I have lived in this great nation for almost 87 years; served her honorably for almost half that time in the United States Army in many capacities from rear-rank private and up. I am a Christian, Constitutional Conservative with a tolerant respect for my fellow law-abiding citizens.

I spent my first seven years on a 160 acre river-bottom dirt farm on which I became a farmhand at age five. That was in 1930 and the beginning of the Great Depression. We lost that farm due to foreclosure, sound familiar? According to Robert A. Margo in his work, “Employment and Unemployment in the 1930s,” wages actually rose slightly; this did not include farmers laboring as sharecroppers which we were. Unemployment rose to all-time highs, up to 20 % and hovered in double digits until just before America’s entry into World War II when the unemployment rate was between 9.5 and 14.5 depending on how unemployment is measured.

And those were the good old days! Why are they still considered to be, “The Good Old Days?” Pretty simple, actually; family’s played together, prayed together, vacationed together and espoused virtues of liberty, personal freedoms, national loyalty, pride in being an American, a collective dislike for homosexuality, gratuitous sex, public promiscuity and abject laziness. Common decency and courtesy was just that, common to all. Doors were seldom locked and neighbors helped neighbors. Communities took care of the less fortunate; that is, charity began at home and spread outward.

Communities supported their schools, students and teachers. Additionally parents fostered the ideals and practices of the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts. Churches were focal points usually within ethnic or cultural communities. Bullies were most often taught the error of their ways by their peers. The law came down hard on child molesters, perverts, nuisances, troublemakers and petty criminals.

In 1933, FDR was inaugurated as America’s 32nd President and immediately picked up where Woodrow Wilson left off, the conversion of America to Socialism. Thus began the practice of Big Government Handouts to the lazy, shiftless, indolent barely legal thieves.

There were few illegal aliens, a few Communists, a few not too outspoken foreign nationals and a smattering of anti-racial, secretive organizations such as the KKK.

The true greatness of America came to the fore when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and thereby drew America into World War II. Some 16 Million men and women saw active service during this conflict. This, my generation paid a horrific price of almost ONE MILLION casualties.

Unfortunately WW II, as costly and horrible as it was, failed to provide any lessens to the Communists. On June 25, 1950 the Communist nation of North Korea attacked South Korea. President Truman under the umbrella of the newly organized United Nations, ordered American troops into South Korea. This protracted action resulted in nothing but a truce in 1953. Another almost 130,000 casualties and almost 5,000 were missing in Action these too were Americans, mostly of my generation.

True, we have been pointed our as “The Greatest Generation.” That appellation means little when one realizes that it took nearly fifty years before a grateful nation got around to authorizing a National Monument to recognize the Greatest Generation and then the monument was badly designed and had only one Gold Star to recognize one One-hundredth of our casualties! The foreign countries liberated by our brave men and women have done a far-better job in remembrance than has our own country.

So what seems to be the problem or problems, who are the culprits and what are the solutions?

The foremost problem is our collective failure to remember who and what brought us to greatness. The prime mover in all our success was our belief in and reliance upon God to sustain us in all our worthy endeavors. Yet, we had the audacity to take prayer, God and Freedom out of the lives of our children the selfsame children who get older but no wiser and certainly no nearer to our Holy Father. This and distancing oneself from God has disastrous results; migration toward and adherence to the use of cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, unprescribed drugs such as oxycodone, oxycontin, etc and illicit sexual practices, adoption of the LGBT cult life and unprotected sex leading to a plethora of teen pregnancies. Above all the generation which followed mine has the aggravating attitude of, ‘so what’ and ‘who cares’ and ‘I can do what I please.’

The bad monetary and fiscal policies of the government seem to rub off onto our young people. They are mortgaged far over their income, they max out easily obtained credit cards. If television is any indicator, young people are rude, arrogant, self-centered, parent dependent, lazy, uneducated, unthinking, act purely on impulse or because some overpaid, oversexed celebrity says so. So very few of our young people are prepared to lead and are unwilling to take real responsibility. The real exceptions are those young men and women who have served or are serving in our military forces.

Far too many parents abandon parental responsibilities as well as their marital vows. Current data indicate that over Fifty Percent of marriages end in divorce and in 2006 there were 12.9 million families headed by a single parent, usually a woman. As an aside; though women are the main providers of love, nurturing and human values, not one fabulous American woman has ever been elected to head this great nation, another disgrace.

America has had far too few real leaders since the first six presidents, but we have endured far too many unprepared, unwilling or incapable Presidents. In my humble estimation, I offer a Twentieth and Twenty-first Century presidential commentary. Both Woodrow Wilson and FDR were elitist, arrogant lying dictators as is Obama. Herbert Hoover was a cultured, educated humanist. Theodore Roosevelt was far ahead of his time and one of my top five. Truman is my number one choice as the beat, at least in my lifetime. Nixon was brilliant but a liar. Eisenhower was actually a lazy president and who as the Supreme Allied Commander disobeyed the orders of his boss, George C. Marshall and met with Marshal Georgi Zhukov and allowed the Soviet forces to capture and rape Berlin.

JFK was a capable Naval Office, but was a moneyed, spoiled, womanizing bad boy. Carter, in my opinion, was a spineless, gutless phony; America’s worst until Obama came along. Ronald Reagan was and still is head and shoulders above all the Oval Office Sitters since Abraham Lincoln. Democrats have been the worst presidents, Clinton, though brilliant was and likely is still without morals, a bald-faced liar and totally untrustworthy. Gerald Ford is far, far down the list. LBJ was a bully boy with a penchant for micromanagement which invariably caused massive problems, like losing the war in Vietnam. He was a racist not the great Human Rights leader he purported to be.

This country could use another sextet of Presidents like Washington thru John Q. Adams.

Far too few members of Congress and Presidents have been impeached including Reid, Pelosi, Waters, Rangel, Frank, Dodd, Hal Green, Sheila Jackson Lee, Obama, Holder and others.

What do I see as steps to get America back on track?

Set superior examples for our young people, the evil doers and those who choose to deviate from the moral high ground.

At the local level:

Use those old fashioned methods which obtained long-lasting results:

1. Public stocks
2. The whipping post
3. The death penalty for Murderers, Child molesters, rapists, gang attacks
4. Debtors prison for deadbeat parents, credit thieves, and other trust violators

At the state level:

• Make frequent use of chain gangs, longer work days and fewer privileges for prisoners.

At the Federal level:

1. Impeach when impeachable offenses are suspected or provable.
2. Punish politicians who lie or knowingly and willfully accuse opponents of bad acts.
3. Set a low maximum on funds donated or accepted by candidates for government offices.
4. Enact at all levels, legislation to forbid taking a government pension while employed by any government agency.
5. Limit the number of appeals by convicted felons.
6. Allow NO gang activities in any prison facility.

Simply stated; clamp down on wrongdoers, demand all Federal laws restricting freedom of religion be repealed and allow states and municipalities to be the arbiter in all such matters.