"Liberty is too Precious a thing to be buried in books"

From the old film "Mr. Smith goes to Washington." The final speech, as the corrupt politicians try to force Smith out of the senate before he exposes them.

Marco Rubio

Kansas City, KA – The Junior Republican Senator for the state of Florida  is forty-three years old, and already people are talking about him becoming one of the youngest ever presidents of the United States of America. In the polls, last year, he took a beating.

Just after the Boston Bombing, he and the “Gang of Eight” released an immigration reform bill. But the bill went sideways, and everyone associated seemed to be left out in the cold. However, his poll numbers are climbing again, and, while for a while he was sixteen points behind Jeb Bush, he is now only three.

There has been much talk about Republicans reaching out to minorities. Marco Rubio could do this easily. He is a Cuban-American born in Miami, Florida. He speaks Spanish, and has plenty of stories of his parents and grandparents with which to build a powerful narrative.

He has done some of the preliminary things “necessary” to run for presidents, besides also hinting that he just might. Before the senate he was very capable in state politics in Florida, more than once pulling off tough elections.

In his book An American Son, he tells his life story. Of how when he was very young he was spoiled by his parents, causing him to be selfish, pensive, and unpleasant. He talks of how that affected his political career. In Florida, when the elections were going bad, at least once, according to his book, he went to a car to pout until his wife got ahold of him.

When he ran for senate five years ago, he ran against Charlie Crist, then then governor of the state. Rubio scraped a win in the primaries, but then Crist suddenly ran as an independent. (Crist is now running for governor of Florida as a Democrat.) Rubio had a long, hard fight. Until, on election night, they were unsure of victory. Then he got a call from the media services. “Were calling it for you.” He won that night.

In the upcoming election of 2016, there are many people in the field. The young man from Florida is one of them. But there are already people who are calling it for him. It will be interesting to watch how it plays out.

Andrew C. Abbott

Airplanes, Black Boxes, and the Chocolate King

Kansas City, KA – Just a few months ago, Flight 370 was lost, and despite Ocean Shield and all the Shaws’, Presidents’, and Kings’ men, it still hasn’t been found, and no one knows why.

In a terrible, unfortunate, and saddening turn of events, we are reminded of the final scene of the film Hunt for Red October. After the breathtaking hunt for the submarine Red October, which is finally found, we hear the ambassador ask “Do you mean to tell me you’ve lost another one?” Well, we've lost another one. Another flight has gone down, Flight 17, and again, no one knows why.

The loss of life is tragic, and the stories continue. Now the Black Boxes appear to have been found. John Kerry, our secretary of state is stating that evidence points towards Russia, or at least Russian involvement.

There are stories of desecration of bodies, of thievery, of tampering with evidence, and of much more, including a story I read that popped up briefly stating the bodies had been dead for days before the crash, before it disappeared from Huffington Post. I am sure the wild theories will get worse from there.

But a light has been shown, now, in glaring colors upon those that are holding these cities. These riotous rebels. They call themselves the Donetsk People’s Republic, maybe thinking that if they give themselves a nice democratic sounding name they will get more support.

But now we are finding that there does not seem to be much that is very nice about them. They are apparently handling the crash site as drunken men, both figuratively, and, it seems, at times, literally. As drunken soldiers stumble through the site.

The world has been reminded that on Ukrainian ground, there are violent rebels, causing atrocities, unrest, and killing. As Ukraine tries to take back its borders and hold the ones it still has, the world has again been reminded of the conflict, with the loss of their own loved ones.

Petro Poroshenko is the new president of Ukraine. He is a former Chocolate King, making billions in the industry of making our favorite sweet. Since the possible shoot-down of Flight 17, and then the gross mishandling by the rebels of the incident, his nation has, in a sense, been vindicated in the world’s eyes. It took the conflict coming to us for the widespread outrage to begin at these “Separatists.” But now President Poroshenko has a golden opportunity. It is such a great one that he could have written the script himself.

Andrew C. Abbott

The Back Door of the Alamo

Kansas City, KA – Recently I was at a “leaders’ lunch” at a conference, when a WHO radio host, Steve Deace, who came from an abusive father, said that that same father told him, in his life, one good thing which he has remembered all these years. “The reason the men at the Alamo fought so bravely, is because there was no back door.”

In his book the Art of War, (which, by the way, is an excellent read for any looking for some weekend reading) Sun Tzu says that very few men will fight, unless they stand on “desperate ground.”

Desperate ground can be hard to find. Society many times goes out the back door, against such men as Joseph Stalin, no one came up against him, only those that stood to lose everything, or understood that everyone else would, opposed him.

When a confrontation can be avoided, it often is. It would be better if it were not that way. We all know the famous stories of thousands, perhaps millions of people under the control of Hitler’s regime who thought it atrocious what was being done to the Jews, and other groups, but said and did nothing, because they were not the ones in danger.

Those that did do or say something tended either to be Jews themselves, or those who recognized when any part of society loses its freedom, everyone else does to. In other words, those who did not try to use the back door.

The back door is almost always there. If you look hard enough is almost any situation, you can usually find a way out, a way to run away and say “living to fight another day.” But not many heroes are made that way, and not many nations saved.

We don’t know the names of the men who ran, during Scotland’s war for independence, at the battle of Fallkirk, but we do know the name of the man that stood. His name was William Wallace.

Vladimir Bukovsky, dissenter from Russia who spent a third of his early life in prisons and insane asylums for daring to oppose the government there by reading poetry in public said “The man in the crowd says ‘why me?’ And everyone is lost. The man with his back against the wall says ‘if not me then who?’ And everyone is saved.”

Andrew C. Abbott