Posted on 03/20/2016 11:32:51 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
On April 14, 1852, Lloyd and Lodisa Frizzell and their four sons, with “five yoke of cattle one pony & sidesaddle” in tow, departed their home, on the Little Wabash River in southeastern Illinois, for California. Seventy-two days into their voyage, Lodisa would write in her journal (later titled Across the Plains to California in 1852):
That this journey is tiresome, no one will doubt, that it is perilous, the deaths of many testify, and the heart has a thousand missgivings, & the mind is tortured with anxiety, & often as I passed the fresh made graves, I have glanced at the side boards of the waggon, not knowing how soon it might serve as a coffin for some one of us.
They were, at that point, barely halfway.
What inner fire fuels a person to undertake that sort of journey is a mystery. But there is no disputing that the United States only flourished because of it — a point Marco Rubio made Tuesday night, as he ended his campaign for the presidency. The soaring passage is worth quoting in full:
We are a hopeful people, and we have every right to be hopeful. For we in this nation are the descendants of go-getters. In our veins runs the blood of people who gave it all up so we would have the chances they never did. We are all the descendants of someone who made our future the purpose of their lives. We are the descendants of pilgrims. We are the descendants of settlers. We are the descendants of men and women that headed westward in the Great Plains not knowing what awaited them. We are the descendants of slaves who overcame that horrible institution to stake their claim in the American Dream. We are the descendants of immigrants and exiles who knew and believed that they were destined for more, and that there was only one place on earth where that was possible.
It seems, though, that Americans are content to be merely their descendants.
One half of the American electorate long ago indentured itself to the dependable mediocrity of welfare-statism. They went in for the New Deal, the Great Society, now Obamacare — and, if they have their way, they’ll embrace whatever full range of programs enables Julia to move from cradle to grave insulated in a government-funded bubble.
Meanwhile, the other half of the electorate — “rugged individualists,” supposedly, who should have been receptive to aspirational, up-by-the-bootstraps rhetoric — are split between those who want small governments and free markets, and those who apparently don’t much care one way or the other as long as the governments and markets start working for them again, the way they did in the past. If that requires an illiberal executive or artificially manipulating markets (say, in the form of massive tariffs), so be it.
The desperate-times-desperate-measures approach to politics flaring up on the right is rooted in an overwhelming feeling that things simply are no longer fair. As an Ohio small-businessman explained last week to Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Salena Zito: “We have done absolutely everything that we were supposed to do all of our lives, and our values are looked at as backwards. Our homes are worth less than we paid for them, and there is no great replacement for the jobs we are skilled to perform.” They followed the rules, and the rules didn’t work.
Maybe that’s a legitimate grievance. But what do these voters, who seem to have resigned themselves to lamenting their circumstances, share with Lodisa Frizzell?
After all, there are no born pioneers, settlers, or immigrants. There are only people who decide that nothing is foreordained, that success — that bitch-goddess — resides, if anywhere, only at the far end of many hard choices, and that chasing that possibility is preferable to standing around in misery or penury. Hence the attitude of the pioneer and the immigrant toward the expansive Out There. They imagined things might be better somewhere else, and they had the courage to risk the journey and the discipline to persevere.
But today? In the time it took Lodisa Frizzell and her family to reach California, an unemployed Illinoisan with a beat-up Nissan could have circumnavigated the country multiple times looking for work.
It’s no mistake, in the end, that the symbol of Donald Trump’s appeal is a wall. Trump’s supporters feel besieged — not just by illegal immigrants and terrorists, but by invisible economic forces and unfathomable technological systems and cultural rot. They were going diligently about their business when, suddenly, the world changed. But rather than negotiate those changes, they have decided to rally behind a candidate who promises to cordon that world off and set things aright. Little could be more out of keeping with the vigorous American past than the decision, by millions of wound-nursing workers, to outsource the shaping of their own future to the head of state. But most want the going and getting to have been done; they would much prefer to marinate in everything the go-getters got.
The character of a nation is not permanent. Just because we are the descendants of people who performed awesome feats of endurance and creation does not mean that we will manage the same. They chose to strike out. They chose to forge a path. We’re choosing to stay put — and hope that someone else comes along and makes the path smooth again.
“....NumbersUSA, a prominent immigration restriction group, keeps an ongoing scorecard on 2016 presidential candidates and since updated on March 4, Ted Cruz has an “A” and Trump a “B+”......
http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/09/who-is-more-hardline-on-immigration-ted-cruz-or-donald-trump/
You seem to be stuck with that image - I guess that’s what floats your boat.
The article is quite clear and why it is worthy of consideration and discussion.
The GOPe was busy stomping on everyone trying to raise the call for change.
Now in November, Donald Trump will bring a much unprecedented, and a much deserved, political annihilation to the inept and corrupt GOPe-led Republican Party. The party is heading to the garbage heap of history where it belongs.
Chin up! The Trumpeteers are so viscous I have quit visiting FR most days. Trump is the he perpetuation of corporate government welfare. I pray these D a Duke fanatics will not return our country to the late sixties cesspool... But they are Obama like drones, it’s the same party after all progressive. I have been reading more behind our founding documents, exploring the idea the Constitution was God inspired.. Not something that supersedes or changes the birth, death and resurrection of Christ, but something else.
I saw Risen this weekend. My challenge is to ponder this.. When I say I do not fear death.. The response was.. Then fear the death of what you are entrusted with. We were not entrusted with lawsuits and corporate welfare, but even our founders could see we would embrace it. We were entrusted with the Gospel and the freedom to proclaim it publicly.
I read the entire piece and suggest everyone does the same thing.
There is no “tingle” (though it would appear you feel it) with Trump/GOP discussions, as his opposition/support obviously lies in the eye of the beholder (those who want freedom and those who want European socialism).
You certainly like to pull things out of thin air.
You have a well defined proclivity for misinformation.
Your post is great and deserves a repeat.
To: Cincinatus’ Wife
Trump’s supporters feel besieged — not just by illegal immigrants and terrorists, but by invisible economic forces and unfathomable technological systems and cultural rot. They were going diligently about their business when, suddenly, the world changed. But rather than negotiate those changes, they have decided to rally behind a candidate who promises to cordon that world off and set things aright.
I am under no obligation to “negotiate those changes” when the changes were forced on me by non-representative government and a slew of opportunistic politicians/lobbyists/lawyers/social engineers feathering their own nests. If I can use a wrecking ball to set-right the deleterious changes forced on me, my community, my country, then so be it.
Trump is ultimately a force of government “of, by, and for The People” and I hope he can turn things around, because if he can’t turn things around as an elected official, then we crumble and fold as a Nation. The people replacing us don’t give a damn about the “pioneers, settlers, and pilgrims” you pretend to celebrate.
4 posted on 3/21/2016, 3:07:40 AM by spodefly (This is my tag line. There are many like it, but this one is mine.)
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Government gives nothing to the people. It provides no additional economic benefit to those who work. It supports those who do not work with the sweat of those who do. Government should create a few common sense rules, maintain order, infrastructure, and defense. However, each of those functions has metastasized into an ever growing mass that threatens to kill the body it inhabits.
In their defense, what choices have they been given over the last 40 years? Reagan and a bunch of “me-too Republicrats” vs. the Communist of the year is all I see. There are 300 million people in this geographical entity and you tell me that this is the best we can do?
Eisenhower vs. Stevenson (1952 & 1956)
Nixon vs. Kennedy
Goldwater vs. Johnson
Nixon vs. Humphrey; Nixon vs. McGovern
Ford vs. Carter; Reagan vs. Carter
Reagan vs. Mondale
Bush vs. Dukakis; Bush vs. Clinton
Dole vs. Clinton
Bush vs. Gore; Bush vs. Kerry
McCain vs. Obama; Romney vs. Obama
We could people at random that would have done less harm (Reagan is the exception) than this group. Besides, we’ll need voters like this to offset the illegals and the dead.
BTW, I have voted in every election since 1964, the first I was eligible to vote and 2 years AFTER I was honorably discharged from USMC.
Don’t give up now and jump into the fire.
The TX A&M Aggies didn’t.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3411688/posts
I was going to read the article, but when I saw that it was posted by Cincinatus’ Wife...I knew it was trash.
You can lead a horse to water....
Half the population occupy the left half of the bell curve. The quality of this statement certainly doesn't exclude you from being among them.
Yeah, but your water always seems to have been bottled in Flint, Michigan.
This horse knows better than to drink it.
Wow, even for NR this article is one helluva reach.
I see you post threads too; I do not rush on to them and make comments about you, but then I’m secure in my position and don’t feel the need to personally insult other posters.
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:roosterredux/index?tab=comments;brevity=full;options=no-change
The corrected link to your threads
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:roosterredux/index?tab=articles
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