Sunday, June 15, 2025

Answer to a Nation Sliding into Chaos

When chaos overcomes
Efforts to deesculate
A spiritual revival becomes
Our best hope to erase hate

Laws are being toyed with
Amidst civil unrest
Civility can't win when
We don't share how we are blessed

Great Britain is at risk.
France is at risk.
Germany is at risk.
The US is at risk.

You have to be a healthy nation
To take refugees in
When there's no acclimation
Civil unrest begins


Wednesday, June 11, 2025

The Overdue Homecoming

The son, brother, husband, father

Long overdue.  Long past hope.

The remains found years after.

Now, brought to rest. Honored. Home. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JAMyqdMj_g   after 52 years, Southwest Airlines Captain Bryan Knight last saw his father, Col. Roy A Knight, at Dallas Love Field Airport when he was five years old. Col. Knight deployed to serve in the Vietnam War in 1967

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk5BFTiAL4k  after 80 years- and brought home by his nephew, Captain Chuck Axel. SSGt Loring Lord was killed in action over Germany on March 21, 1945.t

H

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

We Don't Need to Redefine America


We don’t need to redefine America
But return to its truths, self evident
The constitution was indeed a miracle
Putting policy where it is best spent

Promoting the general welfare, hence
While granting freedoms equally to all
Providing for the common defense
Responding to liberty’s call

The American Republic, once great
Ought not become a socialist state
Freeing industry improves the employment rate
We must act before it is too late!

Green jobs, stimulus packages, entitlements
Must be a thing of the past
Giving power back to local governments
Returned to the people at last

click on the title to read Tom McClintock's speech
California: A Morality Tale in Three Parts

The following is a speech delivered to the
Council on National Policy on September 30, 2011....

We Who in Freedom Live Today


We who in freedom live today
Remember those once brave
Who knew the valiant price to pay
For sovereign rights to save

The greatest act that one can do
Is to do what's hard, but right
To face enemies and fear too
And be steadfast in the fight

If we ever were to forget
Life's lessons would be gone
But a patriot's heart won't let
Of such comes freedom's song

Thus in the season where colors fall
And families gather near
Let us pay tribute to honor's call
And thank our veteran's dear

Pause and Remember


Pause to remember
Solemnly with pride
Our American heroes
Who now live and have died

We owe all these men and women
Our respect and admiration
We are grateful for each veteran
For their service to this nation


Mitt Romney
Today, Veterans Day, we pause to remember - and to take solemn pride in -
America’s heroes. We owe the men and women who have served in our armed forces our respect, our admiration, and our eternal gratitude.

The Golden Thread of Freedom


Throughout the gospel plan
There lies a golden thread
Giving free agency to man
To choose where one is led

Defend the constitution
Each freedom it provides
Safeguard it from pollution
And strengthen it with your lives

Give of yourself in service
As it is vitally important to activate-
Those finer qualities of purpose
That refine us and are a joy to radiate


To summarize our capacity to influence those around us, President McKay said the following half a century ago:
There is one responsibility which no man can evade and that responsibility is personal influence. Man’s unconscious influence, the silent, subtle radiation of his personality. The effect of his words and acts. These are tremendous. Every moment of life he is changing to a degree the life of the whole world.
Every man has an atmosphere which is affecting every other. Man cannot escape for one moment from this radiation of his character. This constantly weakening or strengthening of others. He cannot evade the responsibility by saying it is an unconscious influence. He can select the qualities he would permit to be radiated. He can cultivate sweetness, calmness, trust, generosity, truth, justice, loyalty, nobility, and make them vitally active in his character. By these qualities he will constantly affect the world. This radiation to which I refer comes from what a person really is, not from what he pretends to be. Every man by his mere living is radiating sympathy, sorrow, or morbidness, cynicism, or happiness or hope, or any other hundred qualities. Life is a state of radiation and absorption. To exist is to radiate. To exist is to be the recipient of radiation.
"To radiate our positive influence in civic affairs, we must become righteous and moral; we must, as Ghandi once said, be the change we wish to see in the world. We need to learn and abide by the principles found in the Constitution, for as President McKay taught: "Next to being one in worshiping God, there is nothing in this world upon which this Church should be more united than in upholding and defending the Constitution of the United States!" (Instructor Magazine, 1956, 91:34). We must take that knowledge and understanding of the Constitution, and infuse our political system with its disinfecting simplicity and principled restraints; we must become leaders and work diligently to support good people in public office, or seek office ourselves. And finally, we must radiate our influence by exposing ourselves to those who might be impacted and uplifted by our actions, words, and character."


http://www.connorboyack.com/blog/the-civic-duty-of-the-latter-day-saints

The State is No Judge of Religious Truth


The state is no judge of religious truth
It must be mute on such matters
History, alone, gives us the proof
To civic peace it has been disastrous

Each man must tend to his own conscience
Coming to know for himself what is right
Learning to self-govern and to be cautious
Of what puffs itself up to take freedom and light

Religion is that transcendent link
To God and community
That each might spiritually drink
Moral fiber for unity

pondering:

Is religion special?

Desert News

Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011 



any comments are appreciated... as I am still pondering