Monday, February 4, 2013

So God made a farmer

The Dodge Ram ad was ranked number 1 by pretty much all the surveys. Paul Harvey - So God made farmers. Here's the video -

Superbowl Dodge Ram Ad

and the text - 

And on the 8th day God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker!". So, God made a farmer!
God said I need somebody to get up before dawn and milk cows and work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board. So, God made a farmer!I need somebody with strong arms. Strong enough to rustle a calf, yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry and have to wait for lunch until his wife is done feeding and visiting with the ladies and telling them to be sure to come back real soon...and mean it. So, God made a farmer!God said "I need somebody that can shape an ax handle, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire make a harness out of hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And...who, at planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty hour week by Tuesday noon. Then, pain'n from "tractor back", put in another seventy two hours. So, God made a farmer!God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop on mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor's place. So, God made a farmer!God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees, heave bails and yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink combed pullets...and who will stop his mower for an hour to mend the broken leg of a meadow lark. So, God made a farmer!It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight...and not cut corners. Somebody to seed and weed, feed and breed...and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk. Somebody to replenish the self feeder and then finish a hard days work with a five mile drive to church. Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who'd laugh and then sigh...and then respond with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life "doing what dad does". So, God made a farmer!

Friday, January 18, 2013

George Orwell - 1984

"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.


Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”

Friday, January 11, 2013

Democracy

Heard about this on the radio recently, and thought will share it here. Worth chewing on, be it the condition in India, or here in the United States.

It could probably that we are getting a bit too skeptical and are under-estimating our resurgence ability. And it becomes clear when you read about Alexander Tytler that he had a cynical view of the democratic system of government, and probably that the democracy that he writes about is not as evolved as the ones now. And we all know that there simply doesn't seem to be a better form of government than a democracy at the moment.

But.

Keeping in mind all these things, these words still manages to achive parity with the current situation. Selfishness and Complacency and Apathy.

(Do click on his name to get to Wikipedia to read about him)


Alexander Tytler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinborough (1887) has been credited with the following:
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
Great nations rise and fall. They always progress through the following sequences:
  • From bondage to spiritual faith;
  • From spiritual faith to great courage;
  • From courage to liberty;
  • From liberty to abundance;
  • From abundance to selfishness;
  • From selfishness to complacency;
  • From complacency to apathy;
  • From apathy to dependence;
  • From dependence back into bondage.