Thursday, April 3, 2014

Lions Led By A Sheep? ... J. D. Longstreet

Lions Led By A Sheep?
Wolf Bait
A Commentary By J. D. Longstreet

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Someone once said something that sounded a lot like this: "A nation of sheep led by a lion is more to be feared than a nation of lions led by a sheep."  That "someone," as it turns out, was Alexander the Great.  At least the attribution I found for it says it was Alex as quoted in "The British Battle Fleet: Its Inception and Growth Throughout the Centuries to the Present Day (1915)" by Frederick Thomas Jane.

Howsomever, who said it is not as important as the message it encompasses.

There can be no doubt that America is currently led by a sheep, nay, a herd of sheep when one includes the limp-wristed cohort of progressive/Marxists in the US Senate and US House of Representatives to the big sheep sitting in the Oval Office (or out on a golf course somewhere!).

That is the real reason America was plastered with egg on it's face when Obama and Kerry tackled Russia's Putin over the Crimea incident. Putin is a lot of things but a sheep is NOT one of them.

A little over a year ago I wrote:  "As I survey modern day America, I see a nation of sheep led by — a sheep.

If you know anything about sheep, you know that a trained goat is used to lead the other sheep to the slaughter house. Thus, the name “Judas goat.” Why use a goat rather than another sheep? Simple. A goat is smarter than a sheep. The sheep are slaughtered while the life of the Judas goat is spared.

Having a nation of sheep led by another sheep tells one everything one needs to know about that nation — dumb, easily led, and headed for the slaughter.

Sadly, America is being fleeced along the way to the slaughter house. It’s sort of akin to paying an admittance price to one’s own slaughter. How sick IS that?

But that’s where we are as a nation today.

It is depressing being a member of the “can do” generation observing the “can’t do” generation destroy nearly two and a half centuries of hard work creating a nation unlike anything the world had ever seen.

If my generation made a grand mistake, it was our having faith that following generations of Americans would have, at least, the same love of freedom and liberty, the same degree of self reliance, self respect, and pride in the American experiment that we did. In that, dear reader,  — we were totally mistaken.

The great melting pot has finally boiled its contents down and those contents have coelesed into something quite alien to the aspirations of the original founders of the country. Unlike the old Americans the new Americans yearn for the return of the shackles, yokes, and chains of lords and masters. And rest assured — they SHALL have them."
--SOURCE:
  http://www.saveamericafoundation.com/2013/01/22/america-a-nation-of-sheep-led-by-a-sheep-by-j-d-longstreet/


As I observe the Obama administration "negotiating" with Putin I recall something Thomas Fuller, a 17th Century English churchman and historian, once said:  "It is madness for sheep to talk peace with a wolf."

In Judge Andrew P. Napolitano's book:  "A Nation of Sheep" the judge frankly discusses how the federal government has circumvented the Constitution and is systematically dismantling the rights and freedoms that are the foundation of American democracy.  He challenges Americans to recognize that they are being led down a very dangerous path and that the cost of following without challenge is the loss of the basic freedoms that facilitate our pursuit of happiness and that define us as a nation.

Judge Napolitano reminds readers what America is all about, that the purpose of government is to protect freedom, and freedom is the ability to follow your own free will and not the will of government bureaucrats.  He asks the simple question, which are YOU, a sheep or a wolf?  Do you blindly follow behind where you are led, or do you challenge the government at every pass, forcing it to make decisions that will protect our freedoms?

Judge Napolitano asks the questions that no one else will, challenging readers to rethink why they are blindly following a government that has only its own interests in mind.  He asks:

    Why is the government using the war on terror as an excuse to sidestep the Constitution?

    Why are Americans not challenging and questioning the government as it continues to limit more and more of our freedoms?

    What part of "Congress shall make no law..." does the government not understand when it criminalizes speech?

    Whatever happened to our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that are proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, guaranteed by the Constitution, yet ignored by the governments elected to protect them?

    Why does every public office holder swear allegiance to the Constitution, yet very few follow it?

  Don't we have rights that are guaranteed and cannot be taken from us?"

 A Nation of Sheep by Judge  Andrew P. Napolitano is available at Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/Nation-Sheep-Andrew-P-Napolitano/dp/B002N2XHVW

My broadcasting idol, Edward R. Murrow, once said:  “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”  How right he was!

Today America is overrun with sheep and wolves with very few lions in evidence.

I hold my breath day to day to see if our Sheep-in-Charge will make the single fatal mistake that will collapse the greatest country ever known to man.

America's lions have been either muzzled or caged.  The wolves, inside and outside the walls, have gathered and wait with salivating jaws for America to stumble. 
I hail from a long line of hard scrabble farmers.  My father once told me that as a lad he had cared for sheep... fed them, watered them, fleeced them, and butchered them.  He once volunteered:  "Son, there is no dumber animal on God's green earth than a sheep." 

Sheep are so skittish that often the shepherd will have to dam-up a small flowing stream to create those "still waters" spoken of in the 23rd psalm just to entice the sheep to drink because -- they fear the sound of running water!

Is that where we are as Americans today?  Are we so skittish that the sound of freedom frightens us? 

Look.  Maintaining freedom is an ongoing struggle.  We can't just win our freedom and then relax.  There are always those waiting to strip us of our freedom and return us to chains.  Remaining free requires eternal vigilance and the courage to rise to any challenge and defend that precious liberty.

And yet today, elements of our government are violating our constitutional rights every single day -- and we do nothing!  Like sheep we cringe when someone utters the word "IMPEACH!"  And each day we lose a little more of that precious freedom.

As brutal as it at first sounds (and it really IS brutal) tarring and feathering worked pretty well for our ancestors. Toss in a rail for the miscreant to ride upon and that completes the set.  The fact is, they made their point.  The malefactor never dared inciting the wrath of the citizenry again.

Our forefathers were anything but sheep.  We are not descended from sheepish Americans.   So, our behavior today is of an aberrant kind.  I contend it is learned behavior.  We placed our trust in out government to educate our children and instead they indoctrinated them in socialism and communism. 
Our young graduate from college dumb as posts.  One is led to believe that without Google, Wikipedia, and cut and paste, there would be few graduating classes at our colleges and universities this Spring.

Pitifully, our young have never known real freedom as some of us old fuddy-duddies have, therefore they have no idea what they have lost.  They believe this is normal!  Another generation lost.

"Have we held power to account? Do our elected officials fear the populace, which Thomas Jefferson said indicated liberty, or is it otherwise – where the people fear the government, a situation Jefferson postulated would lead to tyranny?"
  --SOURCE:  http://www.ummahpulse.com/2011/11/sheep-led-by-wolves/

Today, in America, there is no doubt that the people fear the government.  The nation that rebuked a tyrant at its founding now accepts, and feels comfortable with, tyrannical rule.

How utterly sad!

J. D. Longstreet
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