Civis Romanus Sum

Over the preceding centuries, the Constitution of ancient Rome had developed an intricate series of checks and balances intended to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual. The consulship, elected annually, was jointly held by two men. Military commands were of limited duration and subject to regular renewal. Ordinary citizens were accustomed to a remarkable degree of liberty: the cry of “Civis Romanus sum” — “I am a Roman citizen” — was a guarantee of safety throughout the world.

But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year-old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius, to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law. "

The preceding is from an Op Ed in the New York Times by Robert Harris entitled Pirates of the Mediterranean.
It appeared in 2006  but I think it raises some interesting points to think about.
Terrorism was one step along the way to the death of the Roman Constitution.
Should America be worried? It too has seen erosion of liberty since 9 11.

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither"... Ben Franklin
But it is more accurate to say that they will have neither in the end.

Modern Life and Rome

Roman neighborhood street and sidewalks

How modern ancient Rome was!

Or, perhaps, as Solomon reminds us, there is nothing new under the sun and we are just continuing what has been during the more prosperous times of history.

The following are some things modern life has in common with ancient Rome.

Romans enjoyed  hot and cold running water in  homes and if there was no plumbing in the house, one could find hot water at the public baths. 
Bathroom sinks and toilets were much like ours today. Sinks were on the wall and had hot and cold taps (faucets).

Bathrooms sported flush toilets and there were public toilets for travelers.

Fast food restaurants lined the streets. You could buy sweets,  fruit, bread, soup, stew all piping hot to eat there or take home with  you.
There were kosher inns and restaurants also. Rome was very cosmopolitan and had something for everyone.

Graffiti was popular with young folks who left their mark on public walls in the form of  criticism, compliments and barbs at famous people, favorite singers , actors and gladiators who had the popularity of modern sports heroes and rock stars.
Graffiti was also illegal then too.
Graffiti of the day was not much different than today though I think a bit more crude.

"We two dear men, friends forever, were here.  If you want to know our names, they are Gaius and Aulus."
"Antiochus hung out here with his girlfriend Cithera."
"Epaphra, you are bald!"
"The city block of the Arrii Pollii in the possession of Gnaeus Alleius Nigidius Maius is available to rent from July 1^st.  There are shops on the first floor, upper stories, high-class rooms and a house.  A person interested in renting this property should contact Primus, the slave of Gnaeus Alleius Nigidius Maius."

Can you translate the picture (graffiti) to the left?
I can... roughly it tells us that the boss(Dominus) isn't worth a rat's behind.
That saying is with  us today  "I dont give a rat's a--."
Some graffiti was pretty raw  just as it is today.




Jars and containers of the day had the names of the manufacturer and advertizements telling you the quality and characteristics of what was inside. Just like today.

Garum was a fermented fish sauce used on many foods as a condiment. There was kosher garum and non kosher garum and it's praises and character was listed on the jar.
One jar advertizes the contents as Castum (Kosher) Garum" made only from fish with fins and scales.
And Garum is still available today.

Villas were heated with underground furnaces that blew hot air into rooms through duct work.   They were called Hypocausts.

They built apartment houses and high rises (high for the day) just like we do today. People could rent or buy into condos and associations as well.

There were straight, flat highways built for heavy traffic and trade. They knew that a good well kept road system was one part of what made Rome strong.     Strong infrastructure was known to be a backbone of a strong nation.

Spectator sports were all the rage as were health club memberships and working out. They spent time at health resorts, retreats, spas and sea side vacation towns. Games and shows drew huge crowds.
Summer saw Romans heading to the seashore or the mountains for relaxation.
Children were sent to camp in the Alps and other mountain ranges.

Building and the arts were subsidized by the government to keep them going.
Stringent building codes were in place in Rome but ghetto high rises were poorly constructed and inspectors paid off to get a pass on code violations.

Urban development lead to problems of gridlock and  traffic congestion, noise pollution, rising rental fees, ghettos and urban blight, unemployment, racial tension, increase in crime and an ever increasing cost of living.

Unrest due to political challenges lead to riots, demonstrations and even fires during their 'long hot summers'.

Rome began to crumble under the twin burdens of inflation and increased taxation.As well as unbridled immigration.
As a trade deficit developed and jobs 'moved overseas' Romans found themselves increasingly hard pressed to make a  proper living.
Immigrants replaced Romans at an extremely high rate as well. Everyone wanted to take advantage of the Roman system.

The Empire imported far more than it was producing and the result was a crushing blow to the economy.
War became an industry as Rome insisted that Pax Romana could only be secured through perpetual war.

Just like today.

America Needs a Call to National Repentance

American's can't win in the political department unless  the nation repents of the very things that have brought it down because the old saying that a nation gets the leaders it deserves may just well be the case.

A look at the news on any given day and the trash that fills it show the steady decline of morality and decency. We see people calling 9 11 because their fast food order is slow to arrive. Others punch out the server if something annoys them.  Self absorption is the order of the day.

Morality is in decline in America. Groups of kids think nothing of robbing a store en masse. They feel entitled to the goodies they take. There is no thought for the store owner or his family. Our schools do not educate but indoctrinate in extreme views and undermine thought. History is perverted and recreated like something out of  Orwell's '1984'.

Corporations and banks steal and cheat the public and not  much is done to stop them.Divorce is a national pastime and dirty language is par for the course wherever you go.

I have actually seen people curse G-d in internet 'shorthand' that is so popular. It is so common  that I once was horrified to see it used on a religious forum. G-d is out and do your own thing replaces him and his guidance. "In G-d we Trust" is an empty phrase. In fact G-d and his commandments have been placed in dusty , dank basements for storage.

The super rich use America as a cash cow while sending business and jobs overseas and closing down American manufacturing, once the envy of the world and now not even a shadow of its former self.

The widow , the orphan and the weak and the elderly are used mercilessly and cheated out of what little they have. They are thrown aside and justice is denied to them because they are poor.

Our leadership partners  with other nations at the expense of our own people. Laws are enacted that work against our own citizens.  Foreign law is put on a par with American law. Relativism and cultural relativity, German rationalism have perverted our view. Values are so skewed that few recognize what this means. Few see the end of self reliance and the work ethic because they don't know what it is anymore since those values are not taught anymore.

Ginsburg

Justice is gone from courts who take on a political flavor  rather than dispensing justice or upholding the Constitution. The love of American values is replaced by a foreign mind set that is pervading the entire nation as Americans sink to the bottom and strangers rise to the top.

A woman sitting on the Supreme Court,  Justice Ruth Ginsberg, mocks the Constitution while speaking to foreigners and does so in complete confidence and arrogance. Don't replicate the Constitution she told them but look to South Africa as a great example. South Africa where whites are being butchered? How clueless and self absorbed is this woman?

It  is an utter disgrace to speak that way about the nation she was hired to serve and protect and  yet there she sits on the bench that is supposed to uphold the Constitution she looks down upon. She should be fired  immediately.  But it is okay to mock the very nation that pays your salary and supports you. It is alright to denigrate the Constitution that gives you your freedom and your job.
She looks like a demented Gerbil.

Wee bit of snobbery

Our own president saunters around the world apologizing for us. What does he apologize for? For the billions in handouts and food shipments that saved millions of lives?  Is that what he apologizes for?  America has carried the world on its back for a long time now and all it gets in return is a kick in the face even from its own leadership. Disgraceful, yet, these leaders have no clue. They vacation while Americans look hard for work. They call  people out of work liars and declare there is plenty of work. Our leaders just can't understand why the little people are not employed.
Truth be told  they simply do not care at all.

Prices on necessities are rising to the point that normal people cannot afford to feed their families as they once did,  but,  not much is said. The public just pays and remains quiet as food prices soar out of sight, housing becomes unaffordable and jobs are sent overseas to nations we also help support through hand outs!

Yes, we give foreign aid to China. We borrow from them, but also give them foreign aid and they steal technology from us to the tune of multiple billions of dollars all the time. Sane, moral people see the goofy weird , sick attitude behind this kind of policy.

I learned long ago to follow the money. There is usually someone's pockets bulging from such things.

China is one of the biggest economies in the world and grew at more than 9 percent over the last year. It also has loaned more than $1 trillion to the U.S. to fund its deficit-spending.

But at the same time, the U.S. sends foreign aid to China, which lawmakers of all stripes say is just plain nuts.

"Why in the world would we be borrowing money and then turn around and giving it back to the countries that we're borrowing it from?" Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said. "If they have enough of a surplus to loan us money, they have enough of a surplus to take care of their own needs."

Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia asked the same question in a recent appearance on Fox News: "Hey, in the crisis that we're in right now, should we really be continuing to send American taxpayer dollars over to China for these purposes?"

It isn't a lot of aid -- tens of millions in bilateral aid, much more through international institutions to which the U.S. contributes.

But the question is why a nation that's competing with the U.S. economically and politically in every corner of the globe should get any money from the U.S.
Fox News

The Occupy movement was so filthy, so lacking in personal or national pride that they attracted vermin , rats, filth and disease to their camp sites.   This indicates a serious lack of values and morality when you are willing to live in your own filth . What kind of people are so lacking in decency that they trash the very place they live? What kind of people like living in filth?

Walk through any mall and hear children and teens using the most vile language you can think of freely and without embarrassment.It is now second nature to people to curse and revile. There seemingly are no limits for them. Their parents, if they even have two of them, are absent and unconcerned for the most part. Home life is missing for many as each member does his own thing.

We see gangs of kids raiding stores and stealing en masse. Their parents are no where to be seen and in most cases are not married to one another anyway. We see a generation that feels entitled to whatever they want.

The fundamental problems that America faces are not from outside.If the barbarians are at the gates it is the fault of the people inside who have allowed national morality to slide with hardly a whimper of complaint.

If there are no decent presidential candidates you can blame that on the public who don't demand strong, moral candidates but accept whatever is thrown at them and find excuses for the low morality of its leadership. G-d seems to let you have what you desire most if you are not seeking his ways. There is a saying that in the way you wish to go, you will be lead and truly America seems to be gravitating toward its lowest common denominator.

Hollywood promotes easy uninhibited sex outside marriage even for kids. It promotes what it calls alternative life styles for children barely old enough to understand who or what they are let alone make life changing decisions. Drunk, rude, drug taking stars and athletic 'heroes' dominate the news. They are held in high esteem.

Children's movies are even laden with sexual innuendo and dirty language and parents feel it is okay because it entertains them too, after all.  Previous generations must be whirling in their graves.
Television offers so-called reality shows that  portray all  kinds of people living and doing degrading things. People are given urine to drink and willingly debase themselves for money.

The government of the people, by the people and for the people are promoters of abortion on demand as a substitute for birth control and marriage is denigrated. Broken families are portrayed in books, television and movies to be the 'norm'.

Schools are quick to deny G-d and relegate Torah, the bible, to the trash pile, in this nation where, at one time, it was the basis of education.  Grammar schools taught Hebrew, Greek and Latin as a basis for higher education the purpose of which was to read your bible. Not any more.

Text books of today promote an anti-American view of history, the Constitution is trampled and put under attack and many say it needs "changing". The nation has taken on a foreign mind set it never used to have as immigration has brought more and more who refuse citizenship and opt instead to live here for the perks, giving back nothing but attitude and having a whole lot to say about a nation that they do not love enough to become part of.

America has become a just a hang out for many to take part in the freedom and money they neither vote for nor  defend. Some places have even asked for a change in law to allow foreigners to vote in national elections as if this was in any way natural or right. I call these people  the squatters of America.They come, they use, they take , they refuse to take the oaths of allegiance however.

I have a neighbor who has been in America for over 40 years with no intention of becoming a citizen.  She needs the perks America provides her but she wants the option to bolt and run if things go south.   She is not alone, as there are thousands upon thousands just like her. Seriously, why do we allow this? Where are our standards, where is our pride?

The election process  has become a Hollywood style extravaganza for the super rich and the special interests who promote them.

Another evil that must be repented of is Operation Paperclip which brought many thousands of unrepentant actual Nazis to the United States and allowed them free rein in science and other areas of life. Don't think they helped us any. In fact Russia beat the USA into space because these Nazis were undermining the space program. America's moral compass was more than compromised in allowing these people into the nation.

I think America has to demand and desire a  more moral and sane society before anything can even begin to improve.  Change begins at home in the individual and in the family but there needs to be a national call for repentance.

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The Declaration of Independence

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

---

Signatures:

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton


North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton


Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean


New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark


New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton


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If Only We Heeded the Warnings

Sign of the times....

And There is Still a Hole in the Ground

"I will break the pride of your power......your strength will be spent in vain".. leviticus

Here is the final resting place of the victims of 9 11 madness, the Fresh Kills land fill.
This is what those who "cleaned"up the site thought of the blood and bodies of the murdered.
This is the work of those who care more about the feelings of the murderers and their nations. Look how much they care about the innocent .


This is the work of people who care if you burn a mohammedan book or if you use un-PC terms in conversation. They are terribly PC in all ways toward murderers but this is what they think of their victims: so much garbage.





It is almost September 11, and this year will see the 9th anniversary of the destruction and almost complete dustification of the Twin Towers and other buildings at ground zero.
In those nine years the victims' remains have been scooped up and deposited unceremoniously at a garbage dump on Staten Island. What little remaining steel there was got quickly shipped off to China before it could be examined, and a big hole in the ground is all that is left.

That big hole in the ground is all that is left to gape at the sky in shocked surprise because nothing else has been built there. And, in all likelihood, nothing of value or decency will be built there because the times we are in seem to be devoid of strength of character.

The place is a huge crater without a decent memorial in sight, without a building, nothing. It is a memorial to victim hood. It is like a rape victim who can never clean themselves up and move on.
There has been little progress other than cleanup that cost the lives of many because of the hazards of working there.
And a bill to provide extra health help for ground zero workers was thrown away like the remains of the victims too. Even they got no respect.


Osama bin Laden remains at large (maybe), no one really knowing what he did or if he did or where he is but America made war with Iraq and is doing something in Afghanistan and bombing with drones in Pakistan which may or may not have something to do with Bin Laden.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, which spawned the 9 11 fly boys rides off into the sunset and is considered a good pal of the US.
Ask George Bush who was seen kissing the Saudi guy during his presidency. Talk about being undignified and wimpy. Here is the worst form of bowing down to foreign cultures that are vastly inferior to your own.

Ask Obama why he bows low before them . (Still not as horrendous as Bush kissing that man). No leader of a powerful nation should ever *kowtow to the cultural traditions of a foreign nation.

America has sunk millions and millions of dollars into useless buildings and prisons in Iraq while the US itself sinks further into debt. Obama takes credit for leaving Iraq, which isn't true at all, and enlarges the war in Afghanistan. No one seems to mind that we have been at war for a decade with little results.
Little results have become an American standard.
No one really protests the endless wars except in election years when candidates have to try and look as if they actually stand for something other than milk toast. But each administration really just continues the policies of the one before in many areas.




We have presidents who themselves are 'little results', little men. Itty bitty, wimpy, limp wristed men who pose and preen and flounce around the world stage but do little else.
We have an economy that gives little return because business is shipped off overseas, and the symbolic hole in ground zero has little results in making it whole again.

It has become a symbol of the priorities that are all so wrong. It points out impotence and limp wristed reactions. It is weak and poor and pitiful. How can America get strong and restore itself economically and internationally if it cannot even repair a hole in the ground.
It is a sign and a parable about the state of things today.

The victims of the inhuman criminals who murdered them without remorse, without thought, without conscience, without souls, deserve far better than this.
They just really do.



*kowtow
n : a former Chinese custom of touching the ground with the
forehead as a sign of respect or submission [syn: kotow]
v 1: bend the knees and bow in a servile manner [syn: scrape, genuflect]
2: try to gain favor by cringing or flattering; "He is always
kowtowing to his boss" [syn: fawn, toady, truckle, bootlick,
kotow, suck up]

The End of the Age of Confidence

American life has changed far more drastically than most realize and Americans have taken on a mentality that is very UN-America since the arrival of immigrants from Eastern Europe and the third world. They have begun to change how America thinks. The rugged individualism, the desire for a certain national isolationism has all but disappeared...

Almanso Wilder

One of the greatest things about America was that it encouraged innovation and discovery. Freedom was the bright background against which anyone with an idea could have his say and put his plans into action. You only needed to be a 'go-getter' to make your way in society.

But over the past century that dream, that way has been slowly undermined and replaced by a welfare mentality that wants to be served, offered ways, given chances and a leg up rather than fight their way up to the top by ingenuity and rugged individualism.

Our society and culture moved forward by leaps and bounds and by the early days of the 1900's America was prosperous and moving ahead in invention and spirit. The individual was everything. Laisez faire was the idea of the moment.

Today ideas have filtered into the nation about how you are owed certain things and how you have a right to things once considered privileges. No one was about to give you a free ride in the old days but today it's almost expected. Then , if you were out of work that was your hard luck. If you were in need you had better scramble to get up off the ground. The sickly and elderly had their families and charity was for those who did not.In those days you could scramble, you could get ahead because individuals could set up their own way to make a living. Today, not so much and government has made both farming and business ownership a nightmare for many.

Families were not far flung and distanced in those bygone days . You married someone close to home and you stayed close to home (with the exception of the pioneers but even they brought large numbers of family westward with them ) so that children had lots of family ties around them. Today families are encouraged to move on and go far from their origins. It has not brought good things with it.

In the true story of the boyhood of Laura Ingalls Wilder's husband Almanzo, there is a vignette of his boyhood and it shows how the mindset in America has changed quite drastically.

In the small one room school house in Malone , New York where Almanzo lived, the older teen boys in the school were more than a handful and intimidated teachers. Many would and could not find a way to stay on. In fact, so aggressive were these boys that in the year previous to this story, they had injured the male teacher in charge of the school to the point that he later died of his injuries it was thought.

When a new teacher arrived all of the good children were scared and worried for him. Almanzo's father, Mr. Wilder was not. As he said, when a man takes a job he ought to be man enough to keep it, man enough to handle it and if not, that was his lookout. That, the suggestion went, was how a man was made. Men were to be rugged and able to take it on the chin without whining.

One day when the older boys came to school they were now itching to test the mettle of the new teacher and one boy advanced on him to provoke a serious fight. From under his desk the teacher brought forth a huge black snake whip and with a handle hard and thick enough to stun and ox. With it, he whipped those boys as they came at him even to the point of creating welts on them and finally, winding that whip around them, threw them out into the school yard . They were never a problem again. Mr. Wilders , though telling his son that a man had to fight his own battles had provided the black snake whip to the new teacher, but the teacher stood up for himself in making use of it.

Today that teacher would be in jail and the boys would be pitied as victims of cruelty even though they had been a source of serious trouble for the community for a long time. Much would be said about "where" their parents were in all this but the point is that in those times it was handled very differently on the edge of the frontier. And in the 1860's Malone, NY was the edge of the frontier up on the Canadian border.

Laura Ingall's Wilder presents this memory of her husband as matter of fact. Today there will be much clucking of tongues over it though. Yet, you can see how it shows how things have changed. Some for the better but much for the worst.

The senior Mr Wilder was adamant that being a farmer was the noblest career for any man since it afforded him self reliance and complete self respect if he was a good man. No one made his hours, no one commanded his steps and he could provide for and take care of his family on his own without government interference.This was a source of great pride to men in that day. Mr Wilder pitied businessmen who had to dance to customer's tunes. How different than for farmer's today who are indebted to the government, told what to grow and when at times and heavily in debt.

While I also see that the school board of Malone should have gotten serious about those bad boys and done something, the story points to the individualism that was part and parcel of America. No government was going to provide for you. If you went to the frontier the US Army had forts to protect you, but on the whole you were on your own. No one told you what kind of house to build. Today, licenses and permits are prohibitive in places. As I have mentioned on my personal blog my house is in dire need of repair but I cannot afford to make them because of permits and this and that.

Can you see how far we have come from those days? How much people have come to depend on a huge government to save and provide for them in so many circumstances?
This post is not about what the school board of that small town should have done or not done and it's not meant to open debate on whether the boys should have gone to jail for the previous problems/crimes. It is meant to show the vast difference in mind set that has taken place.

In those days men relied on themselves and the charity of neighbors and the love of G-d to aid them in their lives.Today it has all been moved over to reliance on the god of government I think.

Rose WilderAlmanzo's daughter said , "It took seven successive years of complete crop failure, with work, weather and sickness that wrecked his health permanently, and interest rates of 36 per cent on money borrowed to buy food, to dislodge us from that land." That was by the 1930's when things began to really change in America.

In his book The Age of Confidence, Life in the 90's (1890s) By Henry Seidel Canby, he states that in the 1930's the generation gap was almost completely closed with childish adults who wanted to hold onto childhood raising children.

How different also from the cry of the 1960's when teens bewailed a "generation gap" which in reality according to those of previous generations hardly existed anymore at all!

Valentines Bah, Humbug

I don't celebrate Valentine's Day though I would if I could. Like a shot.
It's pagan origin precludes it for me, however.

But in reading around the net today I noticed a theme from women and men on the custom
of giving a card and/or candy to someone you love or are thinking fondly of and found the reactions interesting. Here is one example.

The logic goes that since men hate the day it should not exist.
Men concur. Valentine's Day, like birthdays and anniversaries, Mother's Day and other holidays were simply a way for the card manufacturers to make a buck and besides you can tell someone you love them anytime , not just one day a year.

Nice but no cigar. That is an excuse to do nothing.

Problem is the men who think such things probably never tell anyone they love them let alone once a year . Men seem to be of the almost universal opinion that talk is cheap. It can be. But for women, talk is important.
Women relate through conversation as well as actions.

Guys insist they struggle to make a living for their wives. This is the proof of the love. Okay, fair enough in some cases but ...
They would be making a living wife or not. That's an excuse. Money interests men, success and power too, and they would be out there slugging wife or not.

You won't hear these same Scroogey sentiments said about the NBA playoffs or SuperBowl Sunday.
Most women have no use for football or basketball really. Left to their druthers they would sooner watch a chick flick or do something entirely different. There are a whole lot of women, however, who make a big to do for their men on those days making sure the guys and their pals have snacks, dinners, etc. And, many of the women join in and watch, a significant number of them doing it for him, for them, etc.
Now it's true, most men don't care if women like sports or not. They don't care if women watch with them or not. They probably don't care much if women make a big to do or not either. But if someone goes out of their way to make it nicer for you.... well you know what I mean.
But women do care about things men believe are the little things.
Girly girls do that is. The macho babes might not, but the rest do care a lot. And I don't just mean Valentine's Day.

The scuttlebutt around women is that most men in their lives do not celebrate or remember anniversary days, birthdays and if they do, it is with dread and lack of care.
Most women say their men rarely if ever say "I love you". To women, if you don't say it, you don't feel it, arguments to the contrary. It is also cruel to deny someone something they need.
So that one day a year is too much to ask. Well according to most of what I read, it is.

Theordore Roosevelt's America and on Immigration

Theodore Roosevelt's Thoughts on America

"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts "native" before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.
The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.
For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish-American, or an English-American, is to be a traitor to American institutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic.
The foreign-born population of this country must be an Americanized population - no other kind can fight the battles of America either in war or peace. It must talk the language of its native-born fellow-citizens, it must possess American citizenship and American ideals. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and must show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every prince, potentate, or foreign government. It must be maintained on an American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in important plants and at critical times. None of these objects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant sections, and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant only as an industrial asset. The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is to not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them. The policy of "Let alone" which we have hitherto pursued is thoroughly vicious from two stand-points. By this policy we have permitted the immigrants, and too often the native-born laborers as well, to suffer injustice. Moreover, by this policy we have failed to impress upon the immigrant and upon the native-born as well that they are expected to do justice as well as to receive justice, that they are expected to be heartily and actively and single-mindedly loyal to the flag no less than to benefit by living under it.
We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immigrants merely as industrial assets while they remain social outcasts and menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man merely as an industrial asset and not as a human being. We cannot afford to build a big industrial plant and herd men and women about it without care for their welfare. We cannot afford to permit squalid overcrowding or the kind of living system which makes impossible the decencies and necessities of life. We cannot afford the low wage rates and the merely seasonal industries which mean the sacrifice of both individual and family life and morals to the industrial machinery. We cannot afford to leave American mines, munitions plants, and general resources in the hands of alien workmen, alien to America and even likely to be made hostile to America by machinations such as have recently been provided in the case of the two foreign embassies in Washington. We cannot afford to run the risk of having in time of war men working on our railways or working in our munition plants who would in the name of duty to their own foreign countries bring destruction to us. Recent events have shown us that incitements to sabotage and strikes are in the view of at least two of the great foreign powers of Europe within their definition of neutral practices. What would be done to us in the name of war if these things are done to us in the name of neutrality?
All of us, no matter from what land our parents came, no matter in what way we may severally worship our Creator, must stand shoulder to shoulder in a united America for the elimination of race and religious prejudice. We must stand for a reign of equal justice to both big and small. We must insist on the maintenance of the American standard of living. We must stand for an adequate national control which shall secure a better training of our young men in time of peace, both for the work of peace and for the work of war. We must direct every national resource, material and spiritual, to the task not of shirking difficulties, but of training our people to overcome difficulties. Our aim must be, not to make life easy and soft, not to soften soul and body, but to fit us in virile fashion to do a great work for all mankind. This great work can only be done by a mighty democracy, with these qualities of soul, guided by those qualities of mind, which will both make it refuse to do injustice to any other nation, and also enable it to hold its own against aggression by any other nation. In our relations with the outside world, we must abhor wrongdoing, and disdain to commit it, and we must no less disdain the baseness of spirit which lamely submits to wrongdoing. Finally and most important of all, we must strive for the establishment within our own borders of that stern and lofty standard of personal and public neutrality which shall guarantee to each man his rights, and which shall insist in return upon the full performance by each man of his duties both to his neighbor and to the great nation whose flag must symbolize in the future as it has symbolized in the past the highest hopes of all mankind."


(President Theodore Roosevelt would have disliked his distant cousin Franklyn Delano Roosevelt quite a lot as attested to by Theodore's widow and friends. 
Franklyn Roosevelt was everything Theodore knew would destroy America. )

Click here to hear Pres. Roosevelt speak. It will take a minute to load on seperate page.

What Things Cost Back Then

To understand how wild prices have become take a look at some prices from 1974, 1969 and 1960 and compare with what things cost today.

With inflation at 11.5%, the average American earned $13,000 dollars a year and a new house, nice large size cost around $34,000 in 1974.

It was possible because of other prices and taxes,etc to actually save up and pay for a house outright. Certainly a large down payment was not impossible and house payments on a good sized home would average about $200 a month.
You might pay about $150.00 monthly for a large 2 bedroom apartment
A brand new Mercury Capri cost $3,395.00 and a Ford Mustang cost $3800.
Paint was about $2.99 a gallon compared with almost 25 today.
Blue Jeans were $5.00
Chicken was 49 cents a pound for a fryer
Eggs were 59 cents a dozen
Maxwell House was 1.59 for a real pound..not the 10 oz cans you get today for $6.99 but full 16 ounce cans.
Coca Cola was .88 cents for 6 cans
You could buy 100 bags of delicious TenderLeaf Tea for 88 cents .

Bumblebee tuna was 49 cents a can.



Prices had climbed since 1969 though.
A few years before in 1969 a phone bill ran as little as 4.00 a month while electric bills were around 6.00 per month in summer!
You would have earned an average of $8,550.00 a year and paid $14,000 for a new 3 bedroom home.
You could buy a car for $1,950.00 and put gas in it for .35 cents a gallon.
Beef was .49 cents a pound and chicken 29 cents a pound.
Apples 49 cents per lb.
You would pay .28 cents for a box of Cheerios!
Canned foods ran about .29 cents a can
Watermelon was .03 cents a pound and you could still get lettuce for 15 cents a head and bread for 25 cents a loaf.

By today's standards $100.US dollars from 1960 would be worth $679.00 today.So what you need 679 to buy today, would have cost you $100 back in 1960. Inflation in 1960 was 1.4 %

The population of the country was only 180,671,158 people too! Tons of room to roam.

One gallon of gas in 1960 was .25cents... by 1969 it had gone up to .35 cents. Highway robbery!


But compared to 1940.. things had gotten more expensive because look at these prices for 1940:

Car: $800

Gasoline: 18 cents/gal

House: $6,550

Bread: 8 cents/loaf

Milk: 34 cents/gal

Postage Stamp: 3 cents

Stock Market: 131

Average Annual Salary: $1,900

Minimum Wage: 30 cents per hour

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