As we are well aware, 2014 is a critical mid-year election and the direction this nation takes depends on the outcome of this year’s congressional races. Being early in the year, I was reminded of an old joke with a message that applies to the upcoming choices we have to make. There are variations of this joke and I will use the clean version. I also apologize to those spiritual readers as the premise of this joke has an incorrect view of the afterlife.

An American voter died and their spirit was immediately taken to the gates of heaven. The guardian at the gate reviewed their file and gave the American a choice. “We’ll let you spend one day here in heaven and one day down in hell, then we’ll let you choose where you wish to spend eternity.”, the guardian told them. The American voter spent a day and heaven where they observed total serenity with mild music, nice food and repeated praises sang to God. The next day the American voter was in hell where a wild party was being thrown. The liquor never stopped flowing , the music was loud and rhythmic, the food was hot and spicy, everybody was dressed elegantly and even Satan, himself, was out on the dance floor leading the fun. The next day, the American voter told the guardian that they were choosing hell. So the guardian, without hesitation, sent them on a one way trip to the underworld. When the voter got there, they were greeted with walls of flame where they saw the inhabitants writhing in continuous pain with the most horrendous smell imaginable emanating from the suffering. The American voter was immediately joined to the suffering feeling a pain that they could not have imagined during their earthly life. The American voter looked up and saw Satan looking down at them laughing. Complaining, the American voter shouted to Satan, “This is not what I saw when I visited here.” Satan answered, “Yesterday, I was campaigning, today you voted.”

In 9 months we will be seeing and hearing a campaign. We will hear promises that we should know will be unfulfilled. The American voter in the joke saw and heard the campaign. They never considered Satan’s track record. As we hear these promises of the campaign, let’s all consider our representative’s track record.

The message to the joke is, are we, as American voters, able to discern from the campaigner and the officeholder? As a voting block, this nation turned out over 65 members of the US House in 2010 who voted for an odorous piece of legislation that threatened both our personal and economic freedom. The sole purpose of their election was to repeal or defund this piece of legislation, return our government to its Constitutional principles and stand up to an administration that was exceeding its authority. How has that gone over the last four years? What has been most disappointing to me is that we elected people who served our nation with valor in the armed forces but do not exhibit that valor in the halls of Congress. These people who served all took the oath “to defend our Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic”. The two key points of this oath is to defend our Constitution, not our government and that our defense is to be against enemies both outside and inside our nation. It mystifies me to see, with the exception of a few, people who served bravely in uniform but fail to see the enemy in the halls of Congress, in the White House and in the courts. During the last government shutdown with the purpose of defunding the (Un)Affordable Health Care Act, did your representative cave to the budget deal which allowed this act to proceed with the outcomes we are now seeing and give our president a blank check on top of it? What are they currently planning on the immigration legislation? Have they supported any change to the banking bill that passed while the left was in a lame duck session? Did they support investigations on Benghazi, Fast and Furious or the IRS? Are they going to oppose the president in his present income inequality agenda?

Everyone in the US House and a 1/3 of the Senate will run for reelection this year and they all have a track record. When we go to the polls to vote our values, are we going to vote for a fighter, or a politician without a spine who goes along to get along? The tea party did a great job of unseating the less than Constitutional incumbents of both parties in 2010. This year, more than ever, all patriots need to do the same. If your representative is not fighting the enemy in government, this should be the time to find a replacement. The filing deadline for a primary election is still a few months away in all 50 states. The money would be difficult to raise, but the tireless minority who keeps up the fight has a history of winning in this country. The political left is presently giving us an example of this day in and day out. We should be doing the same or we are just inviting our eventual loss of freedom. I only wish I had written this sooner so organizers would have more time to give us this choice.