"a house divided........"

Several years ago part of the Brown family sat around a table having breakfast and talking about a number of things including politics. The younger members of the family had questions and asked me, as the senior member of the family, to begin writing my thoughts on our Country, our political system as I understood it, and growing up when I did. My initial thought was no one would read it, since it would simply be my opinion, and the younger people of the day seemed to have little interest in politics and the structure of our country. Several said they would indeed read it and pass it on to their freinds. Still, I felt I didn't have the right skills to put my thoughts in writing. Thus I did nothing.

Here we are a few years later and a number of things have changed my mind. As a man who was just entering school as World War II was winding down, I grew up in a country far different than the one we live in today. With each passing day I find myself concerned for the kind of country it will be for my grand children and great grand children who will be entering school in the next few years. I read two online newspapers every day follow a number of different people on Twitter. In fact a number of my tweets have appeared in the editorial comment section of USA Today. I have taken the Hillsdale College online Constitutional Course, and am now reading the writings of Abraham Lincoln, all 3000+ pages of it. In other words, I pay attention and I am terribly concerned about what is going on in our country today. I am concerned we seem unable to get the truth from either our elected officials or the media we count on. I am concerned we have a system where politicians continually run for office, worrying only about the next election while the country is being run by a bunch of un-elected bureaucrats! That is not government wth the consent of the governed. MOST OF ALL I AM WORRIED YOU DON"T SEEM CONCERNED!

All of these concerns might not have pushed me to change my mind until I heard the President of the United States, a former law professor say "it would be unprecedented for the Supreme Court to overturn, as unconstitutional, a law passed by a majority of Congress"! I thought, what are they teaching these kids in school today? We learned, in grade school, the concept of separation of powers, and the responsibility of each branch of the government.

The fact a President would make a statement he knows is wrong to further his own agenda and that Lincoln's words "a house divided against itself can not stand" seem almost as much in play today as they were before the Civil War made up my mind. Therefore, I will try and explain my view of our country,our political system, and some of the differences between today and yesterday. Although I am doing this for my daughters and grand children, I would hope it might ignite some ideas in otherrs as well.