For 2010, Act to Guarantee Your Way of Life

A novel New Year resolution is to simply appreciate the gift already possessed by all Americans: the gift to live with a form of government that best adheres to the tenets of a democracy. In essence, appreciate the gift of being free.

To "appreciate" is not simply to rejoice, hang or honor the flag, claim to be from some special generation, put your hand over your heart or on your forehead during the Pledge of Allegiance, or have served in the armed forces.

To appreciate is to rejoice in knowing that everything you do, and can do, are actions that regardless how trivial, are exercisable just because you can chose to do so.

This freedom is rare in the world. Despite its rarity, even great societies have lost it. Sadly, liberties and freedoms are under persistent attack throughout this great country. And once any measure of freedom is lost, the road to regaining such freedom is long, torturous and rarely found.

You would think that those possessing a rare and priceless thing would work continually to protect it. You would think.

Buy a car, a boat or a house. Incessant and continual care must be afforded lest these things deteriorate, lose their value, become inoperative, or are lost altogether. Wash them, tune them up, care for them, pay insurance for them, watch were you park the car and boat, or make sure you clean your feet before entering your house. Materialism at its best in a rich society.

But where is the same maniacal devotion to protect the very tenets that ensure one can buy a car or a boat or a house without being told which car one may be allowed to use, which government house one may allowed to live in? Such devotion now rests with an ever dwindling few.

Those that labor in the Sisyphusian struggle of protecting our collective liberties are rare at best. Protecting the doctrines of liberty is a practice practiced by a very few, the seeming outcasts of polite society, those small in number that continually exercise their right to keep the government "for the people" honest and open. These true defenders of this great experiment are labeled radical, "those people," slurred about and lied about by the self-appointed goody-two-shoes individuals operating under their own delusional concoction of what "their" city and "their" democracy should be, and who should be included.

Despite these visible defenders, every great society has failed when the very people enjoying their freedoms appreciated them when it came time to vote, when it came time to honor some icon or other, but yet never acted with the same maniacal dedication when they witnessed their rights wane. They did not unremittingly act in order to bring about a measurable improvement, a measurable righting of a wrong. They simply bore witness, and probably just complained. If they had only protested as they would have protecting their possessions or even their place in a queue at the local coffee shop.

Understandably they simply have given up under the weight of prostituted governing bodies and the special interests they kowtow to. But a few others have yet to surrender despite continually enduring the public defamation at the hands of the syndicates in their fanaticism to concentrate their illicit influence.

What an honor though. As Ronald Reagan said, "Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty." Hence, to be the target of syndicated lies and ridicules is to be a fighter against those destroying our liberties. And it is with liberty that we can both protect our liberties on Election Day and act throughout the year to protect our freedom from being washed away by the very same syndicates that slur with impunity.

But our freedoms are not guaranteed by simply voting. Deterioration to our freedoms is enabled by being spectators while others do the constant fighting. Guaranteeing the eradication of our freedoms is ensured by those special interest syndicates plaguing government bodies to garner favor for their own agenda while denigrating, besmirching and lying about those they don't agree with in the process.

If these syndicates have the right to manipulate, fabricate and coerce for their benefit, don't those that disagree with them have the right to petition their government for a redress? To exercise their freedom to speak and opine? To peacefully assemble and to associate? To expose the syndicates and their corrosive effect on our liberties?

When these fighters that openly challenge the syndicates disappear, so do your freedoms – as proven time and time again when great nations in the course of human history have collapsed.

And America is not divinely immune to that terrible fate.

There are a few of us who have witnessed their own great nation buckle under the weight of coercion by syndicate elites also witnessed syndicates puppeteer the elected representatives, witnessed the majority guise their apathy through votes and pontification, and witnessed the elimination of the openly critical by the syndicate-government.

These few of us are afraid.

We are afraid that history will repeat itself here in America. As we are frightened, we proffer a warning to the inactive concerned that watch as others act: when those great nations buckled, the actively passive were the first to be eradicated since the vocal activists had long been censured and hence there was no one left to protect the "privately concerned" when the goons came calling in the middle of the night – under the cover of darkness then, akin to under the cover of anonymous postings, legislation by committee, bills that no one reads, or vague indeterminate references in the written musings of today.

We often hear that it costs to be free. What we never hear is that this cost must be paid daily.

What makes this incredibly beautiful and wonderful country composed of all races and creeds work so well is that the very inalienable rights to freedom guaranteed by law are the means by which we can pay for this daily cost to retain our freedoms.

So, to truly appreciate your rights to freedom, life, liberty, speech and many more in the coming year, you must act daily and continually so that these rights endowed by our Creator are never abdicated thereby guaranteeing your way of life and ensuring same for your progeny.