Requiem for a Friend

Earth Loses, Heaven Gains

People live their lives in a variety of fashions. Some succeed wildly while sacrificing the simple pleasures of personal relationships. Others cling to old ways, content to remain in their original towns and settle for being merely comfortable. My town is like that for the most part, as we have a very large segment of it comprised of people who either stayed or returned.

My friend Steven Hintze is one of those who stayed for all of his 60 years, and his measure of success was entirely different from the traditional notion. For that matter, so was the measure of his multitude of friends who saw him as a figure to be both loved and envied.

Steve was one of those men who never seemed angry -- unless the New York Yankees were losing a ball game -- and brought sunshine into any room he entered. I refer to him as the unofficial Mayor of our town because he knew almost everyone, and they knew him. To my knowledge, no one who knew him had anything but love for him. I can't think of another man I know without at least one enemy.

Steve was a rich man, but not in the sense one usually associates with wealth. His was a world many would embrace, a world full of family and friends and the opportunity to enjoy it all to the fullest. He worked close to home, so he never had the brutal commutes many people face. His family is very close knit, just as his friendships have always been, and his outlook on life was always optimistic. Steve could take the worst barbs of jest with a self-deprecating grin that would instantly disarm the person delivering them, and he rarely fired back.

Steve liked his Coors Light, enough to cause a prohibitionist to declare that Heaven was not an option at the end. As it turns out, God had other plans. Steve was taken from us a few days ago, called from his dreams into the Heavenly arms of our Father.

Funny how life works out; as we get older, we think about death a bit more, realizing that we're not as immortal as we thought at twenty. None of us is in a hurry to go, though, but at the same time, when a brother like Steve Hintze is called as he was, some of us feel like the last kid picked for basketball in gym class.

If you don't get the analogy, don't worry; it was designed for Steve and God. They'll get it.

God speed, Steve, and prepare a place for your family and all your friends. I just hope that when we all meet again, we don't laugh a hole in the clouds and plummet back down here.

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Propaganda for Hamsters

The Life of Julia

A hamster is happiest when it is in its wheel -- in its cage -- and tended to by its owner with care. It is much too dangerous, you see, for the hamster to be running around free where the family cat may pounce or a careless foot might crush it. And to believe Barack Obama's view of opposing ideology, any Republican would toss the hamster from its safe haven onto the carpet and not give the act a second thought.

What in the world am I talking about, you're probably asking right about now. In order to understand it, a quick trip to barackobama.com/life-of-julia might be prudent. After that, the rest will be clear. Suffice it to say that Obama -- and Democrats in general -- consider the entire electorate nothing more than so many hamsters that need their constant care.

At the link provided, the viewer is guided through a multi-slide cartoon composite depicting the life of a generic woman and her journey through life as the beneficiary of Big Government's care and generosity. During a discussion of this frightening propaganda show, in a political forum of which I'm a member, a dear friend of mine likened the life of Julia to that of a hamster. To quote her, she said of Julia: "Her idea of patriotism can be likened to a hamster in a cage, thankful to it's master...that comes by to drop in some kibble, and laugh at her spinning on her wheel, in her cage with no outlet. She has no idea life could be better."

My friend is a small business owner in Texas and knows a thing or two about personal responsibility and risk, facts of life with which Obama's fictitious Julia will never be acquainted. No, she will be relegated forever to an alleged life of bland bliss, the stuff of which ignorance is made. This is also the stuff being eagerly peddled by a media determined to see the Obama agenda implemented, apparently unaware of their own peril. My friends analogy was spot on.

What Obama and the Democrats have attempted throughout our history is to enslave their constituents through the promise of benevolence and the false facade of compassion. Call it the wolf in sheep's clothing method. In Barack Obama's propaganda slide show, Julia is portrayed as wanting for nothing, apparently not even a man when she "decided" to have a child.

Even a Prisoner is Cared for.

But anyone who cherishes liberty sees her pitiful existence as a dismal one, perhaps viewed as a grainy, bleak environment devoid of any joy whatsoever. She becomes a pre-programmed robot, her entire life planned for her and guided by the government. That is the promise offered by the agenda of Barack Obama and his Democrat cohorts. Ask someone who fled Soviet oppression how living in such a fashion feels.

"The Life of Julia" is being touted by Obama as the promise of a better life, free from both worry and responsibility. The relative happiness of an individual can only be truly appreciated with the accompanying sorrow to measure against; success with the triumph over failure. The human spirit is not designed for guarantees, which would be nothing more than shackles in this context.

Everywhere I have seen comments on the fairy tale of Julia, people have mentioned the absence of the mention of funding for Julia's multitude of handouts. What I haven't seen anyone notice is the fact that the story never mentions Julia's personal life and her state of mind. She is never mentioned as falling in love, for example, and getting married. She apparently has no friends or family, other than little Zach. What is the worth of her life?

I don't want my children and grandchildren to live like Julia in a desolate, barren world where all that matters is what the government determines for them.

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