THE CONSERVATIVE VIEW

BY RUSSELL TURNER

 

NOT THINKING

 

Several years ago I was watching a speaker at a religious conference and he made a comment that has stuck with me over the years. The speaker traveled throughout the world and he repeated the concerns from many other nations concerning our nation; he said, “People in other parts of the world are astonished how uninformed the people of America are, but they are alarmed how the news media controls the people of this nation.” From my point of view we Americans are becoming a victim of our own success. Prosperity can cause a people to be more concerned with play instead of the important things facing our nation. For all of my adult life I have been involved in politics and I make an effort to know the issues. For a long period of time I guess I was naïve in the belief that everyone else took it as seriously as I did. 

 

I do have friends that think the same way as I do, and one of those individuals gave me some insight that brought it into perspective. That individual told me that when it comes to politics there are two kinds of people; there are those of us who are passionate about it, and there are those who do not want to be bothered with politics and there is no in between. I believe that if more people took the time to do some serious thinking our nation would not be facing the problems we have today. For those of us who do take the time to think, it is so obvious how the majority of our people are led to the slaughter. The left and their allies in the main stream media are masters at indoctrinating the people. If it were not for talk radio and the internet we would already have turned into a communist country. 

 

The trend in not thinking has been going on several years, but it has intensified over the last 20 years. During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai Stevenson: "Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!"  Stevenson called back: "That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!” It is a sad fact that in today’s campaigns we hear a constant barrage of words like conservatism, less taxes, gun rights, etc. Sadly, when we elect these silver tongued devils we often find out the words that they spoke were campaign rhetoric with no underlying convictions. In the case of former president Obama he proved that negative advertising works, invective sells, and harsh personal attacks succeed. The candidate who tries to campaign on facts and figures cannot connect to most of the voters today because they have refused to do some independent thinking. It is becoming impossible for people of substance, depth and ideas to compete with the shallow populism and platitudes of their opponents. Thinking people are failing because they will not embrace the devil's bargain of making unsustainable promises.

 

If we Americans don’t relearn the ability to think our great republic is doomed.

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