Where are the Gideons when we need them.....

(c) 2013 by Tom King

 The Republicans have forgotten how to speak clearly and how to tell stories that clarify issues.  Check out this short piece by Ronald Reagan more than a half century ago.  And he was still a Democrat at the time!!!

"A doctor would be reluctant to say this. Well, like you, I am only a patient, so I can say it in his behalf. The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it's like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren't equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can't live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go some place else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.

This is a freedom that I wonder whether any of us have the right to take from any human being. All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man's working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it is a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay and pretty soon your children won't decide when they're in school where they will go or what they will do for a living. They will wait for the government to tell them where they will go to work and what they will do.

What can we do about this? Well, you and I can do a great deal. We can write to our congressmen and our senators. We can say right now that we want no further encroachment on these individual liberties and freedoms. And at the moment, the key issue is, we do not want socialized medicine. " 

- Ronald Reagan

I have to wonder whether, in these troubled times, perhaps we have been denied a Gideon, a champion to stand in the breach and to defend our liberties and our the nation, because we've wasted so many of the ones we've already been sent. A little prayer from all of us about now would not go amiss I'm thinking.

Just one man's opinion...

Tom King