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.
Nothing ventured, noting gained.
At least that's how it used to be - when America was the place to build a life and not a place to collect a check.
The Review using the pioneers to trash Trump, now?
Good morning B_r_A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXp7IkhCSuQ
A nice Roy Orbison song to help soothe what ails you:
“They say the heart must feel it all
Know every rise and everyfall
To earn the right to stand in sunlight
Someday the sun will always shine
Deep down inside this heart of mine
And it will be my time
I hope I find it
Shinin’ somewhere
Somewhere out there
There will be love in time
In time.....
Rivers keep flowing
Cold winds keep blowing inside me
I walk alone
Hard rain keep fallin’
Lost souls keep callin’ so lonely
I hope I find
Love in time
Love in time
.............”
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.
Like any of those NRO people ever set their hand to a plow. Or a covered wagon wheel in a rut. Or an 8 thousand mile trip like my ggrandmother with 2 babies on a ship,then a train, then a stagecoach by herself to the Arizona border to be in 1883. She died a widow of forty years
in 1931. She raised 5 boys. She did washing. Bought houses and rented them. She bought stock and water rights. Her home which fell across the line in 1891 is now used to stage illegals to “jump the wire”
In her name I will try to save our country from rule by NRO effetes for her now ggggranchildren and beyond.
I’ll note here that many of Trump’s supporters never bothered to vote before - one called in to Rush’s radio show to proudly state his virgin voting status (almost voted for Perot but didn’t), not one bit of shame that he’d never registered to vote.
It’s interesting that these previously uninvolved citizens who couldn’t be bothered to fight in the trenches now champion Trump because of (and I expect you’re speaking for this group) “... changes were forced on me by non-representative government and a slew of opportunistic politicians/lobbyists/lawyers/social engineers feathering their own nests”....
Where were these “oppressed Americans” when the little red hen was asking for their help?
Well, are you sure they are voters for Trump?
https://marcorubio.com/news/first-time-voters-marco-rubio/
Marco won Florida in a landslide, said no one ever.
Like Sarah Palin I trace my family roots back to Stephen Hopkins’ daughter Constance. Others “roots” - still many generations ago - were added along the way.
And in those centuries they’ve moved to every corner of the United States to seek opportunity, to prosper and to provide for themselves.
“OBAMA PART DEUX”
I would be careful using the Obama reference to diss Cruz. Obama has been VERY successful in getting his agenda done. We would be fortunate if Cruz (or Trump) get half has much done as they are saying they will do.
oops - I meant half as successful as Obama was.
You can add Obama-Trump voters:
“...For Linda Flesch, who supported President Obama the past two elections, the top issue was jobs, and she said she sees Mr. Trump, a billionaire businessman, as the country’s best chance to spread prosperity to this hard-hit part of the country.”....
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/mar/15/donald-trump-attracting-new-voters-democrats-tired/
to the newbies:
http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/1/511/648/USA-ELECTION-TRUMP.jpg
Still a valid point.
>> It’s no mistake, in the end, that the symbol of Donald Trump’s appeal is a wall.
A conclusion promoted by and for idiots and deceivers.
Who knows ... living their lives I suppose ... I have been voting since my late 20's which was about 3 decades ago. I suppose if I were cajoled to defend the "first time voters" for Trump, the best I could say is "better late than never."
When it concerns politics, the bell never rings.
May 8, 2013 Fox News Latino
Ted Cruz Files Amendment To Deny Path To Citizenship As Senate Works On Bill
......”The amendments filed today to strengthen border security and reform our legal immigration system will not only bring meaningful, effective improvements to our immigration system, but also have a chance of becoming law,” said Cruz in a statement. “America is a nation of immigrants, built by immigrants and we need to honor that heritage by fixing our broken immigration system, while upholding the rule of law and championing legal immigration.”
His amendments are among more than 300 filed by the Tuesday evening deadline. Republicans wanting tighter enforcement provisions filed a majority of the amendments, with Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, leading the pack with 77 amendments.
Supporters of the bill, mainly of the part of it that would legalize millions of undocumented immigrants, kept a steady drumbeat in defense of the measure though emails, websites and social media.
In a press release, America’s Voice, a leading national group that advocates for more lenient immigration laws, singled out Cruz’s anti-citizenship amendment as particularly worrisome.
“This would not only destroy the path to citizenship in the Senate bill - the popular heart of an immigration reform solution - but also turn its back on 100 years of precedent in immigration policy,” said the release..........
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/ted-cruz-immigration-record-216919
Dec 17, 2015: Politico
“....The bipartisan group of eight senators - including battle-tested veterans and relative newcomers like Rubio - painstakingly negotiated a delicate compromise in early 2013 that would overhaul every corner of the U.S. immigration system, including a 13-year pathway to citizenship for millions here illegally.
Fans and foes of the legislation, as well as observers at the time, knew the core bill couldn’t change too dramatically because that would upset that compromise, which not only had the backing of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate but also coalitions off the Hill, such as labor unions and the business lobby.
Cruz’s amendment - which called for stripping out a pathway to citizenship, but keeping a path for legalization - would have done precisely that.
The night before each Senate Judiciary Committee markup, senior Gang of Eight aides would huddle to scour through each of the amendments that were teed up for the following day, determining which proposals would be palatable and which would be unacceptable. This strategy was meant to ensure the core elements of the Gang of Eight deal would stay intact (the four members of the Gang who sat on the Judiciary Committee would vote in a bloc, usually with the rest of the committee Democrats, to vote down potential deal-killers).
“This one was one that clearly we all had to oppose because it went to the core of the deal,” recalled an aide to a Senate Democrat during the 2013 negotiations. “It could’ve unraveled the whole deal. Sure, Cruz himself never called it a “poison pill” at the time. But no senator refers to his own proposal as a poison pill, even if it plainly is. The Gang of Eight never considered Cruz as “gettable,” and it was well-known at the time that Cruz was never going to vote for the bill and was in fact, trying to kill it.”.....
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