Howdy friends and neighbors. Wow! What a football game. Good hard hitting, 60 minute fight to the end, smash mouth football.
As I sit down here at my keyboard mulling over all of the stuff that has happened this past week, from a winter blast to a trillion dollar government bill to a football game, I think what hit me the hardest this week were the stories I had the privilege to hear Sunday morning at church. Last month, a mission team from western Oklahoma went to Bangladesh and they shared their report. I’m not an expert on the country of Bangladesh though I hear it is densely populated and very poor. As I heard the stories of the people that live there and the hopelessness that they live with, I wonder why it is that I was so lucky to be born here in the United States of America. The similarity that I heard in all the stories was the reason the people of Bangladesh have so little is because of an oppressive government. If a farmer improves his allotment of land and makes a productive farm through ideas and hard work, the government will take it away and give it to those who are more favorable to the government. Thus, they simply have no hope for a better life. School is an absolute privilege and one miss step and the kids are kicked out.
I also can’t sit here and say they don’t enjoy life because I have no idea. But, the lesson I learned is to thank God daily for what I have. Here in America I am free to have ideas and free to take an idea from my head and add hope, faith, desire and hard work to it. Then add abundant, renewable natural resources that I can possess and own to this idea to create a product that others in this nation can freely purchase in order to improve their standard of living. Or, they are free not to purchase just as easily. The difference between someone living in the hill tracts of Bangladesh and me, FREEDOM!!!!! The absolute most important aspect of freedom is the freedom of ideas and openly believing in God without fear of persecution. Next, are our private property rights and the freedom to defend those rights. America thrives on hope for a better life. We each have freedom to achieve whatever we want that is morally good.
My only fear now seems to be that our free government seems to want to strip those constitutional rights from me. It seems our fat, complacent, spoiled government thinks it should be able to take success from one and give it to the more favorable ones. But, I still don’t think they have the power to do it yet. Despite what one might hear from the bobble head news media, this country is still brimming over with people who have hope, desire, faith and ideas that will keep this nation at the top for the rest of the world look up to. Good always wins and the United States of America is still wearing a white hat. We invented Coca Cola, the light bulb, football, that plastic thing in a pizza delivery box, and Rodeo. We have a God given duty to use our success to help others have a better life. We as individuals have this freedom. I’m sorry, but the promise of a better life is not going to come from Congress, it comes from within in the form of an idea that divine intervention placed there.
I’m Monte Tucker and that is what’s under my white hat. Well it’s mostly white, but you see, I had this great idea that if I would………………..
