Saturday, October 11, 2008

The Audacity of Faith

Without being judgmental towards anyone, I would have to say that this has been one of the most eventful times in our history. It seems as if we crawl out of one disaster and another one creeps up on us. I honestly do not think that if we had the foresight to see these that anyone would have ran for president back in 2000, except a man ready for the padded cell.

First, we have the twin towers incident which happened before the new president even had a chance to unpack his bags in the White House. An incident which, I think, everyone would agree, could have ruined this nation economically if it had occurred in some prior time. The fact that it didn’t can be attributed to the fact we live in the computer age.

Then we get into wars in two separate countries. Wars, I might add, that saw very unconventional ways of fighting wars. Wars that have divided this nation politically as nothing else could or has since the time of the Civil War. Wars, I might add, that have seen accusations of hatred spewed by all sides of the issue.

While these wars are being fought, we have had two devastating acts of nature in the names of Katrina and Ike. I would also like to say that, even as devastating as these acts of nature were, very few lives were lost. That is something few nations around the world could say if a disaster like this happened there.

Now, we are in the midst of another economic disaster due to sub-prime loans. This disaster may end up as the worst of all. For it is challenging our faith of the very way of life that we have depended on and have even promoted around the world. It has struck at a time when that faith in it is needed most because there are those who will use this as a means to convince us to change that way of life. Hope of a better way is the promise

Whether people say it or not economic woes is a part of the way of life that we have chosen and it has made us the most powerful nation in the world. The history of our economy will affirm this. The history of our nation declares we can come out of this a much stronger nation if we maintain the faith that our forefathers had. It is not hope we need. It is not change we need. It is faith that will bring us through it, faith in ourselves as a people, faith in each other as a people.

Let those who seek change panic. Let those who need hope panic. Those who have faith have no need to panic for they know what they already have. Those who have faith already know what they have been given and they give thanks for it and are not afraid of the future.

We have always been a nation of faith. We have always been a nation that was built upon faith. Its strength has always been the strength of a people who had faith in their own abilities. We are a people who seek not hope in others for we are a people who have always had faith in ourselves. Maintain that faith, my friends. For it comes from our fathers who had the audacity of that faith. Build the dreams of your fathers, my friends, but build them upon faith he had. They can never be built upon the hopes and promises of another.

Those, who seek hope, will always be led by the nose down the path of hope and change. Those who have faith will lead themselves down their own path. Choose the leader that you seek to follow. Just remember one thing as you choose. The leader is always the one who reaps the benefits of the path well chosen. The followers are always the ones who must pay the consequences of a path poorly chosen.

Disasters are a part of either path taken. History will record those disasters. The only question will be how history records the solutions used and who will be given honor of those solutions. Will it be the people themselves who had faith in what they have or someone who decided to declare hope and change was needed?

38 comments:

Average American said...

Good post Griper, and all very true! Just one more thing the leftards won't understand.

The Griper said...

he smiles, well a finger or two of yours was in this pie too my friend. i thank you for it.

BB-Idaho said...

The advantage us pessimists have is that no matter what happens...we were expecting far worse. :)

The Griper said...

and that, in itself, makes a pessimist optimistic, huh, bb? would that be called an oxymoronic truth?

Gayle said...

Yes, Griper... I think that's a perfect example of an oxymoronic truth. LOL!

Great post. I wish everyone had even half of your common sense. What a different nation and world it would be! This is not false praise or flattery. I honestly mean it.

Instead of people panicking and pulling their money out of their 401K's and selling their stocks, common sense tells us this is the time to buy - while the prices are low. Good grief, you can now purchase more stock at a lower price, and if you have some patience you can hold them long term. It will pay big dividends when the economy recovers, and it will! I don't understand why people don't understand that. Their panic and fear is whats turning what didn't have to be a crisis into a real crisis.

Depending on hope and change to solve anything makes about as much sense as planting tomato plants in the snow. You can hope that they will grow, and that the weather will suddenly change, but the plants are still going to die. What we need is faith and common sense.

Some change would be a good thing though, like throwing the thieves out of politics! I doubt seriously however, that Obama's idea of change encompasses that.

Sorry for the rant. There you go... making people think again! :)

The Griper said...

boy, i've noticed that you have snow on the mind today, gayle. lol not only here but over at Goat's place too. lol

tweetey30 said...

Wow what a post and its a great post Griper.. My husband mentioned something to his mother last night when we dropped the girls off. Have you ever notice before a depression there has been a world war?? Just a thought to chew on here. You can correct either of us if you want but that is a thought he had while talking to his mother last night. History will record all of this..

Average American said...

Oxymoronic truths:

social security
military intelligence
common sense
market analyst
smart democrat(heh heh)

The Griper said...

oxymoronic truths, absolute truths, relative truths,mmm, are lies the only thing that is considered absolute now days? is there such a thing as a relative lie or an oxymoronic lie? :)

The Griper said...

tweety,
believe it or not, this country has already gone through around 8 economic depressions already.

they, along with recessions, are natures way of bringing economies back into balance again.

there has to be a balance between supply and demand in economics and when we get too cock-eyed sure of ourselves, nature comes along and gives us a good whoopin on the rear end.

BB-Idaho said...

True or false, we are subject to oxymorons:
original copy
authentic reproduction
death benefits
true replica
non-dairy creamer
wireless cable
..so, if y'all want to place us
pessimistic optimists along with
'jumbo shrimp' at least we have been catagorized. :)

The Griper said...

he sits and laughs at bb's remarks. have to say that this has been one of the most fun threads i've had.

a thread filled with little giants, each and everyone of you.

tweetey30 said...

You hit that one right where it counts but in a good way...

Gayle said...

I love BB's oxymoron list. "Death benefits". LOL!

Yep, snow is on my mind because I haven't seen any real snow in years. I want to have to help shovel the driveway!

heidianne jackson said...

it seems so simplistic and logical when you lay it out like this, griper. why can't the leftards get it!?!?

The Griper said...

the answer is simple heidianne. they have an agenda of their own and they'd rather exploit times as these to advance that agenda.

heidianne jackson said...

from bb "Heidianne sent me to the dictionary and I find"

huh? what in my comment sent you to the dictionary? and in what dictionary did you look?

The Griper said...

you know, bb, i was thinking, being a pessimistic optimist is the perfect place to be. i think i'll join you there. its a position that forces to think deeper along with the inspiration to smile at life. it can even force you to laugh at yourself.

BB-Idaho said...

Heidianne, in answer, your parenthetical phrase mentioning
'leftard' piqued my curiosity. Of course it is a well-known epithet
(or as Griper's Grandpa would note,
a condensed appositive) appearing in hundreds of blogs. I take it to mean 'anyone who thinks differently', from its ubiquituous
usage. So, anyhoo..I was trying to find the definition, ran across synonyms and ended up at this place While I try to avoid
pejoratives, the listing appears to be public record, so feel free to utilize them singly or in groupings..:)

The Griper said...

after looking at the site, bb, gave i had one crazy thought. a post written using only the terms that the site provided. lol

Lista said...

Griper,
This was a very interesting and good post. I only have a few comments.

We need to have faith in God, not just in ourselves and we also need to find our hope in God. God should lead us down His path, not us leading ourselves down our own path.

Your comment about "a relative lie" was interesting and got me thinking. The thing is, if a lie can not be relative, than it must be countering a truth that is also not relative. If a lie is a lie, than the truth it opposes is also a truth. Perhaps this in and of itself is proof that truth does indeed exist.

I also liked your comment that "When we got to cock-eyed sure of ourselves, nature comes along and gives us a good whoopin on the rear end." That made me laugh and oh so true.

I guess a lot of Democrats don't believe in people or in themselves. To come at least a little in their defense, repetitive failure and the multiple experiences of having people let you down, coupled with no faith in God will do that too a person.

I'm not sure if I get the "Pessimistic Optimist" thing. Oh well.

The Griper said...

a lie, lista, is a lie because it is a deliberate and intentional statement of a falsehood meant to deceive. a truth does not need to be intentional or deliberate. it can result from a guess too.

as for a pessimistic optimist it was only a take based on BB's statement that a pessimist always expect things to be worse than they are. if things are better than what they were expected to be then that would be an optimistic outcome for a pessimist.

Lista said...

Another way of saying that is that if someone mistakenly makes an incorrect statement, it is not considered a lie, but a mistake. If someone mistakenly says something that is true, though, this is not applied in the same way. Truth is truth regardless of the motivation of the one proclaiming it.

Adversely, though, what's not true is not true regardless of whether it was a deliberate lie or just a mistaken statement.

I guess if your expectations are low enough, you will often be surprised, yet sometimes these negative expectations result in self-fulfilling prophecies. So we need to be careful not to jeopardize ourselves by expecting too little.

The Griper said...

i don't call them mistakes, lista, unless there was an intent to tell a known truth but the wrong words ended up being said. i just refer to them as falsehoods. it goes along the lines of a statement in a quiz that is answered by true or false.

Lista said...

I think we spend too much time discussing what things should be called, Griper. If a falsehood that is mistakenly, whether than intentionally, spoken is called a mistake or a falsehood, what's the difference. I think everyone understood what I meant.

What I really get a kick out of is how one of my cousins so often says "Oophs! I lied." when all she did was mistakenly said the wrong thing.

The Griper said...

he chuckles and nods. the reason i prefer the word falsehood is because we can make mistakes in other things as well not just in telling the truth whereas falsehood deals directly with truth.

Lista said...

Whatever,
Mistakenly speaking a falsehood is only one of many types of mistakes that can be made. There are always several ways to say the same exact thing.

The Griper said...

true, very true. that leads us to idea of saying something that may be literally true but is meant to deceive. that is another way to lie.

Lista said...

True. The most effective of deceptions start with the truth and than twists it a little.

The Griper said...

yup. don't even need to twist it. just create an implication in another person's mind or by focusing attention on something where it should not be focused.

Lista said...

I think the most common form is "Since this be true, therefore..." in which the first part of the statement is true, but the "Therefore" is not and yes, this can either be clearly stated or just implied.

Lista said...

I think the most common form is "If this be true, therefore..." in which the first part of the statement is true, but the "Therefore" is not and yes, this can either be clearly stated or implied.

The Griper said...

you got the gist of it. you see it used in political campaigns all the time in the use of negative campaigning.

example,

"my opponent is a liar."

that may be literally true. the implication is that since he is a liar then you should vote for me.

Lista said...

Awe! But I don't think that everyone who is accused of being a liar necessarily is one. For example, if someone says that the Bush administration lied to us about their motives for going to war. Actually the war is about oil or finishing what Bush Sr. started. There is really no way, though, to prove what someone's true motives are. That is purely speculation.

There is no proof that the reasons originally given for the war were a lie. They may have been based on limited intelligence information and/or misjudgment, but that still doesn't make it a lie.

The Griper said...

i covered that possibility when i said that it might be literally true, lista. remember we are speaking of using the truth to deceive.

Lista said...

This discussion reminds me of the post I did entitled "Susan Jacoby's "The Age of American Unreason"". I ended up agreeing with everything in the linked article that BB left me with the exception of one single phrase, which of course, turned out to be one of the main thesis statements in the book that the article was referring to.

The Griper said...

he grins, that's one of the beauties of discussion when it is approached with an open mind. you end up looking at the same issue from a different perspective. and if approached in the right manner can end up deepening your knowledge of the issue. and once that is done helps you in the next discussion with another person.

Lista said...

The point that I was trying to make is that a person can make a Whole String of Correct Truths, such as in the linked article that I just mentioned, and than One Incorrect Statement can be inserted along with it and the reader is lead to believe that since everything else in the article is true, than so is the one untruth that was inserted with it.

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