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What Are You Prepared to Do November 2nd - For Faith, Family and Freedom Preservation Day
By Kevin Fobbs
October 25, 2004

I have spent a lot of time over the course of this election cycle traveling to various small towns, large cities and rural areas of the Midwest, and various other parts of the heartland of America. In each city or town there seems to be the sense that our nation which survived and grew stronger after the 9/11 terrorist attack is now safe.

There is a sense in some parts of America as you go in and out of barbershops, beauty salons or even backyard barbecues held under a tent and in a garage as I had the privilege to attend and to speak before in Flint, Michigan this weekend, there is an undercurrent that our nation's safety is truly about our neighborhood's safety, our family's safety our children's safety.

When you have an opportunity to look into the faces of mothers and fathers, share their faith and their warmth about what guides them in their family's hearth, what lifts up their undeniable spirit, it is the feeling that truth in a President who does not waiver, a President who does not change course, a president who says your grandchild or your niece or your mother or father is just as precious to him and just as much a part of his prayers as they are part of yours. These Americans understand that this is a President whose presidency is worth preserving.

Their actions at the grassroots, on the phones, in the church pews, at home meetings, walking their neighborhoods, volunteering to make coffee, bake treats for volunteers, travel their rural roads, work all day at the polls on election day, and all the countless, un-measurable tasks which will be performed leading up to what I am calling Faith, Family and Freedom Preservation Day is respected and honored.

You probably ask why I choose to call Election Day our Faith, Family and Freedom Preservation Day.

I choose this because it was reminiscent of another time and another western rancher who was viewed as a cowboy President and whose remarks in 1899, gave prominence to what Mayor Ed Koch said on my newstalk radio show last week, when he said "The Democrats don't have the Blood or Guts to negotiate this war," on terror. He said unlike the Democrats, The President was prepared to act and to do what was necessary to win the war on terror.

So, I often speak in the grass roots settings I visit and ask, "What are you prepared to do?" I find it a truly fascinating question because it elicits many, many varying answers. It also brings out the three distinctly different categories of Americans who make up the electoral landscape of America. .

In the first category are the Americans who live in the "World of Deniability." You know those types very well. They deny that there really is a true terrorist threat against America. They regard the terrorist threat as more of a nuisance than actually a war. They freely deny; except for the first several weeks after the terror attack of 9/11; that even our nation is now under threat of any real attack. These Americans want the true peace and security that only the United Nations naysayers can provide. These deniers are more than misinformed; they are more than misguided. These sad Americans live in a world where unless the terrorists rolled up on them in the middle of their driveway, just as they were preparing to attend their "The French got it Right Rally" the rest of the nation would be "over-reacting" in their mind.

These individuals would be the same type of Americans who like the French government, and sadly the English government of 1938, embrace Neville Chamberlain, then Prime Minister of England, and would be loudly cheering alongside of him when he said that year, after meeting with Adolph Hitler in Berlin, uttered the ageless words of appeasement, "We now have peace in our time." Of course history and the world know differently.

Thirty-nine years earlier, in 1899, a proud American governor provided direction for those Americans who don't live in the world of "deniability." He was firm and he was resolute, and this is what he said of those Americans who would live in a world of denial and would in 2004 run away from their responsibility on Faith, Family and Freedom Preservation Day. His name was Theodore Roosevelt and he was then Governor of the state of New York.

"Thank God for the iron in the blood of our fathers, the men who upheld the wisdom of Lincoln and bore sword or rifle in the armies of Grant! Let us, the children of the men who proved themselves equal to the might days--- let us, the children who carried the great Civil Wart to a triumphant conclusion praise the God of our fathers that the ignoble counsels of peace were rejected, that the suffering and loss, the blackness of sorrow and dispair, we unflinchingly faced and the years of strife endured, for in the end the slave was freed, the Union restored, and the mighty American Republic placed once more as a helmeted queen among nations."

On to the second category. These are the Americans who say it is "Someone Else's Job". This second category is probably the largest of the three, and also the most unfortunate, because they truly feel it is "Someone Else's Job" to do almost everything in American society. So as a consequence, they are the first to run away, dodge, evade, ignore, openly sneer, belittle, point fingers, berate, poke-fun-at, ...you get the picture. They cower in their homes behind their own definition of relative dis-associative social contact or responsibility because they see no obligation to be involved in anything. These people exist to take advantage of or sneer from behind closed doors at the "fools" who are out on the battleground of the grassroots campaign war.

In the last weeks of the election, you will find them drinking their beer, sipping their wine, consuming their liquor or smoking their funny smelling cigarettes and pointing fingers at those small numbers of individuals who come knocking on their front door to ask for their support for "the candidate" or request their help in the campaign.

The "Someone Else's Job" homeowner will either avoid the door, or engage the innocent campaign worker in mindless, circular conversations which is purposely done to not only waste the time of the campaign worker but to provide the "Someone else's Job" person with fair game and amusing sport, so they can safely return to their beer or wine or liquor drinking house gathering to say how he or she either "handled or showed" the hapless campaign worker a thing or two.

This same category of American voter is usually the last one to volunteer on their block, in their neighborhood, at their job or in any other setting; if at all, yet eagerly accepts the noble position of sideline critic with relish. So therefore in an election where the culture of our country's traditional values are at stake, these individuals truly have no stake in America's future accept to be a sideline critic unless it is at best to satisfy a short term individual interest which will only accrue a benefit to themselves.

This type of American benefits no one in this campaign. Therefore, for this type of person or household, the answer to the question of "What are you prepared to do?" is pretty obvious.

Yet, I suppose there is one caveat! If there is God forbid another attack, if God forbid the President loses or Traditional Marriage loses, or God is taken out of the Pledge of Allegiance, or Partial Birth Abortion becomes the norm and the Ten Commandments are ripped away from us so that we can no longer publicly display it.... trust me these "Someone Else's Job" Americans will be the absolute first out of the gate to spread blame as thick and as far as a cow pasture in Montana.

America would be better off and so would their neighbors if they did just stay to themselves and keep their dark "Someone Else's Job" cloud over themselves and not spread it over America.

Again, I turn to Theodore Roosevelt and to his remarks of 1899, because he also spoke of this second category of American.

He said firmly:

"The timid man, the lazy man, the man who distrusts his country, the over civilized man who has lost the great fighting, masterful virtues, the ignorant man and the man of dull mind, whose soul is incapable of feeling the mighty life that

thrills 'stern men with empires in their brains'---These are the men who fear the strenuous life, who fear the only national life which is worth living."

That brings us to the third category. They are "the Ten Percenters".

The Ten Percenters are the Americans who truly get it. They are the ones that the "World of Deniability" and the "Someone Else's Job" group either avoid in the probable case of Americans in first category and those in the second category scoffs and will makes adolescent fun of or blame the Ten Percenters because whatever was "supposed" to be done did not work out for the occupiers of the second category.

But the Ten Percenters are truly of the breed of President Roosevelt, and who will be the pivot point of this election's success for the President and for traditional values and for preserving the union of one man and one woman.

Teddy Roosevelt spoke of these noble Americans, and they are indeed noble, because they are truly selfless, they are given of the spirit of faith which they regard as universal, because somewhere as GOPAC Chairman and former Congressman J.C. Watts said, these noble selfless Americans have it embodied in their DNA.

I close this out with a solid salute to those resolute "Ten Percenters" who in the end will certainly make the day for America's success in this election for faith, family and Freedom. Just as President Bush launched his Bush Doctrine in his State of the Union Speech in 2003, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke to a similar preservation of safety and security for our families, for our nation as well as for those who yearn for freedom all over the globe.

He called it the Four Freedoms. On January 6, 1941, Pearl Harbor had not yet been attacked and America was still in a pre-Dec. 7th world, much like America was pre-9/11. Before the terrorist attacks. France had fallen to Hitler, just as France had fallen victim; some would say willingly; to the United Nation's "Oil for Food" scandal. President Roosevelt called for freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the World. President Bush has achieved the key first step of that in Afghanistan, where millions of women voted recently for the first time.

The second freedom Roosevelt called for was freedom of every person to worship God in his own way everywhere in the world. Again, President Bush has emphasized that in fighting terrorists who in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Sudan have terrorized families villages and communities who would seek to worship their choice freely.

The next is freedom from want everywhere in the world. Again President Bush, like President Roosevelt has focused the world's attention to meeting the needs and seeking the results from efforts to stave off starvation in third world countries on the African Continent, Asia and other parts of the world, while seeking United Nation cooperation to step up to the plate to their own global responsibilities.

Lastly, President Roosevelt sought freedom from fear anywhere in the world. That of course is the centerpiece of President Bush's efforts in preserving and safeguarding our nation as well as preserving freedom from the fear of tyranny and terrorism which if left unchecked could engulf the war in global chaos.

That is why the "Ten Percenters" are truly America's unsung heroes because they, unlike the two first categories understand the need to be actively involved in the process, to be fully engaged in fighting for the preservation of our nation's and their family and traditional values.

And as President Roosevelt said so concisely that day:

"This nation has place its destiny in the hands, heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our strength is on our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save victory."

Please join the "Ten Percenters" on November 2nd and truly make it 100 percent for Faith Family and Freedom Preservation Day.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.