First of all, let’s make it clear that this is not a commercial for Nike. In fact you can wear almost any kind of footwear and take advantage of the ideas discussed here. However, as the phrase tells us, there are times when you just have to set aside personal hang ups, fears and lack of confidence and quit waiting for someone else to get things done. In the Richmond area this weekend we saw the folks that pulled off the Richmond Tea Party put together an event that attracted up to two thousand people who love their country and are looking to see how they can help.

Most of these people were either never politically active or had dropped out of the effort sometime in years past. They were not professional organizers, political, community or otherwise. Yet they pulled together representatives from around fifteen organizations, attract a couple thousand people and television coverage. They filled the Chesterfield County Fairgrounds with organizational displays, food vendors, games for the children and even a couple of dunking booths for the older children.

These average citizens found themselves pulled form their yard work, honey do lists, even time from their jobs and businesses. What pulled them away from the more mundane tasks that occupy most of us? Most likely it was the same thing that thing that caused you to begin reading this post… a recognition that things are not right in our wonderful country, and a desire to set them so.

The problem most Americans have today is that they will take part in events and programs that have been established for them. How often have you heard the phrase, “somebody should do something about that”? It’s a common malady among those of us who have been conditioned and encouraged to look to government programs to do things for us. They like it that way as it gives the statists control over our attention and direction.

This is precisely what these good organizers see as wrong with our country. Our government was established under the concept they its’ power was derived from the people and was the servant of the people. This clearly is no longer the case. The courts, along with the passive and complicit congress have long since stopped listening to the citizens. Often the will of the people is not only ignored, but the elites running government actually take us in exactly the opposite direction.

So waiting for a government program to fix our nations’ ills is like waiting for a thunderstorm in the Sahara… it is not going to happen. These people, and thousands of tea party organizers throughout the country, have decided to look in the mirror to see who will answer the call and get the job done.

If you have the same frustrations as many of us who believe in the United States of America and see the results of the sacrifices of our forefathers coming to naught, look up the people in your area trying to organize such events and spread the word. If you can’t find anyone… be one. It’s an adventure you will find tiring and exhilarating.

Oh the other hand, if you still don’t think you want get involved, consider James 2:20 which tells us “But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?” The same applies to concern about your friends, neighbors or your country.

Take the first steps. Don’t worry about the results. They are not in your hands anyway. Whatever the results, if you give it your best… even if you don’t accomplish everything you want, at least you can tell your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews that you fought the good fight and did not just let our country go down the tubes. Also keep in mind the fact that the world is run by those who show up. Don’t let everything up to others who may not share your values and concerns.

I spent what could have been a perfectly good evening watching Barack Hussein Obama lay out some of the information about his proposed health care for the masses plan. While he talked for almost an hour, he gave out little real information. It is entirely possible he believed every word of it. What is unfortunate is that most of what we learned has no relationship to reality.

Somewhere around the fourth or fifth exit in fantasy land was the claim that the health insurance plan would not add to the deficit. The total cost, we were told, would be covered by cost cutting and re-allocation of existing federal health care programs. If we could just have an example of this ever working with a government program the assertion may actually have some credibility. It reminds me of the old saying “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice (or thirty seven times), shame on me”. One has to wonder why, if they have identified that much waste already, it is not being squeezed out of the system now... unless that waste lies in delivering care to those deemed unworthy of the expense.

The president is determined that the cost of health care will not be thrust onto the backs of middle class families. Now, let's think about this. Who makes up most of the population and who will use most of the health care? At least at this point, our country is made up primarily of middle class families. Why should they not pay for their health insurance? And where are all the temporarily rich people that will actually pay for this? There just aren't that many... so where will the money come from? Ah yes... from the re-allocation from other government programs like Medicare which, while far from perfect, is something many have come to depend on.

He says some people will be unhappy about the change, that some people will be content with their current plan, but they are not as important as those he is trying to help. The implication is that the fat and happy few want to prevent the others from getting decent care. The problem is that, according the most recent Rasmussen poll, 53% oppose the plan and only 44% support it. While the government must look after everyone's interests, they have lost sight of the chain of command and who their real employers are when they are acting against the welfare and wishes of the American people.

The president revealed his ultimate goal when he told us that only a single payer system would be effective in achieving universal coverage as anything else would permit people to slip through the insurance cracks and become a financial drain on society. He then made his point with an illustration of a diabetic having surgery to remove a foot, but by making sure a proper diet was maintained, that foot and the money would be saved. This is a worthy goal... but how would they be certain diets were maintained. Is he proposing diet police? If we followed that thinking, cigarettes would have been outlawed years ago. Some say you can't legislate morality... well it would seem proper to say you can't legislate common sense... and you can't enforce it. And our federal government is one of the last organizations present itself as a purveyor common sense.

When asked by a reporter if he would be open to using the public option himself, Obama said of course he would, that there would be various levels depending upon the individuals needs and ability to pay... so we had our answer, of course he would not take the basic plan he was hawking to the great unwashed masses.

Rasmussen also tells us that people are more concerned about the cost than the universal nature of the coverage. Apparently the White House reads the Rasmussen reports as well since we were told that he understands and is sensitive to the fact that people are queasy about the deficit. Queasy is not really the word when people see the amount of debt already piled upon themselves, their children and their grandchildren. Either the man is purposely ignoring the anger sweeping the country or he is so wrapped up in pursuing this socialist dream that his is blissfully unaware of the mayhem he is inflicting on the country.

Perhaps the biggest whopper of all and the thing that throws the most doubt on any of the information we've been fed about the plan is the statement that they have already taken steps the would reduce spending by 2.2 trillion dollars over the next ten years. One has to wonder if the next step will be to try to sell us a bridge or ask some of his Nigerian friends or Kenyan relatives to request our help in moving cash into the country.

He wrapped up the press conference with a few other questions. I was glad it was over. I survived watching the whole thing, learned little, but felt kind of dirty... like I had just taken part in something immoral. The point is that even if we don't buy what they are selling in Washington, we need to be aware of it. We need to know this material to help spread the truth. It's just part of the unpleasant grunt work required of us if we are to remain free.

Yesterday afternoon, I watched the shuttle Endeavour blasting off into space. It had been a while since I paid much attention to the space program. Like most Americans, in spite of the few tragic failures, we take for granted the flawless perfection of a NASA operation. After all, they are a bunch of rocket scientists. The whole thing was most impressive... four million pounds lifting off the earth and seconds later traveling at well over 11,000 miles per hour. I was thinking John Force, eat your heart out. Anyone not impressed by both the brute force of six million pounds of thrust and the split-second precision of this take off is just not paying attention.

It got me thinking back to that day in May of 1961 when we filed into the junior high school auditorium to watch Alan Shepard take that first brief wild ride on the top of a rocket into space. Now it does not seem like much, but then, without the experience and technology of 2009 it was quite a feat. No American had ever done this before and it was less than a month since Russian, Yuri Gagarin had become the first man in space.

September 12 of the next year saw President Kennedy tell the people of the world that there would be an American standing on the moon by the end of the decade. July 20, 1969 my wife and I brought our second child home from the hospital and that night saw grainy pictures of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin plant an American flag and leave American footprints on the surface of the moon.

They tell us that a modern day car carries more computing power than the ship that took Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon, yet NASA engineers figured out how to do it and got the job done. It was a time when Americans believed in themselves and they were proud of their country.

Today's launch showed that American technology still gets the job done and we still have brave astronauts who fly these machines. Even though the news outlets recount numerous flights, to the point where they almost seem commonplace... they most certainly are not. It's still a breathtaking sight.

However, even as the Endeavour was hurtling through space, back on earth Police in the District of Columbia killed a man in a shootout just steps from the capitol. The reality of human nature intrudes on our moments of triumph, as if to remind us that we are not merely technicians and programs... just as it did in 1969 when Ted Kennedy's presidential aspirations perished along with Mary Jo Kopechne on Chappaquiddick Island as our three modern day explorers headed toward the moon.

Bad things happened then, more are happening now, but there is still a remnant of the American spirit that put the Apollo 11 astronauts on the moon. It may be working in a more hostile environment, but there is still so much each of us can do. We still have the ingenuity that got the job done then and is getting the job done today.

We have courageous, resourceful soldiers making us safe, when they are allowed to do their job. We have, perhaps, the most generous people who reach out and help their neighbors when they are in dire straights. We have beautiful mountains and sun drenched beaches. In spite of all our problems, the U.S. of A. is still a great place to live. Although it's 233 years old, it still has all the potential in the world and is worth fighting for.

Sometimes we can get so hung up on the problems our country faces that we forget the purple mountain majesties and the bountiful fruited plains. We are truly blessed to live in this country. We have a country to be proud of and a country worth working and fighting for.

A recent Rasmussen poll tells us the half all Americans believe hate is growing in our country. This is based, in large part, on recent killing of a notorious abortionist, an American soldier at a recruiting station and the attack on the holocaust museum in Washington. Thirty five percent consider them to be isolated incidents. The rest, just don't know if or what to think. While it's difficult to generalize from three incidents, many people are busy doing just that.

It seems those that tend to feel more vulnerable and insecure see greater generalized hatred... women (57%)... unmarried (62%). They seem to be responding more on emotion than actually looking at the details of each incidents. Each killing is unfortunate, the ending of one life and ruination of another... not to mention the families involved. However, was an irrational hatred the driving factor in each case?

It seems that today, we have a difficult time thinking about and overusing the word “hate”. For instance, homosexuals believe that they are the victims of hate crimes whenever anyone opposes them or their goals. If a preacher tells his congregation about the sinful nature of their actions, they say he is preaching hate. They may be disingenuously playing the part of a victim, having realized a little sympathy when they are supposedly harassed by someone who simply disagrees with them or their agenda. In some ways believing that your adversaries irrationally despise you is less damaging to the ego than accepting that they may have good reasons that may actually be correct.

In the case of Dr. Tiller, without getting in the head of the shooter, it's kind of hard to understand the details of his motivation. However, automatically assigning Scott Roeder's motive to a blind hatred of Dr. Tiller ignores the fact that, to him, it may well have been just a logical response to a situation where he saw the courts repeatedly thwarting the will of the people and their elected legislatures. We have the situation aptly described by Frederic Bastiat when he said, “When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them.”

The tragedy of Private Andy Long's death is that he was killed in a war where he didn't even know he was on the front lines. It is more comforting to consider the this the action of a deranged, vengeful shooter who, once captured, is no threat to the rest of us. This thinking would let us pass it off as an unfortunate event and not consider the ramifications of multiple Abdulhakim Muhammads among us... hating us as a society, but not considering any of us individually. We may weep for Private Long as we hope we will be spared a similar fate.

What is interesting is that in the first case, the shooter was viewed by the drive by media as part of the larger pro-life community which en mass would enjoy a shooting spree at every abortion clinic in the country. In the second case, where logic, along with his actions and training, tell us the shooter was part of a group with a terrorist agenda, the same media totally ignores the evidence at hand and makes him out to be a solitary nut case. In this case, their political correctness may well be complicit in the next terrorist act.

Then we have the case of James von Brunn, the one truly disturbed individual who lived in a world of hate filled fantasies. Far too many have a scorn for the Jewish people, but they don't go hunting them or their friends down with lethal weapons. For this man to commit such an awful act, particularly at his age, one has to wonder if he felt his life was about over and he wanted to make one last statement before, what would be, a surprisingly bad meeting with his maker. He may have felt being killed by police was more honorable than putting a gun to his own head... an act that would have spared many others much heartache and pain. It could be then, that harboring his irrational hatred for such a long time in his life, he felt his actions were completely logical.

It's hard to say specifically why people do things... sometimes we don't understand our own motivations. Even the Apostle Paul had these conflicts when he wrote, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not' want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” Romans 7:15-20 (NIV)

We do, however feel more comfortable, more in control even, if we see the world as a logical place with an understandable reason for everything that happens – even if we witness what appear to be occasional aberrant events. What we don't like, as a society, is to look at events as part of a bigger picture with causes and effects that can be understood, as this puts a responsibility on us to examine our selves and make some changes.

Many of our problems today come, not from any particular event or situation, but from a lack of confidence to move forward. The stock market is basically in a downward spiral because investors don't believe problems are being fixed... in fact they believe just the opposite. Banks aren't lending money... maybe because they don't have confidence in the economy the borrowers will operate in, or perhaps they feel they've been burned and lost confidence in their own ability to make good decisions and they've become overly cautious.

It appears that we don't really have an economic problem... but a confidence problem. It's not that we lack cash... the Fed is printing paper just as fast as the presses will run. We have a president with no lack of confidence in his ability to do everything short of walking on water. As we haven't discussed the matter, it may be that he believes it possible to be an aquatic pedestrian. At this point thought, his extreme confidence in himself is not shared by Wall St. or Main St. People have begun saving what money they have and stopped buying much that they really don't need. The economy is slowly grinding to a halt.

One would think that all the people who voted for the O-man would have the confidence to move the economy forward, yet even they... the bankers who received bailout money... and gave some to his campaign... don't have the confidence to start the credit flowing again. For the bankers, it's not a cash shortage, they just received billions of our money from the government, but an unwillingness to lend it out. It's hard blame them too much as they've made a couple too many bad choices with their own money... some because of government rules and intimidation.

We are told that the banks are the key to freeing up the credit that keeps our economy moving. Individuals and companies in debt up to their eyeballs don't necessarily need more debt to get them out of debt. The same could be said for governments. Somehow many in our population know this instinctively, but it somehow escapes the thinkerbrains in Washington who have no other answers for us. They tell us to have confidence in them... however more and more people aren't working, and neither are their answers... but they cost us money... they cost our children money... they cost our grandchildren money.

The truth of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's statement, "Who among us would ask our children for a loan, so we could spend money we do not have, on things we do not need? That is precisely what the Democrats in Congress just did. It's irresponsible..." cannot be overemphasized... and even the kool aid drinkers understand this, however they don't admit it publicly.

We are facing a crisis of confidence in our financial markets, our businesses, our government, in America... even in ourselves.

What can we believe in, that will get us moving? Perhaps it is the Christians who have confidence that goes beyond the financial institutions and government to listen to the wisdom of God and lead us forward. We are following people who have no idea what they are doing. Watching the current DC drama reminds me of a political consultant who is fond of saying, “Never assume malice when incompetence will do.” If ever there was a time for a calm word of common sense, it is now.

The solutions we are offered are massively more of the same thing that got us into this mess. Of course, they won't listen to us, just like they ignore Republican objections because, “I won!”. Perhaps we can show our fellow Americans the way out by taking care of our families and refusing to take part in the “sky is falling” rhetoric. Where there are problems, there are also opportunities. The only way to find them is to lose the panic mode and logically assess the situation. Asking for wisdom could go a long to insuring a happy outcome as well.

Someone has to lead our country out of the fix we're in. The people in charge don't have the sense to know that when you find yourself in a hole... STOP DIGGING!