Apparently mistaking the United States of America for a third-world banana republic dictatorship, Oprah Winfrey commented in an MSNBC interview earlier this week, that she is “surprised” that the American people are finding it so easy to criticize her fearless leader, Barack Obama. Ms. Winfrey is evidently “concerned” about this, because, to paraphrase, the president naturally has “authority” over the American people. She seems to believe that blessed as we are with such an extraordinary man to rule us, we the people should be grateful and shut our collective mouths.
To her credit she did mention respect for the “office” of the presidency (not necessarily one and the same as the individual holding that office), but perhaps it’s time for Ms. Winfrey to take a course on the United States Constitution and the First Amendment.
In the meantime, Ms. Winfrey, let me inform you that no one has authority over me, my family or anyone blessed with the rights and privileges bestowed upon this country by the men who risked their lives to craft them. In fact, Ms. Winfrey, were you to investigate those documents, those men, you would discover it is we the people who hold the authority card in this great nation, and the vast majority of us have no intention of handing our liberties over to anyone, including your would-be “authoritarian” friend currently occupying the White House. Let me remind you that such arrangements came to an end in this country back in the 1860s.
Meanwhile, the man who would be king – the man you, Ms. Winfrey, seem to think a king currently occupying that big house in D.C. – trots the globe bowing and scraping to any and every world leader who will receive him. While more than comfortable exerting his “authority” over we the people here at home, he willingly subjugates himself to other countries around the world, even those with unsavory designs on our nation and our people. At the same time, this president has in recent weeks taken to comparing himself to our 40th President, Ronald Reagan, even unabashedly referring to himself as “the gipper,” President Reagan’s nickname taken from one of his famous movie roles.
Were he with us today, I imagine Ronnie would get a good laugh from that ridiculous “gipper” comparison, imitation being the finest form of flattery, but so do I also know that such imitation would not flow both ways. We would never have seen President Reagan bowing and scraping to other heads of state, knowing as he did that such circumstances are where we the people do wish to see some American presidential authority on display. Once we have someone who understands this back in the White House again, we trust that individual will enjoy your full and uncritical respect, Ms. Winfrey – even if he or she does not happen to be a liberal, a messiah, or your close personal friend.






So Tired of Feeling Like a Hostage in My Own Country
October 4, 2011 | Comments (2)It’s getting old, this feeling. This feeling of imprisonment, disbelief and fatigue. For far too many months now, we have lived in a nation held hostage by a gaggle of individuals who have only a sketchy notion of what our country is and hold what little they do know in contempt.
A president travels the country delivering the same tired axioms read with identical cadence from a mechanical device, berating the nation, the people, I love. Secretly, silently, he grins as rioting leftists demand our nation abandon liberty and capitalism. Meanwhile, the president’s wife travels that same country, pricey entourage in tow, dictating what and how we parents will feed our children – and mandating what restaurants will and will not serve their customers.
A governor of a southern state suggests we nix elections in 2012 to quell the successful rightwing efforts of an angry electorate, her words simply mirroring ideas the president and his officials have floated themselves. As unemployment skyrockets at breakneck speed, a presidential advisor informs us it is the government’s job to take care of us and provide all we need to live according to what our superiors deem an acceptable level of existence.
The president orchestrates a steady stream of public displays (with military backdrop whenever possible) in his quest for useful campaign photo-ops. That same president orders his minions to intimidate those who oppose him and do whatever they must to make his transformational dreams our nightmare. Meanwhile, we the people hold our collective breath in hopes that the man’s law designed intentionally to gut our health-care system, our bank accounts, and our personal health will be repealed.
As the current administration stands accused of allegedly placing guns in to the hands of drug lords in a neighboring country, people from that and other countries stream across our borders without sanction (presidential relatives among them), knowing that despite such open defiance of our laws, they will be showered with social services and our tax dollars upon their arrival. Meanwhile the narcissism, panic and abandonment issues of the petulant leader of the free world become more evident – and more dangerous – every day.
In short, we find ourselves trapped in a lawless nation, the perpetrators of our confinement carrying out their tasks openly, brazenly and with unabashed arrogance. And I for one am tired of being their hostage. Until this day, I never believed we as a nation would live to see, let alone tolerate, what now occurs within our great nation almost daily. But, despite my own moments of fatigue, I know in my heart that I am not alone. This nation teems with others, my fellow hostages, who share my love for this country and the resolve to wrest her free from our captors.
Carve away that hard crusty shell of betrayal and tyranny that has encapsulated the Tree of Liberty over these three difficult years, and you will find a moist green pulp still living and breathing at the tree’s heart. Those of us who love this country will continue to nurture that tree, and, like the political prisoners who found their own salvation, their own inspiration, in the words of Ronald Reagan that were smuggled into the frozen Gulag of Siberia years ago, we will wait for that moment when we, too, will at last be liberated from this modern-day tyranny, free to be America once more.