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<h3>Turn The Clock Back . . .   by Kathryn A. Graham</h3>
 
 At the risk of starting the argument of all time, I feel compelled to point out that Americans today are simply not made of the same stern stuff as our ancestors. You disagree? Please write and tell me honestly what you think your nearest neighbor would do if awakened at midnight by the warning, `The redcoats are coming!` Frankly, my next door neighbor is an active duty Marine, but tucking tail is the first thing that comes to mind. I certainly cannot imagine him handing a rifle to his wife or daughter and telling them to `lock and load.` Not in this lifetime, at any rate. He`d be too worried about his retirement. Our ancestors had one or two advantages over us. In the first place, most of those who lived on the American continent at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence were no more than one or two generations removed from individuals who had possessed the courage and vision to leave every single thing they had ever owned for unspecified opportunity in a new and savage land. It was one hell of a winnowing, and their descendants were the best of the best that Europe had to offer. Throughout history, winnowings such as the settlement of our American continent have brought forth the most shining examples of human courage and achievement. Sadly, we have just about run out of Earthly frontiers now, and it cannot happen again until we begin to colonize Antarctica ? or outer space. We have now experienced a full hundred years of urban civilization. One hundred years separate us from the last of our ancestors who fought the Native Americans for their survival. One hundred years separate us from the last remnant of frontiersmen who strapped on their guns and went out to wrest a living from an unforgiving land. We`ve become the sort of weaklings our ancestors would be ashamed to claim as descendants. Oh, there remain a few here and there who would make our common ancestors proud, and they or their children will almost certainly be the first to colonize a new planet, but they are now so widely scattered among the rest of us that they are hard to find. A fellow by the name of Todd Beamer comes to mind, but when I think of that magnificent young man and his friends, I am also forced to recall that the passengers on three other airplanes submitted meekly to hijackers with mere box cutters ? hijackers they outnumbered by roughly ten to one. The awful truth today is that just teaching your child courage and self-reliance can lead to accusations of child abuse. I remember (painfully) one occasion when I was barely two years old. I laboriously climbed to the top of about a six foot slide in Central Park, then lost my grip and tumbled off said slide head first. I wound up with a goose egg the size of Kansas right in the middle of my forehead, saw whole galaxies of stars, and my mother`s hair turned a shade or two whiter on the spot. If that had happened in today`s world, my parents would have had a very unpleasant visit from Child Protective Services, and it is quite possible that they would have lost custody of their daughter altogether. I remember hanging upside down from Jungle Jim bars. I remember swinging so hard on swing sets that I pulled the legs of the swing sets clean out of the ground. I remember running back and forth on a seesaw, wildly keeping my balance as it tipped each way. Compared to my great-great-grandmother, who climbed aboard a covered wagon in Missouri at the ripe old age of 16 years and drove it to Texas, having a baby on the way, I am your original pansy ? but compared to today`s sissy kids, I am Attila The Hun in drag. Unfortunately, the progression is obvious and not too flattering to today`s generation. The more we demand safety, the more our government tightens its grip. We demand safe drugs, so our Food and Drug Administration has made the requirements for testing new drugs so stringent and expensive that drug development has ground almost completely to a halt. Those few new drugs that are being developed are priced right out of reach for the people who need them the most. This government agency actually has the unmitigated gall to tell you what you can and cannot try when you have a terminal illness! Dozens and dozens of wonderful children`s toys are no longer on the market, because of potential risks if parents were not vigilant, or allowed children of the wrong age group to play with them, etc. Have you read the idiot warnings on labels lately? Honestly, the last time I purchased a firearm, it had a big label that said that firearms could be hazardous to my health! By itself, this was merely amusing, but it does lose its humor rapidly when you consider what it says about our society. The last motorcycle helmet I purchased warned me sternly that it was designed to be worn on my head, not on other parts of my body. The warnings on knives are frankly hilarious. I shudder to think what will come with my next motorcycle, but I`m sure it will be a good-sized book. The worst insult of all is that we have pay to print this stuff! Every product we purchase includes warning labels in its purchase price now. It`s a multi-billion dollar industry! The search for safe energy has brought the search for renewable energy to a standstill. Terrestrial energy sources are dangerous, whether we are talking about the merely overwhelming, like hydroelectric power, or other flammable, explosive or radioactive sources. Solar power is reasonably safe, but it is weak and unreliable as yet. Chemical sources are dangerous because of the kinetic energy locked up in the substances involved. You can`t get away from that without changing the laws of physics. Hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the entire universe. Combined with oxygen, it burns hot and clean and could provide us with energy for the life of the human race. It is also dangerous. Because of our fear, because of our cowardice, we are still dependent on energy sources developed before we became so timid as a society. The largest deposits of those energy sources are located in a part of the world that calls America the `Great Satan.` Our president is taking us to war as I write this for control of those resources, an evil and immoral war that cannot possibly have a happy ending for anyone. If you still believe that we are going to war with Saddam Hussein because of weapons of mass destruction, please tell me why we are not preparing to attack North Korea, which has just admitted to nuclear weapons. Cowardice carries its own penalties. America needs to take a collective deep breath and get a grip. Life is hazardous to our health. No one gets out of it alive. No one. Perhaps we could begin by accepting that one simple fact, because it makes everything else so much easier. Are you tired of ruinous taxes? Are you tired of government regulators with their fingers in every part of your life, from the cradle to the grave? Are you tired of being forced to pay into a Social Security system that your legislators systematically loot? Are you tired of paying billions to fight a war against drugs that merely results in your loss of freedom ? and makes street drugs more prevalent than ever? Are you tired of vicious federal agents who manufacture evidence and burn women and children alive in their homes while blatantly violating the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by trying to jail people for the heinous crime of owning the wrong sort of firearms? What part of `shall not be infringed` is giving them trouble, anyway? If you are tired of these things, if you truly want these things to go away, then you are eventually going to have to give up the so-called protections of government. You must learn self-sufficiency. You can`t work to dismantle an overbearing government with one hand while your other hand is outstretched for what that government will give you. You can start by purchasing a handgun and learning to use it. It`s only a very small part of the process, but it`s good for you psychologically to realize that you don`t need help defending your life or your property any longer. You hold your head just a little bit higher. A man or a woman who cannot or will not defend immediate family is not worthy of the name `human.` Even animals defend their young. Take some chances! It may sound silly, but a skydiving course is not a bad idea. You will find out that life is fun when you aren`t wrapped in cotton. You may find that you like your fellow skydivers better than most of the people you know. Life tastes very sweet when you take big bites. It needn`t be skydiving. Try flying an airplane, scuba diving, or rock climbing ? but find something you love to do, maybe something just a little bit risky, and do it. It is never too late to learn physical courage. Learn to hunt! This is terribly difficult and painful for animal lovers like myself, but it is crucially important to any man or woman to know that they can provide their own food. Long range shooting has been an important skill for centuries. Only in the last hundred years has it fallen into disrepute. Learning to hunt is more than learning to shoot, though. You must also learn to field dress the carcass and prepare the meat for consumption. These are survival skills that every single one of your ancestors possessed. They would be appalled to learn that you do not. If you do not want to be treated like a helpless infant by your government, the first step is to cease to be a helpless infant. That is only the beginning, though. It will not be enough. Government is a cancer. It feeds on itself. Those who possess power over your life will not give it up easily. When they learn that you are trying to free yourself from their grip, their jackbooted thugs will come for you. They will come for all of us, and for our families. The day is approaching when each of us will have to decide what we choose to defend with our lives. We must decide if we will accept slavery, or if we are willing, as our ancestors were, to pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to secure our freedom. The redcoats are coming! 
Author Info

At a tiny 5`1`, Kathryn A. Graham is a licensed private investigator, pilot, aircraft mechanic and handgun instructor in Texas. Also a prolific author, she has written numerous articles, short stories and a science fiction novel. http://www.kathrynagraham.com/ 
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