Common Sense 101

At the beginning of the Summer I began to pick up some personal reading. With all of the radical changes happening in Washington DC, I wanted to arm myself with knowledge in order to understand exactly what is happening right now, and what has happen since our founding fathers created this Country in order to destroy our liberties in which our founding fathers feared would happen. I started with Glenn Beck's Common Sense. What an a amazing book. Very easy read, just over 100 pages. I wanted to began a series of sharing with you some parts of this book. The great part about Glenn Beck's Common Sense is that it also includes Thomas Pain's Common Sense as well. It is interesting to experience the difference between the two, by seeing how one speaks back in the day. Glenn Beck's Common Sense gives us a case against an out-of-control government. I will start with some words from Glenn Beck as he start's his book.

"I think I know who you are.
After September 11, 2001, you thought our country had changed for the better. But the months that followed proved otherwise. We began to divide ourselves and the partisan bickering that had been absent from blood donor lines and church services started all over again.
You try to do the right thing every day. You work hard, you always try to do your best, and you play by the rules.
You turn on the television at the end of a long, tiring day and watch as endless analysts in left/right boxes argue about things done by bankers that, in retrospect, now seem implausible. You're worried about what's happening to our economy, but you're more worried about what it means for your family---and you're not sure what to do.
You don't think it's right that while you worked hard, lived prudently, and spent wisely, those who did the opposite are now being bailed out at your expense. You realize now that self-serving politicians and bankers built our financial system on a house of cards that, despite the cheery promises and rosy forecasts, is now collapsing.
Every night it seems you are faced with a choice: Do you unplug or do you speak out? Both of those options make you uncomfortable so you do neither...and you frustration continues to grow.
The fastest way to be branded a danger, a militia member, or just plain crazy is to quote the words of our Founding Fathers. I imagine that this is because words have consequences and the words and ideas that those men shared were revolutionary:

"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."

It is not time to dissolve the bands that connect us to one another, but it is time to dissolve the "political" bands that separate us from on another. Even if we disagree on politics, the phrase "I am an American" is not just a collection of words, it is the embodiment of an idea, one that has power only because "We the People" give it power. But somewhere along the way we've forgotten that, so we feel small and helpless as our country drifts away.
Perhaps what we need is a reminder. A reminder of who we are, who is really in control, and, most important, a reminder of how we got to a place that bears less and less resemblance to the America we remember from our childhoods. Let us start by doing what we've been trained for so long not to: let us declare the causes that unite us."