Ya Gotta Save It

(First published in December 7, 2007)As most of you already know, I have for long been the most avid of fans for my local heroes, the University of Tennessee football Volunteers (herafter referred to as the VOLS). This year’s Big Orange team has been a rich source of immense satisfaction and even inspiration to me. Obviously, this is my favorite time of the year. At this point, I really do not care what the outcome of today’s SEC Championship game , with LSU in Atlanta, turns out to be (well maybe a little bit). The point has already been made. It doesn’t matter how many times seemingly everybody counts you out (or puts you down). My Vols took control of their destiny through sheer hard work and determination, and that lesson is there- for anyone to see who has been watching.

This inspiring season is my metaphor for the soon-to-be-revealed outcome of a far more important contest (for our country) that is soon to come. Real, actual votes will be cast on 3 January 2008 in the state of Iowa caucuses (while most of us are still watching bowl games) in the Presidential race. Former Senator Fred Dalton Thompson, a true son of Tennessee in the tradition of Andrew Jackson, Cordell Hull, Davy Crockett, and Alvin C. York, is an honest, decent public servant who (rising from among us) has chosen to campaign for the privilege of holding the highest office in the land- the Presidency of the United States. Long after I am done (for the season) rooting for the Big Orange, I will still be in there rooting for Big Fred.

Simply put, this man has (with some degree of great personal sacrifice) made it his mission to bring America back at this special moment in history when we collectively have some very hard choices we must make. We stand at a critical crossroads- as both a nation and a culture. We can choose the easy path of promised benefits (whether earned or not) and lavish goodies someone else will have to pay for long after we’re gone- of letting our government do our work for us; or we can go back to the basics, to the spirit of those days of big dreams for tomorrow, of huge risks taken by the people who founded this grand experiment. Its our choice now. This will be our time. There can be no more avoiding reality or the truly hard work that will perforce come with accepting that challenge. This road of discomfort will be difficult, treacherous, even dangerous. But it is what adults do. Responsibility is still the flip side of liberty- just as the words say in “America the Beautiful”. At the risk of wearing out too many time-worn cliches: the tooth fairy won’t be flying in tonight, Santa Claus isn’t coming to town, and Ed Mac Mahon isn’t knocking at our front door.
The road back for America lies through each of us, and it will begin with a severe attitude check- a checkup from the neck up. I’m Talking about a truly massive gut check. And if all of this is news to you, then you really need to start asking hard questions- like why haven’t I heard any of this before now?

Fred Thompson can help guide us in finding the way back to our foundations as a great, free nation. But all of the old traditions from running up the revival tents to becoming the thrifty Yankee traders we once were will take some amount of time to make happen. And none of this will happen through massive expenditures of money we no longer have in one Rooseveltian program after another. Like Tippecanoe and Tyler too or 23 Skidoo, they are part of our history (its true), but they won’t work anymore- if they ever really did at all. The government produces nothing in and of itself. More bluntly (and accurately), our government, and what it does, is a reflection of you and me. What looks back at us from that mirror can be weakness or strength. It is our choice now. And the time has arrived to choose. This is the plain, unvarnished truth you need to know.

That having been said, we have, also, long been in need of someone who can help inspire us to search for and find, that awesome greatness that lies within each of us- also part of our birthright as Americans. This is the common-sense coalition I see forming around the candidacy of Fred D. Thompson- similarly to the way Andrew Jackson assembled his forces to win another election in 1820s America.

Like Old Hickory, Fred can serve mostly as our rallying point for the great years that lie ahead for America. We need to move on (so to speak) and cease to look for secular saviors with their solutions for every problem and their self- appointed goals like “looking out for you”. We can get the job done. We need to get on with what Calvin Coolidge called “the business of America”. I wish Fred well. This is OUR TIME. Lets get busy.

GO VOLS

ITS YOUR FUTURE

For The Nonce——–PV