Articles of Faith - The Democrat/Environmentalist/Socialist Agenda

I believe there are two types of religion.

1. Honest religions - Those that tell you up front what they believe and what it will cost you before you join up and leave it up to you as to whether to become a member. Then, they let you go whenever you want to part company with them - no hard feelings.

2. Dishonest religions - Those that won't tell you what they really believe till they already have you signed up, that use fear-mongering or other forms of pressure to induce you to join up and either won't let you go or punish you for leaving.As far as I'm concerned any formalized system of belief, a significant portion of which must be taken on faith, is a religion. This includes atheism, agnosticism, liberalism, socialism, environmentalism and (Heaven help me) conservatism. Various religions have greater or lesser percentages of their beliefs that are based on fact or faith.

My friends on the left claim their articles of faith are entirely based on fact. The problem is, I can't seem to pin them down on anything you could actually identify as fact or faith-based. Instead you get statements like:

"Things are bad. We have to do SOMETHING!"
"The people are tired of 8 years of failed policies - they want CHANGE!"
"Only the government can save us."
"If we don't do something the planet will die."

The problem with all of these statements is they assume a disaster is coming and that doing something about it will help.

So the next thing they say is: "Well, we have to do something!"

Why?

Why must we do something? Why do we need to meddle? Why don't we let everybody fix their own little corners of the world? Will things not inevitably get better if all of us individually get better? This makes sense to me.

I do realize that leaving it alone doesn't satisfy the need to scratch that folks have who love power and position. Even though our Mom's told us we shouldn't "pick at it", we do anyway!

When I challenge members of the Obama nation, I get counseled to 'give him a chance'. Why should I? I believe that he wants to do things that are bad for the country. If he does something good for the country, I'll praise him. But why would I want to wait for him to fail before opposing him? If he fails, he takes us with him!

If I had a headache and someone pointed a gun at my head and said, "Hold still. I'm going to shoot a hole in your head. You'll feel much better."

How should I react to this proposal? After all, it's still only a proposal. Should I give it a chance? Should I wait till he ventilates my skull or should I do a quick duck, bob and weave.

Me, I'm from the "bob and weave" school. Same with the approach the president and congress have proposed. I think it's going to be about as effective as putting a bullet through out collective heads. I think we need to avoid this if at all possible.

The guys on the left may complain about my not "giving it a chance" on the grounds that they haven't really said what they are going to do yet. Well, it's true they've danced around the issues pretty well, but we can identify some pretty basic beliefs common to most members of this ragtag alliance of atheists, spiritualists, environmentalists, socialists and new age Christians. They seems to share a new religion - one they believe that Americans have elected to govern the country. These are some of the tenets of that faith that I have teased from all the rhetoric from the politicians, the pundits and true-believer bloggers:

1. That the planet is dying from global warming caused by man
2. That man can and must do something about it or the planet will die.
3. That a massive change in our behavior will fix global warming
4. That we must do something to fix the economy or everything will collapse and probably permanently if we don't do it right now -you don't need to look to closely at the details (see principle #10).
5. That spending a bunch of money on social programs will "fix" the economy
6. That the government must take over the health care system or it will collapse unless it does.
7. That Democrats are incorruptible and can be trusted to take good care of you if you give them more power and authority.
8. That centralized power and planning will work better than decentralized power; that more regulation is better for us than less regulation.
9. That government control of the auto industry, the banking industry, the energy industry and the health care industry is a good thing.
10. That government controlled by Democrats is inherently good and benign and you can trust the Democrat party with your money, your health, your job and your freedom.

So, tell me where I'm wrong.

What part of that don't you guys on the left believe? Because if you believe any or all of the 10 things listed above, I think you're crazy and shouldn't be running the country. I don't find a shred of reliable evidence that indicates that a single one of these ideas works or even makes sense.

Most of the argument I get from people on the left is that we should believe all these ideas; that they have been proved beyond doubt and everybody knows it. Now, the left would never lay out the above tenets of their religion in anything like this clarity. These are ideas that are repugnant to many Americans and have cost Democrats their seats in government when some enterprising conservative has pinned one of the tenets on them.

That's why I say that the new religion is dishonest. It doesn't tell you what it really believes. Instead it tells you that anyone who disbelieves is wrong, that everybody believes the new religion and pressures you to serve it. It tells you that the planet will die and the economy will collapse if you don't let the new religion have it's way.

So tell me which of these 10 tenets of faith is not what you believe. If you think I should support Obama's agenda, then as near as I can figure out, these are ideas that he and his supporters ask me to believe and accept by faith. Is this what you mean by hope and change?

If so, I'm still convinced I should oppose Obama's agenda.

I'm just sayin'

Tom

Honeymama, Dr. Pepper & Behavioral Science

My grandmother was a formidable woman. We cousins called her 'Honeymama' - a blending of my grandfather's name for her (Honey) and the name all our Moms called her (Mama). She was of Scots-Irish-Native American descent. I also married a woman of Scots-Irish-Native American descent too. Like my Grandpa King, I learned early on that you don't want to mess with a Scots-Irish-Indian woman. I'm just sayin'. They will strap on a kilt, pick up a shillelagh and go on a warpath on your fuzzy hindquarters.

Mabel McClure grew up in a family of 12, the oldest daughter and, of course, the one her parents most depended on as backup substitute parent. She babysat the little ones, helped with the laundry and on Saturday afternoon when the boys went off to town to the movies to watch Lash Larue and Tom Mix, she stayed home with Nanny and cleaned house. She never quite forgave her siblings for that bit of parental injustice, but she did pay them back.

As was common in those days, all the kids worked in the cotton fields from a very early age. Paw-Paw used to give them all a bag and line them up each at the head of a row. Then he announced that anyone who got to the end of their row slower than Mabel (my grandmother) would get a whipping. Paw-Paw was a tough customer; so much so that when Grandpa and Honeymama decided to get married, they had to sneak off to do it. Grandpa picked her up in his Dad's T-model for a date one Saturday night. They drove down to Itasca, Texas and found a preacher there to marry them. Rather than tell Paw Paw, my grandpa brought Mabel home that night. Everybody had told young Mr. King that Paw-Paw would fight. Rather than duke it out with his new father-in-law, they didn't tell Nanny and Paw-Paw about their marriage for two more weeks. When my Grandpa did finally fess up, he did so fully expecting to get pounded, even though Grandpa was a big strapping boy, a boxer and tough as nails. Paw Paw was about 130 pounds sopping wet, but he had a reputation as a tough and dangerous customer.

So, back in the cotton field, Honeymom knew he meant it when he threatened to whip anyone who didn't pick cotton as fast as she did. Now you'd think she'd have given her brothers and sisters a break - at least the youngest ones anyway. But, you'd be wrong. Instead, my grandmother would set a blistering pace, shoving cotton into her bag at alarming speed. And Paw Paw was true to his word according to the stories and more than one got their butts warmed for not keeping pace with their sister (my grandmother).

Then, on Saturday, Paw-Paw would load the boys all up and leave Honeymama and Nanny behind to give the house a thorough cleaning. It was unjust, no doubt about it, but he always did take her for granted. She really hated being left behind, though. I think it ruined the movies for her. She never went to the movie theater again for the rest of her life, except once in 1980 when "Coal Miner's Daughter", the story of Loretta Lynn came out. She made an exception for Loretta.

She didn't have much of a sense of humor that I remember. My Aunt once took her to see Jerry Clower in a futile attempt to get a chuckle out of her. She dismissed the witty Mr. Clower as "silly" and told Aunt Sandra she was glad she hadn't spent her own money on the tickets. She laughed at ordinary things, though and for some reason (probably something to do with cotton picking and the movies) she did seem to get a kick out of unhappy children throwing tantrums. Don't get me wrong, she wasn't a monster or anything. She'd laugh at family jokes and enjoyed get-togethers. There was nothing she liked better than having her kids and grandkids about her and she was a genius in the kitchen. We all lived for Thanksgiving and Christmas and 4th of July and Easter - those were the big ones, but any time you could get an invitation to Sabbath Dinner, you took it. She made whole wheat dinner rolls that didn't need butter, they were that good!

But I have this picture of my son, Micah throwing a little tantrum and Honeymama is standing behind him grinning from ear to ear with this impish, almost wicked little twinkle in her eye.

As long as I could remember, she always kept a wooden case with bottles of Dr. Pepper in it down in the basement. When we went to visit, we would sometimes get a bottle to drink, but not always. It was textbook behavioral conditioning. We were always well-behaved at Grandpa and Honeymama's on the chance we might get a bottle of Dr. Pepper from down in the cool dark basement. Studies have demonstrated that the most effective way to get behavior to repeat whether it's pet dogs or small children is not to hand out the rewards every time the subject performs the desired behavior. Instead reward the behavior intermittently so they never know for sure the reward will be coming. Honeymom wasn't a trained psychologist, so she did have some tells that gave away when you'd get sent down to the basement if you watched for them. It took me a while to figure out what triggered the invitation to run down to the basement and get myself a Dr. Pepper. I got pretty good at fishing for Dr. Peppers.

We were never allowed to ask for one, though so you had to be kind of sneaky about the fishing. Mom was very strict about that. We were pretty sure asking for one would not work. You apparently had to deserve one. Except nobody ever told us exactly what we had to do to deserve one. I figured out after a while that not running or being noisy in the house was one of the criteria. Letting the grownups talk was another one.

Sometimes we would go outside to avoid screwing up our chances, timing the end of our play so we were sitting in the den looking overheated and wearing our best innocent faces just before it was time to leave. Sometimes we'd sit on Grandpa's lap and listen to him tell stories and play his harmonica while the womenfolk talked in the kitchen. We had to be careful about giggling and laughing too much or we'd get grandpa in trouble right along with us.

Sometimes Honeymom would hint that the garden needed weeding and if Grandpa was out there working in the garden, we'd go out and give him a hand. We were lousy at weeding, but if we didn't do too much damage, we could usually count on a Dr. Pepper being offered. Of course, working the rows in the garden in the blistering Texas summer heat, you pretty soon began to wonder if it was worth a Dr. Pepper to put yourself through that misery. By then, however, you were afraid to quit weeding without being bidden to because since you'd invested that much sweat and sore muscles into it, you didn't want to lose what reward there was likely to be. So, you'd toil on in the sun.

The only ones of us who ever figured out how to get out of weeding were my own two boys Matt and Micah. They were 4 and 2 respectively and cute as buttons. One day, deciding they were old enough, Honeymom sent them out to "help" Grandpa in the garden. When my grandmother went out to check on them they were each halfway down a row of English peas. The vines were stripped of peas, but there weren't any peas in the buckets. The boys had been eating the raw peas as fast as they could pick them. They loved raw peas right off the vine. Honeymom sent them both inside for a Dr. Pepper so Grandpa and I could salvage at least some of the peas for cooking. My grandmother had that twinkle in her eye then too. I think she liked mischievious kids. To this day, I think I went about mooching Dr. Peppers all wrong the wrong way with her.

Her favorite child was my Dad and that man was a complete rascal. Of all his siblings, he was the one most like Honeymama's brothers and sisters. He could get away with almost anything with her. She used to send Dad to the orchard to cut a switch whenever his behavior became too outrageous. Dad's youthful career as delinquent resulted in the killing off an entire peach orchard as Honeymom wore out switches on his butt. But she still doted over him his whole life. I do believe she'd have sent him off to the movies while she did housework if he'd wanted to go.

I, unlike dear old Dad, grew up to be an upright citizen. Most kids have a period in their lives where they go over fool's hill and get in trouble or raise a little hell. I never did. I was a good boy.

I think it was the Dr. Peppers. I never figured out how to get around being "good" to earn one. So, I never quit trying. It was kind of pitiful really. My wife had the same thing with her Mamaw only it was Coca-Cola and Sheila did housework when she stayed summers with her grandmother.

In the last few years, my wife has started keeping Dr. Peppers and Cokes in those small glass bottles in the closet. Whenever I've been working around the house especially hard, she chills a couple of bottles and then brings them out of the fridge when we're done. We pop the tops together. It's a lovely sound, that bottle cap coming off with a hiss.

She gets a Coke in the small bottle. I get a Dr. Pepper made with cane sugar and bottled in Dublin, Texas as God intended.

And we sit in our chairs under the fan or out on the porch and we drink our drinks slowly, savoring the familiar taste - a good little boy and a good little girl, rewarding themselves for a job well done as though my Honeymama and her Mamaw were still watching us to make sure we behave ourselves.

© 2009 by Tom King