Awakened !: A Conservative's Perspective on '' American Exceptionalism ''

By Ron Lee Weinhold

My book attempts to present what I believe is a serious threat to our Constitutional Republic, based on the current administrations increasing imposition of Federal regulations, policies, and programs that infringe on the basic rights of the American citizens. It is partly my personal story of growing up in this great country and making a positive contribution to society, but it is also a call for Americans to wake up to the reality of the continued overreach of the Federal Government regarding decisions that should rightfully be made by private citizens. My goal is to encourage people to become personally informed and take action to end thus trend of intrusive government and return to the principles of our founders. It is not a call for an all out revolution or engaging in violence against the government. Rather, it is a call for a constructive engagement by the folks out here in the working trenches to wake up, stand up, speak out, and then act in a civil manner to bring positive change through positive ideas that are based on the values that have been cultivated and promulgated since the founding of the country. Finally, I hope to begin to restore our countrys reputation of American Exceptionalism that has been tarnished under the current administration. This is a promise I have made to myself and a legacy I want to leave my family, friends, and all people of good will.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479718559

Ron Lee Weinhold

Rob Lee Weinhold is a native of Richland, Pennsylvania, a graduate of Pennsylvania State University, and presently resides in Northern Virginia with his wife, Lin, and grandson, Dawson. Rob has a son and daughter and four additional grandsons. Rob was a career officer in the Air Force and currently works for a defense contractor where he supports an Army program at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

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Copyright © 2012 by ROB LEE WEINHOLD.

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Contents

Acknowledgement

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 — A Sleepy Little Town

Chapter 2 — Decision Time

Chapter 3 — My Personal Wake-Up Call

Chapter 4 — The Meaning of American Exceptionalism

Chapter 5 — The Exceptionalism Agnostics

Chapter 6 — Faith, the Everlasting Bond

Chapter 7 — Politics is Local and Personal

Chapter 8 — Getting Informed, Getting Involved

Chapter 9 — Waking the Sleeping Giant

Chapter 10 — Final Thoughts

Bibliography

End Notes

This book is dedicated to my late brother Richard—my friend,

my mentor, and my conservative colleague.

Acknowledgement

The inspiration for this book is my wife and my best friend Lin. She has been the backbone and strength of our family and the reason I have become the person I am today. Where I lacked courage, she had the temerity to keep me focused on what is important. When I faltered in my efforts, she was able to pick me up and drive me to completion. If someone in our family was hurting or out of sorts, she was there to instill the confidence needed to overcome the pain and confusion. So I give thanks to the person who not only made this book possible, but helped me grow and use my full potential to succeed beyond my wildest expectations.

Robbie Lee

Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

—President Abraham Lincoln

Preface

This book attempts to present what I believe is a serious threat to our constitutional republic, based on the current administration’s increasing imposition of federal regulations, policies, and programs that infringe on the basic rights of the American citizens. It is a call for Americans to wake up to this reality, to become personally informed, and to take action to prevent the continued overreach of the federal government to assume decisions that should rightfully be made by private citizens. Numerous examples of this government overreach will be presented to provide empirical evidence that this should be more than a passing, temporary fear by informed Americans; rather, it should be a real concern that the rights of the people are being violated for the sake of a president and administration that are bent on pursuing a personal agenda that does not align with a large segment of the American population. Someone needs to call out the administration for the blatant actions they are taking, many of which directly violate the constitution or exceed the powers of the executive branch. I consider this a real threat and accept it as a personal challenge. This is not a call to arms; rather, it is a call for people to become informed and take civil action. Our present turbulent times create a moral obligation for people to educate themselves and consider the well being of our future generations to whom we owe much, then begin to turn back the forces that are in the progress of converting our Democratic and constitutional republic into a Western European style of socialism. Our form of democratic government stands as a time-tested success, and the Great American experiment continues to be a light to the world, whereas the socialistic policies of countries like the former Soviet Union, Cuba, and Venezuela represent the failures of intrusive government policies that are destined to fail and sentence its people to a life of hardship and destitution. This is what is at stake for the people of our great country, and this is the challenge we must face head on to prevent our future generations from becoming permanent wards of a totalitarian state.

—Rob Lee Weinhold

August 2012

Introduction

America is at a crossroads! How many times have we heard those words uttered over the past year or two or three? Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one’s perspective of the health of the country, this is truer today than it has been in my entire life and, probably, in the lives of most people walking the planet. With the economy literally on the ropes, taking body blows and upper cuts with each passing day due to out-of-control spending and an increasing number of social programs that have put the country deeper and deeper in debt, we face not only tough decisions but also decisions that will be very unpopular. The notion that unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are well into the tens of trillions of dollars and, in total, exceed $100 trillion is simply unfathomable to the general public and nearly impossible for the human mind to grasp, but these issues must be faced and dealt with in a direct and aggressive manner.

So what can be done to head off the coming juggernaut and turn back the tide of irresponsible government largesse and mindless decisions that jeopardize both our constitutional republic and the well-being of our hardworking citizens? This book attempts to answer this question in simple, understandable terms. I hope to accomplish this with a clarion call to America to wake up, become informed, understand what is at stake, and take action to become involved in preserving our great country.

It is my fervent hope and sincere wish that through the message in this book, I can convey the absolute urgency and the dire need to engage the current debate in a way that can bring real change to a people who are struggling and want nothing more than an opportunity to live a comfortable and secure life and realize our God-given inalienable rights to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.

The title of this book reflects my personal awakening to a dire national crisis, one that I truly believe has reached critical mass in the respect that no one person, group of people, or massive body of politicians, clergy, corporatists, unions, or any other organized group can solve our problems without directly engaging the general public and the body of people known as the American citizenry. Many political entities, such as the Political Action Committees (PACs), Wall Street, and union lobby groups, farmers from across the country, and environmental groups, to name a few, have become partisan and divisive special interests and seem to no longer have the desire, will, or ability to serve the greater good of America; therefore, it will take the independent, hardworking, everyday people to engage in a renewed dialogue that will place people above politics, public interests above special interests, and initiative and hard work above government and corporate greed. If the organized groups mentioned above continue to be unwilling to engage the public, the public must force the dialogue with or without the organized groups.

This is not a call for anarchy or revolution. Contrarily, it is a call for a constructive engagement by the folks out here in the working trenches to wake up, stand up, speak out, and then act in a civil manner to bring positive change through constructive ideas that are based on the values that have been cultivated and promulgated since the founding of the country.

This is also not meant to spur a new movement or organized group that promotes some undefined message trying to achieve some vague goal or objective. Rather, this is a wake-up call to reinvigorate those ideals and principles that have worked since our independence in 1776 and have carried us through the most difficult of economic times, a domestic civil war, a necessary civil rights movement, through global wars, foreign entanglements, domestic terrorism, natural disasters, and some of the worst calamities that can be foisted upon a free people.

Through it all, America has always pulled itself together, regrouped, moved forward, and excelled to greater and greater heights. This current crisis should be no different. We are a resilient people with a tenacious resolve to achieve and succeed. So, America, it is time to wake up and smell the coffee, tea, bagels, or whatever you care to smell. The key point is this may be your last wake-up call. It’s time to shut off the alarm and get to work. Your future depends on it. Your children’s future depends on it. Your grandchildren depend on it and their children and on and on. So it’s time to…

Wake Up, America!

Chapter 1

A Sleepy Little Town

This is my town.

16630.jpg Montgomery Gentry

Growing up in a small town in southeastern Pennsylvania, I was exposed through the local television networks, newspapers, and local populace to many of the issues and catastrophes of the 1960s such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of JFK, the war in Vietnam, the turbulence associated with the war, the growing drug culture, the breakdown of marriage and the family unit, the me generation and its many self-indulgences, and on and on. These were the more global issues that had a direct impact on the nation as a whole and on my local community specifically.

As detailed in Wikipedia, Richland, Pennsylvania, is an unusual small town in that an active railroad crossing intersects the town square. The two streets that comprise the square, Main Street and Race Street, are the only streets linking the northern and southern portions of the borough. The railroad crossing divides the entire town, which has earned Richland a mention in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not books and a mention on the televised game show, Jeopardy.¹

The house I grew up in on that same Race Street was built in the early 1900s, and when it was sold several years ago, I discovered it was listed as stick built. I was amazed to learn that I had lived for almost twenty years in a house built of sticks. It had a ground cellar and coal-burning furnace that required my father to make constant trips to the basement during the winter to stoke the fire. By the following morning, the fire typically had gone out, and on a cold winter day, it was brutally cold. I remember ice on my bedroom windows, and during snowstorms, I had mini snowdrifts on my windowsills. The experience of getting up during the night to make a trip to the bathroom was a frigid nightmarish experience that caused anyone in the household to make it a very quick trip.

Having a coal furnace also required continuous trips to the cellar to shake down the coal residue into the catch at the bottom of the furnace and then shovel it into five-gallon buckets to carry back to the side of the garage for the trash men to pick up on Monday morning. The coal residue also served the purpose of getting people’s cars out of the snow when their tires became stuck. I’m sure the environmentalists of today would have had a seizure to see all of that coal dust on the sidewalks and streets, not to speak of the outrage over all of the pollutants that were put into the atmosphere when the coal was burned.

Coal was a very important commodity in those days of the 1950s and 1960s. I recall the coal trucks arriving on a given day and dumping their load of anthracite coal down the shoots of their dump trucks and into the wooden bins of our basement. There were two bins to store the coal, and I remember the black dust that accompanied it as it was poured into our basement. However, it was our only source of home heat, such as it was, so I considered it a luxury, especially on those very bitter cold nights. Coal did have its advantages as well. While many of the more financially comfortable citizens of the town either had oil or electric heating, which depended on a constant source of electricity, coal didn’t care about electricity, so when the electric power went out due to extreme weather conditions, our coal furnace kept chugging along. I recall several nights when relatives would show up at the front door of our home because they didn’t have any heat due to the lack of electricity. We ended up having a nice evening by candlelight playing cards or just socializing. It is a pleasant memory and a reminder of how important family and friends are when someone is in need. We shared our humble dwelling and our rudimentary heat source in a way that brought family together and strengthened the bonds of mutual love and respect.

Fast forward to 2012 and witness the debate over that horrible enemy of the public, coal. The current administration has gone to great lengths to demonize the coal industry due to its supposed debilitating impacts on the environment. In the current gabfest called public discourse, all fossil fuels are evil and all alternative sources of energy such as solar, electric, wind, and squirrels running in wire cages are fine, although PETA may object vehemently to using squirrels as an energy source. The idea that electric power is a good replacement for fossil fuels is not only disingenuous but also patently ludicrous. Take the new Volt automobile, which is breaking all kinds of records for low sales of a new vehicle introduced to the market. Has anyone noticed where the energy for recharging the Volt originates? The fact is that currently coal-powered plants generate 50 percent of our electricity. That doesn’t seem to fit the agenda of the environmentalists and those who would have us drive a Volt. Maybe the coal-powered plants use a special kind of coal that doesn’t emit pollutants. Of course, it must be perfectly okay to drive a Volt since the president indicated that he expects to drive one when he becomes a civilian. Sure, Mr. President, and the rest of us will be driving smart cars!

I grew up in an environment that certainly didn’t have smart cars; rather, there were more muscle cars than you could shake a stick at. For those of you who don’t remember what a muscle car was, I am basically talking about the Chevy Camaro and El