"Barack Hussein Obama will be the president January 20th because Americans voted how they feel rather than what they know"

"The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men." —Samuel Adams

Such was the thinking of those who created our country out of hopes and ideals in their quest for a more perfect union to be led by people of good character. In the age of patriotism after the "greatest generation" saved our hides once again through sacrifice and valor, an incoming president reminded us to put the country first. In his Inaugural Address on 20 January, 1961, President John F. Kennedy closed his remarks with these famous words: "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country".

However today, the incoming president has turned Jack Kennedy's national challenge on end, essentially proclaiming, "ask what your country can do for you, not what you can do for your country."

In 1963, Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and said for all to hear, "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character". Ironically the first black president in history proclaims just the opposite; he and his party have divided us up into constituency groups, where we are judged by all manner of ethnicity and special interests rather than the individual and national character King envisioned.

Kennedy and King had it right, but the Democrat Party has squandered their great legacy, and betrayed us while seeking to enslave many Americans as dependant wards of the state. The Party’s founder, Thomas Jefferson, would not recognize even the most vestigial elements of his Party in the transition from Jefferson and Kennedy to Obama.

When the Democrat Party still had leaders like Kennedy, Truman and Humphrey it included among its ranks Ronald Reagan, However when asked why he left the Democrat Party, this former Democrat said, "I did not leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me." His observation, "the Party left me," has never been truer than today as whatever were the earlier principles of the Democrat Party has been replaced with socialist ideology intending to destroy the free market society.

Unfortunately, too many Americans have difficulty understanding the qualities required of our leaders to maintain the United States as our founders intended.

Our nation is facing crises on several critical fronts, domestic and foreign, including a historic economic disaster. Though it may be manufactured and illusory, the resolution of our current economic situation requires someone in possession of outstanding constitutional dedication - dedication that has been honed over his lifetime, dedication that is proven consistent with our nation's legacy of liberty and equality and self reliance, not one who emerged out of the nefarious Chicago politics and does not believe in the American constitutional principle of smaller, less intrusive government.

Reformed Democrat Ronald Reagan wrote, "The character that takes command in moments of crucial choices has already been determined by a thousand other choices made earlier in seemingly unimportant moments. It has been determined by all the 'little' choices of years past — by all those times when the voice of conscience was at war with the voice of temptation, [which was] whispering the lie that 'it really doesn't matter.' It has been determined by all the day-to-day decisions made when life seemed easy and crises seemed far away — the decision that, piece by piece, bit by bit, developed habits of discipline or of laziness; habits of self-sacrifice or self-indulgence; habits of duty and honor and integrity — or dishonor and shame". Do you think Reagan was referring to a community organizer who made his bones as part of the vote-stealing ACORN?

It was not only Samuel Adams who spoke of the necessity of our future leaders to be people of high integrity who put the country first above all else; here are but a few excerpts in their own words, including another prescient admonition by Samuel Adams:

John Adams: "Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. ... If we suffer [the minds of young people] to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives. ... We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. ... We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections".

Samuel Adams: : "Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters. ... If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation. ... [N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. ... No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders. ... Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual — or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country. ... Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness”.

Thomas Jefferson: "It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution. ... If a nation expects to be ignorant — and free — in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. ... The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail. ... An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens."

George Washington: "No compact among men ... can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other. ...[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted [early in life] are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous. ... The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens, and command the respect of the world. ...[W]here is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths...? Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness — these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens."

After the American Revolution, when our Founders were working "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity", Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and our Constitution's author, James Madison, wrote The Federalist Papers, its most authentic and comprehensive explication.

In Federalist No. 1, Hamilton warned, "Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants."

Sound familiar?

In No. 10, Madison cautions, "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm," and insisted in No. 57, "The aim of every political Constitution is or ought to be first to obtain for rulers, men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous, whilst they continue to hold their public trust".

One of the earliest U.S. Supreme Court Justices, Joseph Story, wrote, "Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them."

Story warned us of the perils posed by a candidate who tells us everything we want to hear.In November 1800, John Adams, in his fourth year as president, wrote to his wife Abigail, "I Pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessing on this house, and on ALL that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof"!

History has confirmed Samuel Adams’ observation "A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever". Yet we are seeing today by the government takeover of free enterprise with lavish "bailout" money and the socialist plans of the next president, the first efforts to transform our country from what it was in the beginning to one for the "new age".

Ronald Reagan said, "Freedom is ... never more than one generation away from extinction. Every generation has to learn how to protect and defend it, or it's gone and gone for a long, long time".

We now have a new generation of voters who chose to select as president one who does not want to keep the United States as it has been from the beginning. At this pivotal moment in our nation's history, a majority of Americans voted on how they feel rather than what they know. They did not put the country first. Beginning January 20th, we will reap the harvest of what we sowed.