Changes

Several years ago an artist wrote a song called "Changes". The refrain goes" time may change me but you can't change time". I heard this in my mind so I am writing a blog about it. All of life is about change, the youth we have lost, the age that brings wisdom, the wisdom we wished for and now that we are old and fading well we work with the young hoping to instill a foundation. Changing all the time.



Some change is good and some unavoidable. Facing change sometimes brings out the worst in people. Civil Rights was change pushed by liberal whites (the word liberal meaning to set free in mind and spirit) not because there was great love for Black people but because it was right. History is full of the resistance to this change. People have been killed, jailed, cut off, threatened all because of change. And of course history has made its judgment on those who resisted change to hold on to tradition. Change affects everybody. Change is then mother's milk of growth, change makes room for these who need inclusion, or ideas to flower, and most of all to expand our personal growth.



Sadly, change has another face: the stone wall attitude. Frost proclaimed that good fences make good neighbors, the protection from encroachment on the status quo. I do not believe that Frost championed separation of races, creeds, and cultures; but, there are those who do. They have not died out or changed their minds, they live on in those they have trained. The Timothy McVeigh's, George Wallace's, and John Stennis of the world ( yes it is a world issue) still love and exert power. We need look no further than what is happening now to see that change and resistance to change is alive and well.



Changes should be welcomed and in many cases they are. Change makes life better: chemistry, medicine, transportation, exploration have added to the life, and breadth of this planet, unless there is that equality item, then change meets reactions called by other names: Communism or Socialism thing deconstructionism all codes for encroachments on "entitled rights".



I have lived through some of the most turbulent times in the modern era. I have seen great things: moon landings, the end of communism the unification of countries, passage of laws that free the human condition and I have been in awe of humanity's gains. But I have also seen the outcome of a peoples hatred in the guise of assassination, beatings, deprivation de facto jurisprudence and I wonder how much longer this will go on. How many more Haitis, Rwandas, South Africa's; South Centrals Little Rocks, must we endure for all of us to grasp we must change or perish?

The Obama administration is a case in point. A lot of work must be done to stem the tide of the economic madness we are in. Forget about fault because it goes back over the years and it was covered by policy that ignored the core problem in favor of the short term political solutions. To keep the illusion alive that America has no economic problem. Now that it is apparent we do steps to correct the issues have to be made. One would surmise that this attempt would unify the nation around the ideas . That honest, open, calm, discussions and arguments can be expressed because change of this magnitude must be bipartisan. We hear so much about debt for future generations that one would think a rational exchange of ideas would merit consideration. You would be mistaken for envisioning this Utopia.

Change we can believe in was a slogan now under attack by those opposed to change for opposition sake. let us state clearly: there should be healthy debate, this is the democratic initiative. However, to be oppositional without meritorious answers under minds the action needed. Planned misstatements of positions, rude interruptions, gun toting, sign carrying (by the young who have no idea why they do it) and the old alike does not stir debate, it debases it.

There has to be an uprising against theses groups that continue to plant seeds of hate and dim witted thinking. They are un American and the founding fathers (small capitols on purpose) would be ashamed, because too many ideals are dying, too many thinkers have receded to the background, and too many people are giving up. This is not America, this is chaos which along with amorality creates evil: a change we can do without. Later