Dr Love's blog: "Words Of Wisdom"

First and foremost allow me to express my utmost respect for the presidency of the United States.  I am not writing this force my beliefs on anyone; I am expressing a few issues that are foremost on my mind.  Secondly, please let me congratulate Barack Obama on his victory and inauguration as the first African American president of these grand United States of America.  What an event to live through, to be able to say to my children and my grandchildren that I seen the inauguration of the first African American president is something that I will always treasure.

Not many things in my lifetime have been an event worth remembering, or an event worth telling in a positive manner.  I mean if you look at the past thirty years since being born in 1979 I can remember many events such as the Challenger disaster, September 11^th, Columbia exploding on re-entry, the earthquake and tsunami of 2004 that killed over 200,000 people.  Every time I turn around it seems like its bad news after bad news and it doesn’t ever seem to end. However, on the other hand I guess you could say that I have also seen the collapse of the Berlin Wall with the reunification of East and West Germany, and on the same token I have also seen the fall of communist Russia.  I have witnesses the launch of the Hubble Telescope into orbit allowing us to see further than ever before into the vastness of space and even the capture of Saddam Hussein and subsequent trial and execution that was a media circus for months.  At any rate, the reason I write today is not to congratulate Obama, or just to point out what events had transpired in my lifetime but rather to point out a particular American that is normally overlooked, the Native Americans.

For anyone reading this, I am not taking anything away from the importance of civil rights, or equality.  I do not intend to offend nor do I intend to make light of any events that have happened in the past to get us to where we are for civil rights.  There are many people who have been persecuted over the ages such as the Jewish, African Americans, or the Muslims as well as many more.  I bring up the Native Americans not only due to the fact that I am a quarter Cherokee Indian but that of all of the races that helped merge the United States of America into what it is now, the Native Americans are one of the groups who have been pushed to the back of the line so to speak.

Ladies and gentlemen, with the recent election of our first African American president I say that next we should have a Native American as President of the United States.  I mean come on, they were here before we were this is their land.  The land we love so very much, the land we protect with our lives is not OUR land at all.  We arrived here looking for a place where we could express our beliefs in an open forum, having the freedom to do, say and believe whatever we so desired.  When we arrived we were met by a group of what some in those days called savages but were they really?  Being totally independent from any governments, free from religious persecution and above all else the so called savages were the caregivers of the earth.  They would live off the land, growing what they could and hunting what they could kill.  Just enough to feed their family or their tribe the term hording had no meaning to them.

Native Americans are the only group of people that have been reduced to lots of land that have been provided to them by the white man’s government, a government that is suppose to stand for freedom and equality.  If anyone in this country should be able to reside here and have their own set or laws, or their own set of standards it should be the American Indians and they should be able to do this wherever, and whenever they wish. 

Native American’s are the true owners of this land, and who better to guide the United States than a person who is in tune with not only themselves and their surroundings, but in perfect harmony with the earth.  Now that we have taken this HUGE step for total equality, I say that we as Americans need to look into ourselves and realize that there are more important issues than the color of some ones skin, or their heritage. 

I am not what you would call the best Christian in the world. I dont even go to church, although I have very strong convictions about the ability of the church, and or the way they are in todays society. The idea of a church is great, however with the todays society having an effect on the church, the actual established entities, I believe, do not in any way shape or form live up to what God and or Jesus had intended. The church was established to worship our lord Jesus Christ, sing his praises, and bring the word of God to those who need it. The current practices in MOST, churches are an abomination compared to what it was intended. Todays churches are full of pedophiles and other bottom dwelling creatures, among other types, that we allow to step into the house of God and worship him with everyone else when the have a one way ticket to HELL. They tell you one thing and then do the exact opposite, why even bother to come into the house of the lord if your just going to disgrace his name, his house and his praise. Although I do not attend church on a regular basis, I truly believe that you DO NOT HAVE TO ATTEND CHURCH EVERY DAY TO PRAISE GOD! I PRAISE GOD EVERYTIME I WAKE IN THE MORNING AND FOR EVERY BREATH I TAKE. AND SO SHALL YOU! C~Ted E. Brown II

"The Americans" - Original Script Original Real Audio "LET'S BE PERSONAL" Broadcast June 5, 1973 CFRB, Toronto, Ontario Topic: "The Americans" The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least-appreciated people in all the earth. As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtze. Who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did. They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Misssissippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States. When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it. When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States that hurries into help... Managua Nicaragua is one of the most recent examples. So far this spring, 59 American communities have been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped. The Marshall Plan .. the Truman Policy .. all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent war-mongering Americans. I'd like to see one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes. Come on... let's hear it! Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar or the Douglas 107? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all international lines except Russia fly American planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or women on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times ... and safely home again. You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everyone to look at. Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, most of them ... unless they are breaking Canadian laws .. are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here. When the Americans get out of this bind ... as they will... who could blame them if they said 'the hell with the rest of the world'. Let someone else buy the Israel bonds, Let someone else build or repair foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes. When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name to you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake. Our neighbours have faced it alone and I am one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians. And finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th Annual meeting in New Orleans this morning that it was broke. This year's disasters .. with the year less than half-over… has taken it all and nobody...but nobody... has helped. ORIGINAL SCRIPT AND AUDIO COURTESY STANDARD BROADCASTING CORPORATION LTD. (c) 1973 BY GORDON SINCLAIR PUBLISHED BY STAR QUALITY MUSIC (SOCAN) A DIVISION OF UNIDISC MUSIC INC. 578 HYMUS BOULEVARD POINTE-CLAIRE, QUEBEC, CANADA, H9R 4T2

Many of us take our right to vote for granted. However, our state and federal government have been instrumental in the past in denying different groups of people the right to vote for many years. Some of the groups include African-Americans, woman, less fortunate people that didn’t own land and/or couldn’t pay a poll tax, people who could not read or write and young people. Throughout history, these groups have organized, struggled, and fought for their god given right to make the choice to vote. The Constitution didn’t specifically restrict voting to people by the color of their skin. But it stated that only freemen or people who were not slaves could vote. This made it illegal for most African-Americans to vote. It wasn’t until after the Civil War in 1870 that the fifteenth amendment was passed that allowed Black men to vote, but not Black women. After the fifteenth amendment was passed, many states passed a new law that restricted Black men to vote. The Southern States imposed the “grandfather” clause. The “grandfather” clause stated that Black men could vote if their grandfathers were allowed to vote. This didn’t help Black men because their grandfathers would have been slaves and would not have been able to vote either. For many years, only men where allowed to vote. Men said that women’s roles were to be laborers in the household. They also considered women to be too emotional to make wise choices. It took seventy-five years of protesting before women won the ability to vote. In 1920 the nineteenth Amendment was passed which states that all women, no matter what race, where allowed to vote. It wasn’t until 1964 that the twenty-fourth Amendment was passed for poor people. When this country was first founded only white men who owned land were granted voting privileges. Lawmakers believed that only property owners had enough at stake in the country to vote responsibly. In the 1800’s, the property requirements were replaced with poll tax. Poll taxes required citizen, to pay a special fee in order to vote. Even with this new law, poor people still couldn’t vote. Some states only allowed people who could read and write to vote. All voters had to take a literacy test to prove that they could read and write. State lawmakers believed that only people who could read and write could get the information they needed to make smart choices. The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. This act banned literacy tests because there are many other ways to get the information needed to make smart choices. Young people were also not allowed to vote. Voting was restricted to adults twenty-one years of age and older. During the Vietnam War, there were kids eighteen years of age sent to fight for our country and died for their country. Many believed that if they were old enough to enlist, they were old enough to make the choice to vote. The twenty-ninth amendment was passed in 1971 that granted the right to anyone eighteen years and older to vote. Today, many people still do not take the time to vote. After all the protesting and fighting our ancestors did to win us our right to go to the polls and vote, we still take it for granted. The United States government has come a long way since then. African-Americans, woman, poor people, the young and the people who are unable to read and write have had the hardest time earning their right to vote. The next time the polls are open, think about those who fought for your God given right and go make your choice.