by Diane Rufino, August 14, 2021 (originally submitted and printed as a Letter to the Editor in 2008)
Since the terrorist attacks of September 2001, people have complained about how Homeland Security measures are burdening their fundamental rights. Yet every day I lock all my doors and windows in my house and cars and watch where I go. You see, crime has done more to burden my fundamental rights to life and liberty than anything the government has one. Take Greenville, for example: crime is up, juvenile crime is up, and the high school graduation rate is only 54 percent.
So who is responsible for the greater loss of fundamental freedom – terrorists or criminals? And who’s fault is this – the government’s or bad parents? It’s bad parents. Too many parents are not taking their responsibilities seriously and are passing the problems they create onto everyone else.
In my day, people recognized a basic principle: You don’t have a child if you can’t property raise one. And that means being married before having one, being financially secure, making sure the child finishes school, and instilling good family values. Where I come from, and where my relatives came from, we believe it is no one else’s job to raise children except the parents. And those were good days, with safe neighborhoods.
Already the dynamics in this country have changed. Too many people today are taking from society and not contributing. And too many think this acceptable. It’s not acceptable to me. I’m a taxpayer and the government is subsidizing bad behavior with my hard-earned money. What is going to happen in another 30 years if this mentality is allowed to continue? Will this country go bankrupt? Will people be held hostage by the fear of too many criminals living among them? Will all the professional jobs continue to be filled by foreigners devoted to education and a strong work ethic because American parents continue to de-emphasize these values to their children? Or are we going to continue to let parents have a free pass at raising criminals and ignorant young adults?
Forloveofgodandcountry's Blog 
why don’t you see that the people who own the world’s governments have created the circumstances you describe intentionally? You are blaming the victims because those victims have victims of their own. Maybe you should watch A Clockwork Orange again.
The Rockefellers are still laughing about “woman’s lib”. They did it so they could tax everybody. People like you never caught on to that. They did it also so they would have the kids, no more at-home moms. You are a taxpayer? I think you’re causing this problem. You’re handing power over to the enemy. Aren’t you clever enough to find a way to make your living without having to pay a tribute to criminals? You would seem to be the one with poor morals. The people you’re complaining about are just hopelessly ignorant. You could have done something, but all you’re doing is complaining.
There comes a time to take the bull by the tail and face the situation.
Take some responsibility finally. It’s too easy to say that you’re a good citizen because you followed the rules. Will you still be following the rules when your beloved government issues the yellow badges? I think you will. You’ll be saying how important it is to follow the rules and never notice that the lunatics are running the asylum.
Thank you for your comments. As I mentioned in my previous article, I rage against the machine every single day. I do more than most anyone I know. I’m an activist to the core and I will continue to be one. Remember Hillary Clinton once said that it takes a village to raise a child? Well, it takes more than just a few people to sound the alarm, to raise awareness, to offer solutions, to write and be published, to get out in the streets, to attend board meetings, to express disapproval, to threaten to work elections for the sole purpose of getting certain individuals out of office, etc etc. Yes, I rage and I DO something meaningful every single day. I hope you are doing the same. — Diane Rufino
I’m sure you believe that anything to do with elections is meaningful. I’ll go with George Carlin on this one. What we need to do is to create our own parallel economy. To do it right we’ll need to do like they do and use the unfair laws in our own favor. To do this we need to figure out how to cooperate. It’s much harder for us than for them because they each have enough money to do that by themselves while we need to cooperate.
a formidable task, to find a group of people with the moral fiber of Ben Cartwright.
I guess the meaningful thing that you do is generallly the trying to wake people up.
But haven’t you noticed that the vast majority are completely brainwashed, thoroughly incapable of critical thinking? They can’t be reached. They’re not missing some important piece of information. They are fooling themselves at a very deep level and in my experience they can never see it.
I’m thinking of one person who is an engineer. And yet he can’t see when he’s believing something which is physically impossible because his hidden desire to believe that justice will come to those who follow the rules keeps him from seeing reality.
And they all contradict themselves severely. You can find ones with whom you’ll spend hours agreeing and then they’ll say something like “I’ll take every shot they come up with to protect myself”.
When you hear that you can bet that that person will find a way to not believe any of the hundreds of documented facts provided by the very sources which provide the contradicting information.
They’ll watch their own gov’t talking out of both sides of its mouth and yet only see what they want to.
Do you really manage to break through this psychopathy that I see in so many folks?
Yes, I’ve noticed that too many young people and people of minority groups are brainwashed. I hate to say that. But when you go to Board of Education meetings, when you interact with them, when you go to County Commissioner meetings and when you interact with them, when you go to Raleigh often to meet with representatives, when you go to the General Assembly sessions, when you speak and email local officials, when you go to DC regularly to walk the halls of the congressional and senatorial office buildings and get accosted by liberals and just plain idiots as I do, you learn first-hand what we are up against. (I’m assuming you agree with me to a good extent?). I’ve taught civics classes and I’ve taught advanced debate, which I’ve enjoyed, but the point I always wanted to get across to my students is the purpose of discussion and debate and the ability to articulate one’s point of view. The students would take a point of view and then challenge others to take the opposing view. They would go back and forth and back and forth until one student couldn’t defend and support his or her point of view anymore. That is when, I would have hoped, that the students realize which viewpoint is stronger and has more facts and more sound rationale behind it. I’ve gone onto East Carolina University’s campus and engaged students along their walkways about certain issues, such as healthcare and abortion, entitlements, gay marriage, election integrity, the benefit of religion, and court rulings, and we always had nice and civil discussions. I’ve usually gotten responses such as: “I may not agree with you on everything but at least now I understand and can appreciate your views.” My guess is that most of today’s young liberals will change ideology once they get a job, start paying taxes, get married, and try to do the right thing and raise a family they can be proud of. I don’t just try to wake ordinary people up.. I help educate them (I have the benefit of knowledge which I like to share). I also engage in dialogues with my elected officials (they can’t do a lot of damage when they realize that the community is more informed and knowledgeable then they are and are watching what they do), and I like to think that I perform a very important watchdog function in my community and actually in the eastern part of my state. I’ve helped lots of groups across the state. Let’s pray for our country (it is one of the two countries that God has blessed, and we need to be worthy of that blessing). Have a great day, Diane Rufino
now what is the other country that god has blessed? Crazy that you think god would bless a country that started out with genocide and is now ending with another. So God hates people as much as the owners of America do? Maybe you should find another god.
I’d be interested to hear better how you think you’ve influenced your local politicians.
The country is in the finale stages of take over, and the masses of people are blind to it all. The infrastructure bill now in Congress has hidden language in it to take away what freedoms we have left. The next big step to a one world government is coming into play before 2021 is over. Our competitor’s, (Russian, Chin, EU, etc.) however, all want to be the head of that one world government. WAR is in the near future, but not before the population has been enslaved to the government..
the country was taken over in 1912 with an inexpensive bribe to Woodrow Wilson. We have been in constant war since then. We don’t have freedoms to be taken away, just a little bit of space until they have robots guarding us.Russia China et cetera are not competitors. They are other fake states also being run by the same people who have run us since 1912. War is in the present, but most of us don’t recognize it. Instead of us going to some other country and dropping bombs on them in the name of peace we are injecting poisons into ourselves in the name of health.
It’s no stupider than before, it’s just different.
Aren’t you surrounded by stupid people who are ready to inject poisons into themselves to avoid fighting their enemy (the people who own our government)?
I am. The older ones trust their gov’t, the younger ones just want to be able to go to a night club rather than stay home and work on overthrowing the fascist owned gov’t.
Of course that’s ignoring that most of these people are too stupid to understand what they can observe or even try to.
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