Paineful Truth

What makes a nation and nation? I asked myself this the other day when reflecting on the issue of immigration. Why is it that people move from one nation into another? There is obviously something that makes nations different from each other so that a person would be more disposed to desire to live in one over another. Obviously. But while this is a rather plain fact, it’s implications run very deep. What makes a country an individual country? I believe it is several things and that among those are: physical borders, language, and type of government (which includes: economic policies, election procedures, rights and liberties). First, borders. Do you live in the U.S., Canada, or Mexico? The only real way to tell is by physical borders. If we did not have borders there would be no way to tell which country you were in. Obviously. So in order to have a strong country, you have to have strong borders. If entry and exit i...

By the time George Washington was sixteen, he had copied out by hand, 110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation , a set of rules composed by French Jesuits in 1595. The assumption is that this was part of young Washington’s schooling. However, the Father of our Country practiced the lessons from these Rules throughout his whole life. Richard Brookhiser, in his book on Washington wrote that "all modern manners in the western world were originally aristocratic. Courtesy meant behavior appropriate to a court;chivalry comes from chevalier – a knight. Yet Washington was to dedicate himself to freeing America from a court's control. Could manners survive the operation? Without realizing it, the Jesuits who wrote them, and the young man who copied them, were outlining and absorbing a system of courtesy appropriate to equals and near-equals. When the company for whom the decent behavior was to be performed expanded to the nation, Washington was re...

Typically, I attempt to vary my content and topic. Presumably this is to appeal to a wider audience, stay relevant, etc. However, this week there is something weighing heavy on my heart and mind and I cannot let it go. Over the last couple weeks several videos have been made public, giving video evidence that Planned Parenthood has been involved in selling the body parts of aborted babies for profit. Not only is this highly illegal, it is barbaric and unthinkable (Watch all the videos here ). After all this, our United State Senate put forth a bill that would have stopped our tax dollars funding Planned Parenthood. The bill was not, as some claimed, drastic or fringe. In reality it was quite mediocre. The bill did not shut down Planned Parenthood, it did not attempt to prosecute them, put them in jail, or stop them from continuing doing what they are doing. The bill was merely to stop sending your tax dollars to fund something that should be a...

Sometimes, the truth hurts. Then other times, it kills. My stance on abortion has been made clear. It is murder, plain and simple. The news has been about the sting videos that have surfaced, claiming that Planned Parenthood is selling body parts from aborted fetuses. So now Planned Parenthood may or may not be selling the body parts of these babies. And now the call for defunding of Planned Parenthood has risen again, louder than before. My problem with all of this is - why are they getting any money in the first place? Jeb Bush, in what Clinton and many other Democrats called a major gaffe, said Planned Parenthood shouldn’t receive its half a billion dollars of funding from the government, adding that “....I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues….” This comment was made out to be somehow ‘anti-women’ and uncaring. Bush later retracted, saying that he had “misspoke”. However, I think he may have hit the nail on the head. You see, I’ve do...