Today’s remarks may not fit town folk, but I grew up a country kid so it makes perfect sense to me. When I moved to the big city to attend the University of Wyoming, my life changed in a manner I did not think possible. Just like most kids, Christmas Day was the center around which the other 364 days revolved. However, during a long, slow and painful drive home from college for Thanksgiving, I had an epiphany with Thanksgiving suddenly bumping Christmas from its number one holiday slot. Spending three months walking on pavement in Laramie made me so miss ranch life, every afternoon I day-dreamed about going home for Thanksgiving break. I mentioned the trip home being slow and painful; slow due to President Carter’s ridiculous 55 mph speed limit. Yes, President Nixon introduced the double-nickel limit, but with a two year sunset. President Carter made it permanent by removing the sunset. The trip was painful due to the luxurious driver seat in my 1973 Vega. If you are ever diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six weeks to live, spend your final month and half in the front seat of a Vega because it will seem like forever.

After rolling to a stop in the driveway, I squeezed out from under the steering wheel and stretched the kinks out of my lower back. By the grace of God, I was raised a Wyoming cowboy and it felt so good to finally be home. Winter had arrived earlier that November because western capitalism was causing a new ice age, or so claimed the collectivist forefathers of today’s climate change alarmists. I did not believe them then either. Winters were either tough or open regardless the type of light bulb in your barn; a fact escaping the indoctrinated minds of those in academia. Did I mention it was great to be home? The next morning I saddled up to help Dad gather cow and calves trapped by snow drifts in the brushy draws in the hills behind the house and our horses struggled trying to lunge through the deepest drifts. When we stopped to let them blow we were enveloped in a mist of horse sweat slowly rising through the dead calm air. Neither of us said anything. We didn’t have to. This was just another moment spent with my father I would carry with me for the rest of my life. Many times during my eight years of study in the imaginary world of higher education I thought back to that moment in the east pasture when the only thing disturbing the stillness was the rhythmic breathing of our horses. It’s great to have a safety valve; something to fall back on when your world is discombobulating. Going home to the ranch over Thanksgiving was mine and this brings me to my point.

Our great American experiment in freedom has been fatally wounded by collectivism, Marxism, statism, progressivism, liberalism, or establishment Republicanism; it does not matter which title you pick because they are all the same. The popular theme is to lay the blame for our demise at the feet of President Obama, but he is merely the final captain of a ship previously plotted to plunge into the abyss. Obamacare, the death nail, was masterfully launched and it will be implemented regardless the wishes of the populace or elected officials. One hundred million Americans losing their health insurance is just the beginning of a system designed to collapse the health care system and force the unwashed masses to their knees and beg the ruling class for help. I am sad because I so admire America’s founders and all they created, but I know once collapse occurs there is no going home. If you still do not see what is happening you are either complicit or a fool. Take your pick; there is no third choice. I fear ours is the generation who failed to guard the watchtower of liberty.