Nothing Like A Day At The Lake To Put Everything In Perspective

In the past few months, I have been putting a lot of time and effort into my site both to inform you, my faithful readers, as well as vent some of my personal frustrations on the current political situations taking place in the country I love so much. Though I do not regret my actions throughout the summer at all, every once in a while it is nice to take the time to remember what it is we are fighting for, today was that day for me. I spent the day at a lake in NH that I frequently camped at with friends when I was in high school and I began to think about what the high school years would be like for my son if we lose the current fight for sensible government reform and balanced budgets.

When I was in high school, though it was admittedly less than a decade ago, gas was cheap, jobs were easy to find and we all had money to spend on having a memorible weekend after a long work/school week. As it stands now, gas has gone down in price through our economic downturn as a country, which is good if the kids are lucky enough to now have a part time job as many are fighting for jobs with adults recently out of work. Other than that, our youth is faced with the ugly prospect of paying for our fiscal irresponsibility as of late through sky high taxes and other creative "administrative fees" enforced by the very people who created the mess in the first place. Sadly, that dollar amount is minuscule, as it stands now, compared to the massive debt that will be passed onto our children if Obama's cap and trade and health care initiatives are passed. That is not the future that I intend to send my son off into, and is exactly the reason that I am engaging in my current quest.

For me and many other rational adults who were never involved in politics, this very fact drove us to become more politically active. As I stand firm with my fellow Americans in our opposition of the current administration and their policies, it is evident that my views are not independent of the will of the people. It is one thing for the government to poke and prod us to the point of insanity, but they are now compromising the future of our families which is simply not acceptable. For years politicians have tried to engage the younger generation, to get them to vote. In 2008, to his credit, Obama was able to do so and young voters turned out in record numbers. The irony of the situation is that now that the younger voters are politically active, the current administration is now dismissing any opinion that may contradict their current agenda, alienating the same voters that helped to elect The One in the first place. If you want the younger generation to be politically active, you then must live with the consequences of what may happen if they disagree with your opinion.

The bottom line is that my son and his peers are deserving of the same opportunities that we had as kids in America. They deserve the chance to make a couple of dollars in their youth to fund their weekend camping trips and other adventures that will help form who they are in their adult lives. If I was deprived of the life experiences that I survived as a kid, I would not have the courage to make a stand when I truly believed in something. These are the values that have been passed down through the generations in America and have shaped our republic into the strongest in the world. By denying the next generation of Americans the opportunity to make something of themselves at a young age, the government is assuring that the future leaders of the world are inherently inadequate in the life experiences required for leadership. To me, it is a bittersweet notion that all it takes to put things into clear perspective is a trip back to our own childhoods and the adventures we experienced along the way to allow us to envision an improbable better future for our children.