American Dream 2.0

My father's parents immigrated from Italy in the early 1900s with the intention of making a better life for themselves here in the United States. How many millions of us can make the same claim about our grandparents? I'm sure the number is staggering. As many immigrants did, my ancestors came with a dream, a foreign tongue, and very little money.

Somewhere around here, I have a .gif image of their signatures at Ellis Island. It's chilling to see their names penned on the registry from nearly a hundred years ago. It gives me great pride to pull up that image, whether on my computer screen or in my mind's eye.

Within a short time, they settled in Chicago as many Italians did, and began pursuing the American Dream. They learned English and taught it to their children, worked hard, went to church, obeyed the law, honored the flag, and accepted no handouts. They proudly called themselves Americans, not Italian-Americans.

My grandfather worked at the railroad while his wife raised two boys and two girls. In 1938, at the age of eighteen, my father enlisted in the army and served his country with honor. My aunts, proud to be called housewives, also married men who served in the armed forces. A decade or so before my grandfather's death in 1966, he retired from the railroad, a job he had held for forty years. With his savings and pension, he provided support for my grandmother after his passing.

To my knowledge, my father's parents lived in their nimble home from the time they arrived until the time Grandpa passed away. Afterward, my grandmother went to live with one of my aunts until her death six years later. The family took care of their own.

My father spoke of his ethnically mixed neighborhood with pride. Italian kids played in the streets with Poles, Greeks, Irish. This was Chicago, and this was America in the 20s and 30s. They required no legislation to co-exist; they simply did it because it was the right thing to do. If a black kid socked a white kid in the face, it wasn't called a hate crime. They didn't settle their squabble with guns or knives or baseball bats. A bloody nose was what it was, and more often than not, the boys shook hands afterward and went on their merry way.

A gun was kept in the house in case of burglars, and everyone was shown how to use it. It remained tucked away for that dreaded emergency that, at least in my family's home, never materialized, thank God.

This is the old version of the American Dream, version 1.0.

Barack Obama, though not directly responsible for revising the Dream, is putting version 2.0 on a fast track. Welfare, bloated federal programs, entitlements, free lunches, taxpayer-subsidized abortions, refusing to acknowledge English as the language of the land, homosexuals infiltrating the military, a trampling of the Constitution -- these are some of the components of American Dream 2.0.

The new dream will shut our mouths in violation of the First Amendment as it invokes hate crimes laws, repeals our rights to own the means to protect ourselves, and maintains hiring quotas, a dire form of the same discrimination it was designed to squelch.

I read an article yesterday in which an illegal alien woman in Bakersfield is living off a hefty bi-monthly disability check. Her disability? Heroin addiction.

How did we come so far, so fast? Who pulled the handle on the toilet and sent the original dream into the sewer? Will we ever recover, or are we doomed to living a life with a Big Brother we don't want, don't need, and can't afford?

My parents and grandparents would roll over in their graves if they could see this day. I wish I had lived in their time. They had it rough, but they managed. They survived. And they did it without government meddling, all during the era of the late great American Dream 1.0.

Changing of the Guard

In a few short hours, the torch will pass from President George W. Bush to a liberal madman with absolutely no clue of how to run anything more complex than his mouth.

The outgoing president has frustrated me many times, and overall he fell short of my conservative expectations. I knew he was a globalist when I twice cast my vote for him, but I was still under the impression that he would lead the nation out of the darkness brought by the Clinton gang.

Mr. Bush scored highly with his opposition to stem cell research, partial birth abortion, hate crimes legislation, tax hikes, and the assault weapons ban inked by his predecessor. After 9/11, the US was not attacked, so I am left to assume that he did something -- covertly or otherwise -- which averted an encore. (In the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind, a phone call echoes in which W spoke directly to Muslim leaders, assuring them the US military would vaporize Mecca should we be struck again, a tactic that might have bought our safety until Inauguration Day, 2009.)

Officially beginning tomorrow morning, all three branches of government will be controlled by lunatics from the far left. Many of these people belong behind bars or on heavy medication. Rather, they will be at the helm of this once-proud ship and its 300 million inhabitants for at least the next two years -- unless, of course, the last bastion of pseudo-conservatism, those we know as the Supreme Court, vacate November's election for lack of eligibility of the man who will very shortly be transformed from President-elect to President-faux.

This man of change is a virtual Jimmy Carter on political steroids, unrestrained by the House or Senate, a thought which simultaneously gives me a cold chill and scalding nausea unfazed by Xanax and Tums. Obama will surely make all America's enemies proud. Televised throughout the world, he will be inaugurated before the adoring eyes of Putin, Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, Osama bin Laden, and every cutthroat and every leader of every drug cartel and poppy field from Colombia to Afghanistan to Nigeria.

Mr. Obama refers to himself as a devout man, a deeply religious man. Charles Manson's followers were devout people, and Osama bin Laden is deeply religious. Should these revelations bring me peace or to my knees in prayer that I may be spared long suffering and die quickly following a blinding flash?

It's nice to know that our new devout leader will be cheered on by the Gay Men's Chorus, led by a homosexual priest (oxymoron of the millenium). Planned Parenthood and the ACLU will have front row seats to the gala which will be carried live on everything from my TV to my palm pilot to my toaster oven -- though I refuse to watch any of it as I register a tiny whimper of protest in the only way I know how.

Beginning 1/20/09, the rights of the death culture will trump those of the moral minority, something we've seen blowing in the wind for at least twenty-five years. If you doubt that our constitutional rights have been shredded, try standing on a public sidewalk and handing out Christian literature while homosexuals march in a gay pride parade, committing blatant acts of indecency as they stroll through public streets in the nude. You will quickly find yourself in the back seat of a Ford Crown Victoria, heading to the local police precinct to be fingerprinted, booked, and jailed on some ludicrous non-charge.

So if you think the last eight years were a bumpy ride, hang on.

Countdown to Hell

In a few short days, the demented leftists in the US, along with Muslims throughout the world, will revel at the inauguration of Barack Obama.

Communists (leftists, liberals, socialists -- whatever you like to call them, they're one in the same) will have achieved their long-sought goal of bringing the United States from the pinnacle of power to the abyss of irrelevance. Decades-old policies of appeasement toward our sworn enemies, the relentless attacks against Christian principles by the ACLU, the rise of the abortion and homosexual mafias which have contributed to continued and rapid moral decline, and Middle Eastern petrodollars (along with all the influence they have purchased by investing those dollars back into our economy) have conspired to relegate America to the brink of third world status.

To the glee of many, President Bush will soon leave office, and the swearing in of his replacement will reduce the Constitution to a meaningless parchment of antiquity. At stake are everything from our right to free speech, to the right to own a firearm, to the right of peaceful assembly, to the right of freely worshiping God. Voting has proven itself to mean nothing, and the demise of the Constitution, once Mr. Obama illegally assumes office next Tuesday, will quickly follow.

I hope to carve out a single state -- Montana, Oklahoma, Arizona, I'm not picky; let the other forty-nine do as they please -- where I can live with the God-given freedoms handed down to us by our beloved Constitution, without fear of tyranny or reprisal by psychopathic ultra-left-wing hoodlums. You know them by the names of Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy, Tom Daschle, the Clinton thugs. Even our own conservative Supreme Court seems to have abandoned defending the Constitution by not taking up the cases of the proof of Obama's birthplace and citizenship, refusing to vacate his November victory.

The Constitution means nothing, our votes mean nothing, our borders mean nothing, and now our dollar means nothing. As a lone private citizen, I will fight to whatever extent I am able. Ultimately, they will pry my Bible from my cold, dead hands.

Hiatus

I've taken a two-month vacation from blogging as my mind has not yet come to grips with the November catastrophe and subsequent looming disaster that lies ahead. Additionally, I've had some personal issues which I have needed to tend to, and for the time being, I will once again post my opinions to both of my beloved readers as I am able.