Restoration

The following is a personal viewpoint work presented at The Jacksonian Party.

In the wake of Glenn Beck's rally for Restoring Honor in our lives and our Nation, we see the deep and powerful themes of the need for God in the public square and to lead a moral life so as to seek our own path to salvation so as to build a better society.  These are very strong messages and are well intoned to reach across lines of different religions so that we can come to understand who we are, as individuals, so as to better define who we are, as a Nation.  For believers and non-believers, no matter the sect, creed, clan or race involved we are all part of this universe and no matter your personal stance you must come to terms with that universe and your place in it.  The method of leading an Honorable life is simple and I have repeated it many times from a pithy button I saw many years ago:

Honor

Do as you Say.

Say what you Mean.

Mean what you Do.

This requires that you do not speak lies, do not deceive even yourself and speak plainly about what it is you mean to say.  Saying is not enough and the meaning behind your words are required, thus if you lie you live with falsehoods about yourself, your world and retreat from who it is you are.

When you lie to others, you fear yourself.

Saying and meaning require doing and follow through, thus when you say something, mean it, you then must follow through with your own actions and do those things necessary to back your meaning and your words.  In your doing you put your heart into that work, no matter what it may be from taking out the trash to sitting at a desk during mind-numbing hours to walking into the line of fire so as to save others.  If it is what you said you would do and you mean it, then you do it.

There is no shame in being afraid of what you do when it is backed with your words and your meaning.  When your mind, heart and hand work together they create and that is the most awesome thing we can do in this life: create for ourselves, our family, and our Nation.  It is in that order, no other, and before you step off to fight you prepare yourself and your loved ones for what comes ahead.  You do the same at regular jobs or doing minor tasks in the home or for those you promise fealty to.

Being afraid of using your creative power is endemic to mankind.

Letting someone else do for you puts you under their power, their hold, their sway and that is the expression of your fear of yourself, to have others do for you.

To be free you must create for yourself so as to show that you are independent in life and can fend for yourself.

Once you can do so and extend that creative power to help others directly you see the value of this fearful power: it is the power to do good for others.  That creates many feelings within you, as a person, and we feel the worst when we feel good in the knowledge that we do so we can hold our meaning in life and have our words mean something to others.  That feels so good it is shameful, which is why those who help the most are those most often disdaining the limelight for what they have done: how can it be noble to feel so good about doing the right thing in your life?  Worst, still, is that no matter how good you feel about what you have done, you feel that it is not enough and you must do more.

That is the heart of charity within you when you have that feeling.

No government is charitable, that is reserved for us as individuals as we know what charity is by mind, heart and hand.  Public works by government is not charity, no matter what it is called, as it is the diminution of funds from those who are better able to target problems in society put into the most inefficient spending vehicle known to mankind: government.  As individuals we can decide better for what we need to do than any government can for us.  When you think that government can do, for you, in the way of charity, you give up your right to help others without the interference of government through inefficient bureaucracies, dispassionate bureaucrats, lumbering laws, and taxation that draws your life blood of earnings from liberty from you.

When you do for others you know that you have achieved something.

When government does for you it has taken wealth from you and has achieved the spending of it, which only has the wisdom of bureaucracy behind it, not the loving devotion that you apply to all you do.

Honor is deucedly simple.

Sloth is its enemy saying sweet words of relaxing, frivolity and 'just let smarter people figure it out for you'.  How unfortunate that the 'smarter people' are bureaucrats with no passion for their work doing it so it is 'good enough for government work'.  That is the work of sloth.

Those wishing you to succumb to sloth will always entice you with the great benefits of letting others do for you.

All the way to the chains on your wrists and ankles and the lash to your back.  They will never admit to that as their goal, of course, just to 'help' you from all this troublesome liberty and freedom you have.

From religion we get the greatest message that can ever be had for all of us: that to be free we must sacrifice of ourselves.

It is not honorable to give our children our debts and ask them to pay for our spendthrift attitudes towards ourselves.

There is no honor in seeing funds taken from those who are young and given to those wishing to retire who should have learned to do for themselves and help those who have not been so well off in life.  With age is supposed to come wisdom, not the attitude of your grandchildren paying for your good time in life.

To end that feeling that you are 'entitled' to 'help' from government requires sacrifice.

Acknowledging that you have been lied to for years, decades, by politicians who have promised much on the backs of our children who become slaves to our debt.

Acknowledging that you have accepted these sweet lies of how it is a 'good thing' for the young to pay for the retirement of the old, who should have been managing their own lives to create their retirement if that is what they wanted.

Acknowledging that the money put into the 'lock box' is spent: it is gone, not invested as that is not the role of government but that of individuals.

Acknowledging that you are much closer to your own health concerns than any government will ever be and no matter the financial hardships you can seek out help from others to get through them so you don't take the ability of others to see after themselves from them.

You were taught better.

You know better.

Can you speak these things out loud to yourself so as to acknowledge them?  They are painful things to hear coming from one's own mouth.  Trying to get any formulation of this 'system' that does not put your responsibility for your life back in your own hands and not on the backs of our children requires it.

Demands it.

Honor is deucedly simple.

It is horrifically painful when you admit where you are in life, that the lies you have believed are lies, and that you are the cause of pain for this Nation.  And the pain in your own life.  We don't like to think of ourselves as a cause of pain to ourselves and others, yet when we lie to ourselves that is what we do.

Honor is also cleansing.

Once spoken those words gain their power because you mean them as you say them.

That then makes you want to do something to back them.

When you admit that government can not do for you, can not save you, can not give you any 'entitlement' without making others poor, then you are on the path to the restoration of honor in your life.  It says you are willing to walk away from the pain and take up your burden and not burden others with what you are well nigh capable of doing for yourself. It also makes you very sparing of what you say, what you will commit to and requires that you think your life through.  Your mind, your heart and your hands become the power of creativity to do as is necessary to lead a good life and extend that to those you love.

The stories of sacrifice and their meaning to us for salvation is what religion provides to mankind, the great solace of knowing we can trust ourselves to be the embodiment of power and be ever humbled by it.

No one can ever walk that path for you.

And looking up to the guiding light of Liberty while leading a life of Honor is an assured path of salvation no matter what befalls you in life: it may take you into Hell but it will also lead you out again. 

That is also the path to freedom.

Restoring them is simple, painful, cleansing and a burden, all at the same time.

It starts with each of us.  Only you can do this for yourself. 

There is no dishonor in seeking guidance from God to help you understand these things because that first step of the Saying is the hardest and most painful in our lives.  And then the path becomes clear.

Honor

Sacrifice

Liberty

Political Recovery

As Americans have experienced powerlessness before many forms of personal addiction and an inability to control the behavior that makes those faults destructive, the concept of the 12 Step Program came about to help individuals admit that they had no power over those things that allowed addictive substances to become a problem in their lives.  The first step in recovery is always to admit this powerlessness to the addiction, and that a higher power guides our lives.  That is both a personal perspective on higher power, in the case of politics, and the recognition of the power of these things we create and are necessary evils under the Law of Nations as it is present from our very first clasping to each other to create families.  Thus the power of our lives and its guiding force only uses us as vessels for its expression, and it is for you to become the clear and coherent channel for that power in your life.

Thus a 12 Step political recovery system would look something like the following, amended for your personal beliefs for what it is that is outside yourself that sustains your life and your ability to know right from wrong.  That is no physical vessel, no person, no guru, although such may be part of your seeking to change your ways it is up to you to identify the clearest expression of that power by cleansing yourself of those things which have changed its message.

Step 1 - Admit that our political lives have become unmanageable, and that we are powerless to control our addiction to government largesse.

Step 2 - Believe in a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to governmental sanity.

Step 3 - Make a decision to turn our will and our lives to the care of this Power as you understand it to be.

Step 4 - Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and our expectations of government.

Step 5 - Admit to this higher Power, to ourselves, and to someone you trust of your wrongs and expectations of government.

Step 6 - Prepare yourself to have this higher Power  remove your defects and ill-based expectations of government.

Step 7 - Humbly present yourself to this higher Power and ask it to remove your shortcomings.

Step 8 - Make a list of all people who have been harmed by you and by the pernicious things you expected and be willing to make amends for them and to be come at one with those you have harmed.

Step 9 - Make direct amends to such people wherever possible save when to do so would injure or harm them.

Step 10 - Continue to make your personal inventory of personal wrongs driven by misplaced expectations of government and admit that asking government to do all those expectations is wrong and admit that to yourself.

Step 11 - Seek through prayer, meditation and introspection to improve your contact with that higher Power, and seek that Higher Knowledge known only to that Power to guide you throughout your life.

Step 12 - Having had this awakening of your self to the ills that are wrought by misplaced expectations of government, carry that message to others who also have such misplaced beliefs, spread and practice these principles throughout your life.

 

If you need a gathering to help you on this, try a Tea Party.

There are lots of recovering addicts to government power and largesse, or just plain not wanting to do anything about government so long as it left them alone.

Government is no longer leaving them alone.

They, too, are recovering from the similar shock of the expectation that those who are voted into office will retain the moral and ethical character of those who voted for them.

Those elected officials have not.

 

There is a 12 Step Program for the recovery of government to the will of the people in a republic.  It goes something like this.

Step 1 - Admit that those of the poorest moral and ethical character will always seek power and that they lie so you cannot tell the difference between them.

Step 2 - Admit that you expect too much from government and that it is not fit to tell you how to live.

Step 3 - Establish in your mind that a centralized State is ever prone to failure and the best and most accountable government is the most local of government.

Step 4 - Admit that the wrongs of government are in giving it too much to do, and that the best government is the least government that applies law equally to all citizens.

Step 5 - Admit that living with debt gives those who control your debt over you and that goes for our governments as well, and that all should work in earnest to set goals to end their debt at all levels.

Step 5 - Limit the power of elected officials via Term Limits so as to keep the rascals moving out of the system whenever and wherever it can be done from lowest to highest offices.

Step 6 - Elect those willing to cut the power, cost and size of government so as to bring it to fiscal sanity and in line with only what it is handed to do.

Step 7 - Elect those who demand to have every procedure gone through fully so that large bills die as they are read out.

Step 8 - Begin outreach to your fellow citizens to remove those laws that limit representation by fixing any representative body made to be proportionally representative to being just proportionally representative at a fixed proportion and never at a fixed number of representatives.

Step 9 - Elect those who are willing to redact laws that limit proportional representation and live with proportional representation.

Step 10 - Acknowledge that the wrongs of expecting government to do more at higher levels makes you powerless at the hands of government and that this needs to be admitted to oneself, one's loved ones and to your fellow citizens.

Step 11 - Make amends to help your fellow citizens bring the size, cost and power of government down so that our liberty can decide our course as a Nation.

Step 12 - Work with your fellow citizens who do not understand that addiction to government is impoverishment of their fellow man and belittling of their own liberty, and live with the principles of not expecting government to do for you by doing for yourself throughout your life.

 

You can also join a Tea Party for this and get two birds with one stone.

The Tea Party is not about 'reform' nor about any other single ideal, save that government should do a very few things, do them well and at the lowest cost possible with the smallest size possible while having the greatest input possible from the Nation.

'Reform' just means the beast changes its shape and color of its scales.

Real reform requires a chainsaw to the beast to get it back to the guard dog and punisher of those who would harm us.  The best we can ask for is equal treatment under the law.  The moment you ask for goodies, you feel the hand and leg irons being measured for your body... and your soul.