"Patriotism......................."

If my parents ever voted in any election, it was without any awareness on my part of their being registered to do so. From early on, there was enough adult conversation overheard for me to know my whole family considered themselves Democrats, the other side representing “big money”, rich people who held no concern for the working class. With Dad’s sudden death, however, I dropped out of college, joined the Navy, married, and took no interest in politics until, at the age of thirty, my perspectives were drastically changed. Initially adopting the blue party because of my “roots” and a railroad that demanded union membership, this man’s mind was nevertheless not always faithful to such commitment. My conversion to Christ had me trying my best to hear His voice in the matter; and yet my choices, in retrospect, always left me thinking nothing was accomplished. Indeed, after two consecutive terms of Reagan and seeing nothing altered in so far as the Roe-Wade decision, after watching him, as well, use executive authority to “kill” the air-controllers, I simply took my name “out of the game”. My participation didn’t seem to change anything much at all. D.C. was filled with corruption, as far as I was concerned, and prayer worked much better than the ballot box, a theology that sufficed for twenty years. It would take my wife’s passion to see Bush in the Oval Office to draw me back into this, my faith, not her, leading me to re-enlist as a Republican this time around. If my opinion yet held little respect for our “leaders” as a whole, at least, here and there, I held hope. It took only Obama, along with Acorn and the Black Panthers, however, to convince me that the Mafia now held the White House, Barney Frank, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosie being their three main “stooges”. So it has done me well, the last few days, to listen to governors like Martinez and Haley, former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, and Senator Marco Rubio, speak at the Republican Convention. Their words came from an experience known deep within and witnessed to me of a belief yet held in those values upon which this country draws its breath and maintains its existence. If Mitt Romney appears but a “businessman”, he is one with a love of God and family, one possessing a heart desperate to repair the breach in our system. Maybe, just maybe, in the middle of all the mess that inhabits those halls, there is yet hope of change to come. Real change. Change in character. Change we can respect……