Survival

Most of us have known for some time (at least, those of us with two perkinje cells still functioning) that there is no way this republic can survive unless changes are made in government. I am not talking about the “change” such as the Sunni Muslim in the White House talked about, he has only made the situation worse. He has increased the national debt more in two years, than all previous presidents combined, George Washington to George W. Bush. I am talking about crawling out from under the overload of duplicity and extravagance of government, as shown in Senator Tom Coburn's report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that there is $100 billion of wasted government spending just in duplicity of services in agencies (Link - http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11318sp.pdf).

There are many glaring examples of the stupidity and phoney boloney attitude of the federal government. You get dizzy just looking at the report, books could be written about it, especially when you think of the pickpocket attitude of government taxation. Those of us who live frugally, economize in every way possible are sickened by such economic decadence. We vote for representatives, locally, state-wide, nationally who promised to “clean out the barn”. Instead, because they know to whom bureaucrats will vote, more and more government workers are hired to do less and less, and as it has been revealed, at double the pay of the private sector. We actually think that these politicians and bureaucrats have our welfare in mind as they limit their lunch tab for $100 at the finest, to half that at a less expensive place. Of course, as my friends who work in the congressional “slave market” have told me, the average congressional assistant never spends any money on food or entertainment because there are too many lobbyists just waiting to pay their way. In the mean time, Joe, average citizen, is just trying to survive.

I will never understand the fact that a corporation like Ebay, online auction house, with millions of users worldwide can keep up with everything, down to how often an item is viewed. I have owned an online auction store for many years. One of my assistants makes a photograph, puts the photograph online with a description and in a few seconds it can be seen all over the world. We know the next day, the interest in the item, know the highest bidder, and can answer email questions about the item. This company handles millions, of transactions every hour, yet our government cannot keep up with anything...not even nuclear weapons, not even duplication of services (18 domestic food assistant programs, 52 federal programs funding entrepreneurial efforts, 82 programs pertaining to teacher quality). The entire federal government is very much a morass, stupefied fire ants in a hole, all going in different directions. One thing we do know about this big plate of uncontrolled spaghetti, every employee will vote in the democrat primary and every employee draws a large paycheck with all its benefits.

I cannot erase from my mind the poverty I have both seen and experienced, poverty all over the world, and I can associate myself with the poverty I saw because I lived it. I will never make enough money to get over, as a university student, reaching my hands into the bottom of overstuffed chairs to find coins that had fallen out of someone's pocket. How well I remember talking with Dr. W.C. George, faculty at UNC School of Medicine about the hard times I had witnessed and seen as a child. Like yesterday, I remember him saying, “just think...living on a farm, eating berries off the ditch bank, fresh vegetables grown in the good earth, fresh well water, you will probably live to be an old man.”

As an army medical officer, like most officers and men of my time, we were taught survival skills at the time of WWII, the Korean conflict, and after. Bomb shelters were set up in every community to help the survival rate of citizens. Citizens were taught survival skills, stocking up food, essentials for survival in time of chaos, such as a knives, matches, containers for water. You never hear about these things anymore, although the need is greater now than ever. There is only enough food in a city to last three days. Grocery stores no longer have warehouses, the large trucks on the highways are their warehouses, they depend on everything being hauled in, stocked on shelves. In a time of national duress, whether from nuclear or biological warfare, there will be no trucks on the highways, no gasoline stations open. Water treatment facilities will be shut down, with no water in the pipes. Like those people in the snow drifts, there will be no need to call 911. The law enforcement officers, firefighters, hospital workers will all be at home trying to protect their own families. Perhaps too late, citizens will get in the “survival mode.”

In Leningrad, Russia, an old man told me about his surviving the WWII blockade of Leningrad by eating rats. Books have been written on this subject, surviving via plants and animals in your area. It is a known fact that there is more nutrition in an acre of oak trees than an acre of corn, about 1/5 of oak trees produce acorns that are edible and nutritious, elm leaves are also edible and nutritious, fresh pine needles are an excellent source of vitamin C, and so it goes.

In order to save the republic from those intent on destroying it, it is time to go into survival mode. So easy to stock extra cans of food, fill your empty plastic bottles with water, old water is better than no water, and you cannot survive without water. One drop of bleach to the gallon will take care of most microbiology.

Every day, when you get off the bed, ask yourself this question, “what am I going to do today to save the republic?” The most pressing need, every day, is to pray that God in His infinite sovereignty will place some people in government with common sense. The most uncommon thing you could find.