Sacred Honor

   Years ago in my youth while reading the Declaration of Independence the last two words “Sacred Honor” jumped out at me like a lightening bolt and why would the founders of America, place that on an equal footing of importance with their very lives and fortunes. It was at that time certain that I realized I didn’t know what they meant, nor if I even possessed such a thing as my own sacred honor and how and where does one acquire such a personally valued thing.

   I set out on a quest to see if others questioned could explain what sacred honor meant to them and if they understood it in the same way, with the same degree of importance as our founders did. What I got was almost as varied as snow flakes from those I questioned. From some with strong religious faith, it was meant the same as the swearing of “so help me God’ in a court of law or pledge while still others thought of it as the honor of trust or responsibility bestowed on them by overall society that they viewed as sacred.

   As I grew older I became convinced that they were talking about truth, honesty and commitment not so much as it related to overall society but to ones own accumulated over time, “objective convictions” regarding their own individual selves. (Being true to ones, own self) living up to their own personal standards as established over time, completely absent what might be called self deceit. This I concluded by reading their own personal writings.

   The difference between public and personal where the personal was of paramount value that was not necessarily in tandem with public perceptions like the difference between a patriot or sunshine patriot that is the sacred honor they placed on par with life and/or fortune which can only be found within.

   Woe be-it onto the Americans of today that have no Sacred Honor on par with our founding fathers, but wallow only in the perceptions of and self deceit of faux public honors. GAP    

The Hallmark of Freedom is Liberty

What’s all the current political controversy in America among the average citizens all about some may ask, while others say, Democrats, Republicans, the rich, the poor, jobs, spending, immigration, wars, Islam, corruption, rights, etc.. But all those things are but smoke clouding the minds of both those that consider themselves; as liberal or conservative and they both view themselves as Patriots.

  Like the old adage from the railroad industry “stop, look, listen” modern Americans have discarded the reason behind the words, while remembering the words only as old hat that does not apply anymore because we modern men/women are intellectually beyond such admonitions.

  Black Americans today equate slavery as the opposite of freedom, yet when given freedom without the liberty to individually exercise that freedom held them under the thumb and whims of the political élites, and all the rest of America has adopted the same point of view. It is not the words that matter but the true historical meaning and understanding of them when we use them.

  Anarchy benefits only the physically strong or those that can amass power through the collective. The collective benefits only those that rank among the elite, on the backs of the majority.

  In the lead up to America's original revolution; the call from the overwhelming majority was not for freedom from Great Britain; it was for “LIBERTY” we were already free, but freedom without liberty from the controlling civil authority, means only limited slavery as apposed to full fledged slavery like that imposed on most of America's blacks at the time. Individual liberty was at the very root purpose of our Constitution by limiting government as to its power to curtail or restrict our liberty to exercise our rights and freedoms given not by government but by our creator.

  In today’s modern America the same issue of “LIBERTY” is the motivating factor behind the so called TEA PARTY movement even though many among them don’t realize it and focus on the smoke.

GAP

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined."--Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 5 June 1778

"It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth -- and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts." --Patrick Henry