First Things

“First Things”, a wonderful Catholic magazine was founded by the late Father Richard John Neuhaus. Neuhaus was one of the most prolific minds of the 20^th Century. Only a sightless person, such as your writer, can know the importance of first impressions. The sighted person, analyzes others with an almost cruel measuring stick.

Have you ever considered the first time for the first things in your life? In this rapid moving world of technology, we get a very accurate perspective. I remember the first time I went into a self help store, where you push a cart around and pick up what you want. It is hard for young people to realize that until about 50 years ago, there was no such thing as a self help store. I remember my first self help service station. Until then, someone came out to put gas in your tank, check your oil and most of the time, would wash your windshield. I remember the first time I ate pizza. I was in the military service. I had pie my entire life; but had never heard of pizza pie. What a loss! As a young doctor, I remember the first time I encountered human body odor and the first time of the odor of death, and the first time I saw an obese woman's body. I thought, how in the world could any man on earth get excited over that? While on this subject, the best diet in the world, is to eat each meal for one week, with five fat people......naked!

I remember the first time I realized abject poverty. I was just a child. A man in the community who I liked, a house painter, Mr. Bargie, died; and my mother told me I should go to the funeral. It was at his house. He was in a cheap casket, already bloated, in his white overalls. The casket was next to the bed in the small house. As I looked around at the poverty stricken people, I knew poverty more than I have ever known it before and probably, after traveling through the world, since.

Seventy years ago, the poverty in eastern NC was astonishing. Only God could understand it. I have very little patience with today's spoiled children and the parents of these spoiled children. They do not know what it is like to go to the table and there is a bowl of potatoes on the table. They have never seen their mother or grandmother darn socks, seen patches on clothes, seen their mother pick out hog feed sacks for her dress, seen entire families riding in a wagon with a mule pulling it to town or to church.

There may be a first time for today's “bloomers” to know hunger and to know walking. I'm advising families as the value of the dollar sinks every day to buy canned food and to buy comfortable walking shoes.

I remember the first time I was cheated by a store. I had saved my money from working in green tobacco and purchased a beautiful shirt from Leader Bros., Smithfield, NC. The first time the shirt was carefully washed, it faded into a gray morass. Of course, the store told me it was not washed correctly and refused to refund my money. I remember the first time that this 100% disabled, service connected, blind veteran went to a VA hospital. My military career had been spent as a medical officer in a military hospital. When I was decorated in Washington, D.C. I was told that I would be cared for. The usual liberal mantra is, “You have nothing to worry about.” Those of you who believe this slop, are as misguided as was the writer. If only the poor, deceived public, knew what awaits them with the government socialized health care. The VA hospital was a mockery to everything we hold dear as citizens. It makes no difference, that I am a doctor or even a field grade officer. At the VA facility, you just take a number, get in line, and take whatever abuse is shoveled your way. It will be the first time for many of you to know the callousness of Obama Communist care.

Capitalism is not that much different from Marxism. The peasants just get in line in both systems and take whatever the bourgeoisie master drips down to them. I am convinced that the world's repudiation of God's mercy has resulted in decadence almost beyond comprehension. It is not just in America, but world wide. The fastest growing HIV/AIDS population is in Russia, growing faster there than even in Africa. One million Russians now have HIV/AIDS. In America, 690 people were arrested recently in a child prostitution ring. There were 52 child prostitutes and 60 pimps. Most of these children will wind up with HIV/AIDS. From 300 to 600 thousand of the 2 million prostitutes in the US are under 18. More than one million children in Asia including Thailand, Philippines, and India, have been sold to brothels or street pimps for sexual exploitation. Juarez, Mexico on the border of the US, is the most dangerous and corrupt city in the world, with 2000 murders this year.

It is reported that the brother of the president of Afghanistan, Karzai, is the #1 drug dealer in the world and is a partner with the CIA. Think of this when you see the caskets of killed American sons and daughters returning from those battlefields. It is reliably reported that America in Afghanistan, like America in Iraq, is now paying your tax dollars to the enemy soldiers for conversion. Do we really believe there is any abuse or atrocity engulfing America that was not on the rampage in Sodom when the fire fell on that sinful city?

For my entire life, I only wanted the opportunity to work and worship. I have taken my life as a responsible venture. Come out of your slumber. Help rescue us all before all hope is gone.