eighty dollars for four or five months' work. You say if I will furnish you the money you will deed me the land, and, if you don't pay the money back, you will deliver possession. Nonsense! If you can't now live with the land, how will you then live without it? You have always been kind to me, and I do not mean to be unkind to you. On the contrary, if you will but follow my advice, you will find it worth more than eighty times eighty dollars to you.

LINCOLN TO JOHN D. JOHNSTON, JANUARY 2, 1851.

 As I was reading this, I couldn't help but marvel at the difference between our wise 16th president and our very foolish 44th president. While this letter shows how much Lincoln valued hard work, thrift, and integrity, President Obama's presidency and his current campaign is about "What can government do for me?" While he claims to be a great admirer of Lincoln, his recent attempt to gut welfare reform by removing the work requirement is a prime example of how much he and his party often appeal not to "the better angels of our nature" (to quote Lincoln again), but in fact to the "lower urges" of our nature.  Like Lincoln, we should help people when they are down by offering them a "hand up" instead of a "hand out".  

Actually, both political parties have been complicit in the subsidizing of non-work.  In the name of compassion, unemployment benefits have been extended by Congress to people who are out of work for 73 weeks!  Now as bad as economic conditions have been, I find it hard to believe that, for those who really want a job, it would take 73 weeks to find some kind of productive work. Rather than an incentive to get back to work, we have given them an incentive to stay out of work.

While I know that there are people out there who are truly needy and ought to be helped, I also know that we have developed a "welfare sub-culture" in our country of people who, like John Johnson 160 years ago, know how to "work the system." This way of life, in which people spend enormous amounts of energy finding ingenious ways to avoid work, often is passed down from generation to generation.  And, rather than solving this national problem, our government has aided and abetted it, often by giving out so many benefits to people who don't work that they would have to take a "pay cut" to take a minimum-wage job!

Please don't misunderstand me. I have no disdain for people in this sub-culture, but a great deal of pity for them.  Often they are trapped in the "welfare mindset" that keeps them from becoming productive members of our society.  But we do them no favor in providing open-ended government  programs that are actually not compassionate but harmful both to the recipients and to our society as a whole.


Want to read more?  Here's links to some of my more popular posts:
TR on Lincoln-The Great Statesman
Reflections On 30 Years of Marriage-Part 1
What Is Marriage?
Five Biblical Reasons To Support Traditional Marriage

9-11-12-A Sad Day For America

While we're focused on the economy and jobs in this election, the events of 9-11-12 should remind us that this is still a very dangerous world, and that we desperately need leadership at the top in Washington.  Unbelievably, when our embassy in Cairo is stormed by protesters and our flag is desecrated, our diplomats there put out an apology for an anti-Muslim film that we have nothing to do with!  What kind of leadership is that?  Yes, I know that the White House has disavowed the memo since there has been a storm of protest about it, but it still stands as a testament to a feckless leader who stands behind the fig leaf of killing Osama bin Laden (an important achievement that obscures an otherwise dismal foreign policy record).  As Ross Kaminisky wrote in an excellent article this morning:

"...Why did the first terrorist to touch our flag not receive a "warning shot" to the arm or leg, and the second terrorist, who presumably was not impressed by the admonition, not then have his head blown off?"  http://spectator.org/archives/2012/09/12/a-black-flag-day-for-america

Now we have an ambassador in Libya and three other diplomats killed because of this 14-minute movie that no one here had ever heard of until now.  Could it be that the events in Libya occurred later in the day Tuesday have been prevented if we had taken a much stronger stance in Egypt?

This reminds me so much of the kind of "leadership" we had in 1979-1980 under Jimmy Carter that resulted in 52 hostages being taken in Tehran and held for 444 days.  Carter's foreign policy emboldened our enemies and discouraged our friends to the point that Iran felt unafraid to take Americans hostage and hold them for over a year.

Finally, we found out yesterday that our President refuses to meet with the courageous Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu later this month when he is in New York.  While our friend Israel is in greatest crisis of its existence with the potential for more lives lost than in the Holocaust, our president finds it more needful to be campaigning in Ohio.  Is this the great foreign policy leader that we were regaled with in Charlotte last week?  Why are we not standing with our greatest ally as it faces an existential threat?

Update 1:53 P.M.-I watched President Obama's statement this morning on the Libyan crisis.  He read it flatly like it was some kind of press release.  Amazing!  Four members of his administration killed including his top diplomat in Libya and there is no hint of anger in the President's voice.

I saw an excellent interview with retired Lt. Col. Jack Peters on Fox News expressing some of these same thoughts.  Switched to CNN and the supposedly objective news anchor is laying into a Romney surrogate because Gov. Romney dared criticize the president!  That was totally pathetic!


Want to read more?  Here's links to some of my more popular posts:
Lincoln & Obama-Two Views of Welfare
TR on Lincoln-The Great Statesman
A Christmas Story-Put It On My Account
Reflections On 30 Years of Marriage-Part 1

TR On Lincoln-The Great Statesman

I recently came across a short essay that Theodore Roosevelt wrote about Abraham Lincoln while Roosevelt was still president.  He wrote these words when "politician" and "statesman" were synonymous and when neither word carried an onerous connotation.  Both of these men, TR and Lincoln were statesmen in the best sense of the word.  How we desperately need men and women who possess both great character and great wisdom to lead us now, as these men did so well in the last two centuries!  As we enter the heart of this election season, I would to God that the men and women running for office would heed these words, written over 100 years ago, but which still ring true today.  WN

(Italics below are mine)

Immediately after Lincoln's re-election to the Presidency, in an off-hand speech, delivered in response to a serenade by some of his admirers on the evening of November 10, 1864, he spoke as follows:

"It has long been a grave question whether any government not too strong for the liberties of its people can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies. On this point, the present rebellion brought our republic to a severe test, and the Presidential election, occurring in regular course during the rebellion, added not a little to the strain.... The strife of the election is but human nature practically applied to the facts in the case. What has occurred in this case must ever occur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.... Now that the election is over, may not all having a common interest reunite in a common fort to save our common country? For my own part, I have striven and shall strive to avoid placing any obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here, I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom. While I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think for their own good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed or pained by the result."

This speech has not attracted much general attention, yet it is in a peculiar degree both illustrative and typical of the great statesman who made it, alike in its strong common-sense and in its lofty standard of morality. Lincoln's life, Lincoln's deeds and words, are not only of consuming interest to the historian, but should be intimately known to every man engaged in the hard practical work of American political life. It is difficult to overstate how much it means to a nation to have as the two foremost figures in its history men like Washington and Lincoln. It is good for every man in any way concerned in public life to feel that the highest ambition any American can possibly have will be gratified just in proportion as he raises himself toward the standards set by these two men. It is a very poor thing, whether for nations or individuals, to advance the history of great deeds done in the past as an excuse for doing poorly in the present; but it is an excellent thing to study the history of the great deeds of the past, and of the great men who did them, with an earnest desire to profit thereby so as to render better service in the present. In their essentials, the men of the present day are much like the men of the past, and the live issues of the present can be faced to better advantage by men who have in good faith studied how the leaders of the nation faced the dead issues of the past. Such a study of Lincoln's life will enable us to avoid the twin gulfs of immorality and inefficiency--the gulfs which always lie one on each side of the careers alike of man and of nation. It helps nothing to have avoided one if shipwreck is encountered in the other. The fanatic, the well-meaning moralist of unbalanced mind, the parlor critic who condemns others but has no power himself to do good and but little power to do ill--all these were as alien to Lincoln as the vicious and unpatriotic themselves.His life teaches our people that they must act with wisdom, because otherwise adherence to right will be mere sound and fury without substance; and that they must also act high-mindedly, or else what seems to be wisdom will in the end turn out to be the most destructive kind of folly. Throughout his entire life, and especially after he rose to leadership in his party, Lincoln was stirred to his depths by the sense of fealty to a lofty ideal; but throughout his entire life, he also accepted human nature as it is, and worked with keen, practical good sense to achieve results with the instruments at hand. It is impossible to conceive of a man farther removed from baseness, farther removed from corruption, from mere self-seeking; but it is also impossible to conceive of a man of more sane and healthy mind--a man less under the influence of that fantastic and diseased morality (so fantastic and diseased as to be in reality profoundly immoral) which makes a man in this work-a-day world refuse to do what is possible because he cannot accomplish the impossible. 

In the fifth volume of Lecky's History of England, the historian draws an interesting distinction between the qualities needed for a successful political career in modern society and those which lead to eminence in the spheres of pure intellect or pure moral effort. He says:

 "....the moral qualities that are required in the higher spheres of statesmanship [are not] those of a hero or a saint. Passionate earnestness and self-devotion, complete concentration of every faculty on an unselfish aim, uncalculating daring, a delicacy of conscience and a loftiness of aim far exceeding those of the average of men, are here likely to prove rather a hindrance than an assistance. The politician deals very largely with the superficial and the commonplace; his art is in a great measure that of skillful compromise, and in the conditions of modern life, the statesman is likely to succeed best who possesses secondary qualities to an unusual degree, who is in the closest intellectual and moral sympathy with the average of the intelligent men of his time, and who pursues common ideals with more than common ability.... Tact, business talent, knowledge of men, resolution, promptitude and sagacity in dealing with immediate emergencies, a character which lends itself easily to conciliation, diminishes friction and inspires confidence, are especially needed, and they are more likely to be found among shrewd and enlightened men of the world than among men of great original genius or of an heroic type of character."

 The American people should feel profoundly grateful that the greatest American statesman since Washington, the statesman who in this absolutely democratic republic succeeded best, was the very man who actually combined the two sets of qualities which the historian thus puts in antithesis. Abraham Lincoln, the rail-splitter, the Western country lawyer, was one of the shrewdest and most enlightened men of the world, and he had all the practical qualities which enable such a man to guide his countrymen; and yet he was also a genius of the heroic type, a leader who rose level to the greatest crisis through which this nation or any other nation had to pass in the nineteenth century.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT SAGAMORE HILL, OYSTER BAY, N. Y., September 22, 1905.


Lincoln, Abraham (2004-09-30). The Writings of Abraham Lincoln - Volume 1: 1832-1843 (Kindle Locations 35-48). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

\Want to read more?  Here's links to some of my more popular posts:
Lincoln and Obama-Two Views Of Welfare
Reflections On 30 Years of Marriage-Part 1
What Is Marriage?
Five Biblical Reasons To Support Traditional Marriage

A Good Word!

Every relation to mankind, of hate or scorn or neglect, is full of vexation and torment. There is nothing to do with men but to love them; to contemplate their virtues with admiration, their faults with pity and forbearance, and their injuries with forgiveness. Task all the ingenuity of your mind to devise some other thing, but you never can find it. To hate your adversary will not help you; to kill him will not help you; nothing within the compass of the universe can help you, but to love him. But let that love flow out upon all around you, and what could harm you? How many a knot of mystery and misunderstanding would be untied by one word spoken in simple and confiding truth of heart! How many a solitary place would be made glad if love were there; and how many a dark dwelling would be filled with light!
ORVILLE DEWEY
From Daily Strength For Daily Needs


Want to read more?  Here's links to some of my more popular posts:
Lincoln & Obama-Two Views of Welfare
TR on Lincoln-The Great Statesman
A Christmas Story-Put It On My Account
Reflections On 30 Years of Marriage-Part 1