On January 21, 2020, one could easily be flooded with pointless, repetitive, and dishonest speech-making if they allowed themselves to be held captive by the pointless, repetitive, and dishonest media coverage of a political party’s effort to rewrite the text and intent of the Constitution. But there was a speech given that day worth noting … and taking to heart.

To know of it, one had to shift their attention from the floor of the Senate to a snow-clad ski resort in Switzerland. The gathering was of internationals “elites” and entitled the World Economic Forum. One of its stated objectives is to “improve the state of the world.” They were told exactly how to do it.

President Trump gave perhaps his best speech. And despite the impression you can get from media bursts, he has given a few very good ones.

I have seen some pointless social media throwaways that degrade the “grade level” of Trump’s words. I have heard one person comment that he does even speak good English. I am not an expert on English composition and have the grades to prove it.

Trump doesn’t have to speak great English. He speaks very good American.

The president’s comments in Davos were American to the core. They did not give the nod to global schemes that some in the past either embraced or at least walked around. He told of America’s success in the past three years. And he told how it was done.

Basically, we began a return to what we were built on. The first responsibility of a government is to its citizens. Every decision – great, good, bad, or yet unproven – began with that in mind.

To this collection of world leaders and CEOs, Trump touted lower taxation, less top-down regulation, and the need to free everyday citizens from bureaucrats. What he talked about was economic liberty. Economic liberty for individuals.

It was made clear that this same prosperity is open to everyone. Others can share in it, not by the United States (or individuals) sending resources as “make-ups,” but by simply practicing the same liberties. Perhaps it was not a “shining city on the hill” poetic moment. But it was a practical, straightforward expression of a simple truth. For the most part, nations and economies do not struggle because of a lack of resources. Their most confining struggles come from a lack of liberty.

The most important American export is the example of how economic liberty can positively affect the lives of citizens at every level of society. Liberty, of course, does not prevent problems. Problems are a natural thing in a mortal world. Liberty is simply the best, most productive, most humane way to meet those problems.

One can read for themselves what the president had to say about the “perennial prophets of doom.” They are to be left behind as the rest of world advances itself not by surrendering power and rights to centralized authority but by nurturing the “big dreams, daring adventures, and unbridled ambitions” of individuals blessed with liberty.

The speech rang of pride in accomplishments. But it also had a clarity about the basic approach from which those accomplishments were born. It was a statement of America’s rightful position of leadership in offering that approach to the rest of the world and of its clear intent to protect its citizens first and foremost.

As a nation, we have a long way to go yet to recover our original path on that walk of liberty. But we have begun. Many of our own citizens have not yet realized it. I suspect that there are more around the globe who have realized it then our media would like to report.

In the middle of the wall-to-wall coverage of political positioning in the Senate, it would serve everyone well if they would pause a few moments to read the Davos address. It is the most American speech from the mouth of a President of the United States (or anyone seeking the office) since Reagan gave his farewell from the Oval Office.

*Note: After posting this I saw that only a few posts down Franco has a video of the entire 40 minutes … I had only read the text last night and reacted to that … it is well worth either the read or the time watching.

He was the only man in the Continental Army who served as a general throughout the whole Revolutionary War, except for George Washington. He never won a major battle. One of his early decisions cost Washington almost half his army. A good part of the war, he was a “desk soldier,” champing at the bit to be allowed another battle command. Outside of Washington, there is no one more responsible for the army’s success.

On the surface, it would have seemed that Nathanael Greene had little chance to become a great military leader. He was born into a Quaker sect that not only opposed war but discouraged “literary accomplishments.” From childhood, he walked with a decided limp. His father was a successful farmer and smith with a large foundry.

The young Nathanael found ways around his faith’s boundaries. He became self-taught in the classics, mathematics, law, and yes, military science. Shortly before his father’s death, he was given charge of the family business.

He was thirty when his father died and it proved a liberating moment for him. Between 1770 and 1775, he helped establish a school, was elected to the Rhode Island General Assembly, married, helped to organize a local militia, and managed to get both himself and his cousin expelled from the Quaker faith. He was on a committee appointed by the assembly to revise militia laws. At one point, he offered to resign from the militia he had helped to form and train because of its members saw his limp as a problem on the parade field.

In May of 1775, he was promoted (perhaps because of political connections) from private in the militia to major general in command of the militia when it was sent to help respond to the siege of Boston. Forty-four days later, he was made a brigadier general in the new regular Continental Army.

By October of 1776, Greene was a major general and considered perhaps Washington’s most trusted officer. He was in command of the last American stronghold in New York City. His decision to defend Fort Washington against overwhelming odds resulted in not only the loss of the fort and New York City but also what constituted almost half of the Continental Army at the time. More than half of the prisoners would die in the prison ships of the British. It would be more than four years before the Continental Army suffered a defeat to match the loss at Fort Washington.

It would be 1780 before Greene would again be the overall commander of troops in the field but, for the present, he was responsible for important command moments under Washington at the battles of Trenton, Brandywine, and Germantown. He was re-proving his ability to lead men and make important command decisions in the heat of battle. But it would be in the misery of Valley Forge where he would make his greatest contribution to that point.

Washington knew he needed both organizational skills and administrative ability in a Quarter Master General if the army was to survive the winter. Greene became that man. It would fall to him to feed and supply an army with almost nothing. Food was not the only issue. Supplies of all sorts were badly needed. Clothes for the soldiers, forage for the animals, firewood, and gun powder were only a few of the items which Greene’s skills brought in.

He was so successful that Washington called upon him to take the position of Quarter Master General of the entire army. His abilities probably saved the army at that point.

He had moved from behind the cannons to being behind the “spreadsheet” and he hated it. He was very good at it and the passion with which he performed this duty spoke well of both his devotion to the cause and to Washington’s ability to persuade.

He hated dealing with Congress. Perhaps this we can forgive him! He fought with them constantly and asked to resign more than once.

When Cornwallis was tearing through the southern colonies to divide the Revolution, Congress refused to appoint Greene as the commander as Washington asked for and instead sent Horatio Gates. In short order, the Americans were handed an embarrassing loss at Camden.

This time, Congress relented and allowed Greene to take command of what was left of the southern command. It was not much. It consisted of less than one thousand men who had just suffered two terrible defeats.

With the addition of Daniel Morgan’s men, the southern forces were barely over one thousand men while Cornwallis commanded over forty-five hundred battle-tested troops. Undersupplied and outmanned, Greene did the last thing most would advise. He divided his command. Morgan would take the “light troops” and head into the backcountry and draw part of the British after him while Greene headed south to find supplies and train.

After Morgan’s classic victory at Cowpens, both Morgan and Greene began a chase across North Carolina to rejoin each other. Morgan was carrying over 800 British prisoners as well. Angered and embarrassed by losses at King’s Mountain and Cowpens, Cornwallis was determined to catch the smaller Continental force and crush it. Together, Morgan and Greene began a race to the Dan River to cross over into Virginia.

In a desperate move to catch the fleeing rebels, Cornwallis burned his supply wagons and anything he thought would slow him down. The great general was beginning to make frustrated mistakes. This one would not be his last.

The Continentals beat Cornwallis to the Dan by mere hours and were able to cross ahead of the British because of Greene’s planning and organization. He had made sure that the route to the Dan was well scouted and planned and that boats were made in advance and waiting.

Cornwallis turned back into North Carolina and declared it cleared of rebels. Across the Dan, Greene supplied and trained for the return trip.

Within a week, with more supplies and additional troops, Greene crossed back into North Carolina to pick his ground for a fight. It was a defensive position near Guilford Court House. His battle plan would be much like Morgan’s at Cowpens. There would be two lines of militia to fire and fall back to be supported by a line of regulars.

The plan worked again. When the British reached the third line, the regulars fired a volley and crossed bayonets with the Redcoats. Greene gave the command and the right flank began to close on the British.

Cornwallis saw that the day was lost if he did not act quickly. He had his cannon turn to the right flank and fire grapeshot (think large, really large, buckshot) into the masses of soldiers. At least half or more of the troops who would be hit were to be British but it was the only chance Cornwallis had to halt the flanking movement.

This time, Greene made the right move in a moment of decision. He had taken a terrible toll on Cornwallis. The ground was of no value to him. He stopped the bloodbath and ordered a retreat.

By the standards of the day, Cornwallis could call it a victory. He controlled the field. But he had taken a much heavier toll than Greene. He was without supplies in a hostile country. Many of his best troops were gone. Even across an entire ocean in Parliament it was noted that another such victory would “spell the ruin of the entire army.”

Disgusted with the Carolinas, Cornwallis crossed into Virginia and began a trek to the coast in hopes of getting supplies and reinforcements. The trek would take him to the port city of Yorktown and the end of the war. His fate had been sealed by a self-trained colonial general with a stiff knee, a bookkeeper’s mind, and a warrior’s heart who finished the war without a battlefield victory to his name.

Kit Carson arrived in Pueblo, CO, riding in the back of Daniel Oakes’ wagon about the second day of April 1868. A runner was sent to the town’s doctor, Michael Beshoar, telling him that Carson was ill and needed to see him as soon as possible. Beshoar was working at his second job which was editor and publisher of a local newspaper. He hurried to his medical office only moments before Carson.

After the examination, Carson spent the night in Pueblo and met with the doctor the next morning for an opinion. He was told that he had an aneurysm of the carotid artery, a bulge in the weakened wall of the artery, and he should have bed rest for a few days before continuing to travel. The old scout refused the bed rest saying he belonged with his wife for the birth of their eighth child. He was given some wild cherry syrup laced with opium and tincture of veratrum to slow his heart. He paid the doctor three silver dollars and left to rejoin his wife.

Three days after Kit and the now 40-year-old Josefa Carson settled back into the borrowed three-room apartment belonging to Tom Boggs in eastern Colorado, their eighth child was born. It was a daughter and Kit insisted she be named Josefita after her mother. It was April 13.

Despite his weak condition, Carson began making plans for building their house. He sent a letter to an admirer he had met in New York on the trip he had just completed saying that he was improving and was happy to be among family again.

In the early evening of April 27, Kit was reclining on a pallet of buffalo robes because their furniture had not been moved from Taos and there were no bedsteads. In the next room, Josefa was sitting on the dirt floor combing the hair of Teresina, their 13-year-old daughter. She suddenly called out to her husband in Spanish and he rushed to her in time to catch her in his arms. In Spanish, she said, “Kit, I am very sick” and was dead in what seemed to Carson only a minute. Her death has been attributed by some to what was commonly referred to as “childbed fever” or puerperal fever but it can only be guessed from the distance of time.

A week after burying Josefa, Carson sent a letter asking that her older sister care for his children in the case of his own death. He also gave instructions for both his body and that of his wife to be relocated to Taos after his death. Ignacia, Josefa’s sister, and her husband began packing and within three days began the 200-mile trip to Boggsville in eastern Colorado. They arrived on May 15 but had missed Carson by a day. He had been moved by army ambulance to Fort Lyon the day before. The day after arriving at the fort he had dictated a will to Army surgeon Dr. Henry Remsen Tilton and signed it with the “C. Carson” he had learned years ago, the extent of his writing ability.

Slightly more than a decade before, an army officer had called Carson “the master horseman among a race of horsemen.” It had been over a year since “The General,” as Carson was often referred to now, had been able to mount a horse even with help.

The two earliest verified pictures of Kit Carson were taken in the mid-1840s. The earliest shows a determined, clean-shaven face with a set jaw and hair almost to the shoulders. The second oldest has Carson in a hat and heavy coat. They both picture a mid-30s man with the direct, calm, and strong look of someone who had been given a leadership role with a brigade of rugged mountain men at 19. The deep chest and wide shoulders are there regardless of his 5’6” height.

On Carson’s last trip to the east, he sat for a few pictures with the Ute delegation and, of course, a political figure or two. While on his return he was prevailed upon to sit for a couple of individual pictures. The reproductions of these two are probably the most published photos of Kit Carson. Without the touchups, they show a man whose body has changed considerably. He was a man dying. He now had a mustache that he had allowed to grow toward the end of his military duty. But somewhere in those eyes, one can still find the man who had commanded independent, willful trappers, had plunged headlong into more fights than could be recorded, had guided some of the more important expeditions of his time and returned them to safety, had been a stern but trusted barrier between Indians and settlers, and had directed military campaigns.

On the afternoon of May 23, 1868, Kit Carson called out to Dr. Tilton who “sprang to him.” There was a gush of blood from his mouth and the doctor “supported his forehead on my hand, while death speedily closed the scene.” Carson, not yet 59, had died.

Each age and generation has its necessary warriors. They protect us all. They make the way for the foundations of our culture, our society, to be built. They then protect that culture, that society, as it grows and matures. Abroad they face enemies and dangers in order to keep them from us. At home, they stand behind thin badges to keep what has been so dearly paid for in the past and present. Theirs is a life not just of duty and struggle but often of split-second actions that change lives forever. It is a heavy task that they take from our shoulders.

In explaining to a superior his handling of a crisis as Indian Agent, Carson replied, “I do not know whether I done rite or wrong, but I done what I thought was best.” I suspect that is a good place for a lot of us to begin.

I have always tried to follow my mother’s instructions about not making fun of another’s appearance. Often I have not tried nearly hard enough. And there have been a few times when, I must admit, I have ignored it altogether. Looking over the press photos of the cabal which has been the thrust behind the impeachment farce about to be tossed from the House to the Senate, I am flooded with enough negative thoughts to properly organize them. I am not sure Central Casting could have sent over another set of faces that would suggest so many socially unacceptable jokes. I will do my best to remember Mother’s instruction.

I know that Adam Schiff has often been referred to as being a “pencil-neck”. There has been occasional, I understand, slanders of “bug-eyed” thrown his way. But truthfully, the first term that has repeatedly popped into my mind when subjected to his almost continuous presence on TV has been “weasel”. But I have so far restrained from the public calling him such. And there is a desire on my part to be as fair as possible to actual weasels. I hope that it is duly noted that I am not calling him a pencil-necked, bug-eyed weasel and that I am given all the credit I deserve.

In the case of Representative Waters, I can only recall the age-old saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. If I am to continue to heed Mother’s wishes, I should let each of you decide exactly which thousand words to use. But I have thought (privately and silently, of course) that the only thing more twisted than her closed mouth is what comes out of it when opened. Once again, I hope I am given proper credit for not allowing this to pass my lips.

I know that in this specific photo there are several unkind members of the Trumpian cult who would speculate that the best thing about Jerry Nadler here is that he blocks out Speaker Pelosi’s face, preventing any nasty comments about her. I suspect there are some of those cultists who think that Chairman Nadler seems to have a vacant, far-away stare in almost all of his pictures lately (you know, the last decade or so). Some of the more insensitive of that bunch might say he has the look of someone from another dimension of the universe bewildered as to how he can return. Others might say that his seemly stumped unique posture was evidence of being spineless. But I am certain that Chairman Nadler is a vertebrate, regardless of what dimension he hails from – almost.

But the most important (and even permissible under Mother’s guidelines) point to be gained from the picture is reinforced by another photo of the same group so that all seven subjects are fully visible. None of the cabal looks any more acceptable to those who prize their liberty or the Constitution. But it can be quickly seen that all of those who have been so very intent on bringing this farce to the floor of both houses of Congress are solely from New York and California. And I would add, very narrow parts of those two states.

This picture is the reason the Founders/Framers gave us the Electoral College. It is the reason that the present set of leftists in the media and the Democrat Party would welcome doing away with the Electoral College. They really don’t want to be bothered with the quint viewpoints of mere Deplorables. The most important point to be gleaned from the picture is not some comparison to the Star Wars bar scene. It is that there are no rules for those who would drag us into their corrupt vision of a “fundamentally transformed” world. It is not that they don’t look like us. It is that at the bottom of their soul, they are not like us at all. But they are convinced they are our betters.

It is not often that either Chris Mathews or Joe Scarborough are right about anything. But a couple of weeks ago, on the same day, they both used their own words to speculate that the nation was on the verge of a crisis that would endanger its very existence. Of course, they were dead wrong about what the crisis was or the reasons for the danger. As a matter of disclaimer I would like to make it clear that I did not go on an MSNBC binge. I picked up these insights from short clips. Long ago I determined that MSNBC should only be consumed with accompanying dozes of good Irish whiskey. And, unlike Irish whiskey, MSNBC should always be restricted to short, well-spaced dozes. The whiskey is always more enlightening, honest and clarifying.

Our Republic is in the middle of just the latest attack on its very nature and purpose. But it is one of the most severe and is made possible by a decades-long campaign against a culture of individual liberty which was that Republic’s springboard. The immediate threat is a knife-to-the-heart-of-self-government impeachment farce to remove a duly elected president without cause. The overall threat can go by many names but currently can best be titled modern progressivism.

Its goal has always be the out-right destruction of our Constitution, hence our rights; our individual choices. Over a century ago, a wise reader could easily have seen this nail in the coffin of constitutional self-government in the writings of Woodrow Wilson before he ever stumbled into the governorship of New Jersey and then a split-ballot presidential election.

When James Madison rose at the Constitutional Convention to challenge George Mason’s suggestion to add the fat too broad “maladministration” to the causes for impeachment, this present circus was exactly the type of thing he wanted to prevent. For as he and almost all of the Framers knew, removal by reason of personality, momentary popularity, policy disagreement and any number of other partisan or personal charges destroys the bedrock of constitutional self-governance. Removal for other than specific, defined, proven actual behavior is simply overruling valid elections. This present circus is exactly what Hamilton feared in Federalist 65 which has mischaracterized so often in trying come up with anything that resembles a logical and constitutional basis for the impeachment sham. This merely places the presidency (of anyone) at the whim of the House and destroys the basic concept of divided powers, which Hamilton described as a death sentence to our divided system of government.

These observations are hardly new and I claim no great insight. It can be easily seen that this impeachment began even before Trump was sworn in. It has nothing to do with a very appropriate phone call to another national leader, or intrigue with Russian operatives or an imagined obstruction of Congress by merely exercising the rights of a separate and equal branch.

This impeachment is the latest step in a process to destroy our constitutional order which began well over a hundred years ago. It has been in the works that long and has taken that long to reach this point. Dismantling the constitutional order has been the progressive’s goal from the beginning. And any who cheer on this latest attack on that order for whatever reason are accomplices in advancing that goal to new lengths.

Regardless if you care to refer to the attackers as progressives, leftists, utopians, communists, socialists or statists, their objectives will always end in the restriction if not the elimination of MY liberty. There is no respect for individual choice, property rights, personal religious conscience, economic freedom or even human life. And that includes your liberty as well.

These natural, divinely delivered rights are far more important to this generation and all those to follow than your or my opinion of anyone president’s vocabulary, demeanor, tweets, manners or even his supposed character. I see no greater character flaw in a public official than behavior that will take away my liberty. Government healthcare, growing heavy-handed government regulations, turning a back on border control measures and failing to call out liberty killing “climate change” demands for what they present a far greater threat to the Founders/Framers visionary gift than anything done by this president. To fail to kill Obama Care when given the chance is a far greater betrayal of the Constitution than a phone call to a fellow foreign leader or a course tweet.

All of us need to acknowledge that the decades-long path which brought us here has for the most part been a comfortable one, made comfortable by those who should have been fighting the hardest. Since 1928, there have only been two periods in which the progressive agenda has not advanced steadily – the Reagan administration and the present one. Certainly, there were three “great leaps” under FDR, LBJ and BHO but the advance continued in all the other times as well.

For the most part, the leadership of the political party which should have stood the firmest against this trend accepted it – only in smaller and slower portions. “Progressives” like Woodrow Wilson were writing before the turn of the 20th century about ways to step pass the constitutional order to better serve the progressive goals that it obstructed. Of course, as Wilson suggested, one of the most important was to attack through the unelected courts. This has been the left’s most successful method of overturning both plain constitutional language and public will.

The last three years have given us the most successful turn-around of the courts to date. Certainly, we have added one fairly good constitutional jurist to the Supreme Court and another whom I suspect will not measure quite so well but be a vast improvement over ANY appointment by a Democratic president. But probably the greatest impact has come from the appointments in the lower courts. It will not be long before over 20% of these judges will have been confirmed during this administration. In three days of Stalin-like congressional meetings last week, eight more judges were confirmed.

Regardless of the stage in which we find ourselves in this sham of an impeachment drama, it should be apparent to even a bias anti-Trumpian what a “star chamber” event it is. A self-governing republic can never be served, only undermined, by such doings.

Over the last hundred or so years the resistance to the steady and forceful march of the left has been greatly undermined by a self-serving, often docile, comfortable establishment elite of the “opposition party” and a conservative pundit class who were much more political intelligentsia than grass-roots conservative. It has been the grassroots which have been stirred and finally panicked by the excess of the left and their agenda. These grassroots waited – and waited – and waited some more for their “leaders” to actually fight back. They instinctively knew that fighting back is not merely slowing down the progressive march but stopping it and hopefully to begin a slow process of gaining back some ground.

These grassroots finally screamed at their “leaders” through a truly grassroots Tea Party Movement. But in the end, these mere peasants were abandoned by those “leaders”, dismissed as “wacko-birds” or well-intentioned amateurs after they were mined for some votes.

For those who seem to have should a hard time understanding the election of and support for Trump, I will try and give a poor peasant’s simple appraisal. Those grassroots have and have had an urgent sense of how dangerous and advanced the left’s agenda is. They don’t trust the political class to fight hard enough to save the American culture. They understand that this agenda not only has to be defied but stopped, reversed and hopefully defeated. Trump is the symbol of that defiance. But he is not the embodiment of it. But so far, he has certainly been its instrument.

The hard truth for all the “conservative” pundits who can stroke their chins in measured conversations is that in less than a full term Donald Trump has done more to advance liberty-based policy and undermine leftist agenda than all of the career politicos and academic think-tanks wizards put together. And he didn’t do it by virtue of his long-studied reflection or a courtly manner toward those who would destroy our liberty, regardless of the pace.

This president was elected because that grassroots believed he would try and do just what he said he would, which the majority of elected GOP politicos were not doing. And so far, they were right. He has not been helped very much by the political class members of his own party but he has moved the ball and actually made a few stops on third down.

If you agree or not, the nation can be grateful for the work of most House Republicans. I doubt the Senate GOP members will be as great but I can hope, for the sake of the nation.

To reject and denounce this impeachment is not to defend Donald Trump. You do not have to accept his policies, personality or even his behavior. What HAS to be defended here is the basic principles of the Manga Carta. And all centuries it took to reach a point in history so that the Carta could take place. And the almost eight centuries since when an accumulation of experience with common law, enlightenment and various forms of tyranny melted together to give our Founders/Framers a unique moment in time to create a gift to us. Those Founders/Framers did not pass on to us mob responsive parliamentary system. They left us a system based on basic rights and responsible process.

To accept this impeachment is to accept tyranny based on your dislike for a personality. Regardless of the excuse, tyranny for any reason only strengthens the next tyranny. And it, by its nature, reduces liberty for everyone. When Donald Trump’s liberty is violated so is My liberty and so is Yours.

The nature of our national founding has been under constant attack for what now has become more than a century. We are now closer than we have ever been to losing that struggle and becoming something entirely foreign to the basic concepts which have been the pillars supporting the single most successful and beneficial secular endeavor mankind has yet launched.

The crisis inflicted by illegal immigration is only one example of a many-pronged assault. It is only a piece in a mosaic but is certainly a destructive one. Like all the other pieces it strikes at some key values central to our success as a self-governing republic. One of these is, of course, culture. Another is the very necessary respect for rule of law.

The question of illegal immigration is also an example of a long-standing technique of the left to push their agenda while both distracting from the actual central issue involved and placing any opposition on the defensive. Many leftist arguments stir a false compassion presenting their ideology as an answer to some human misery. It certainly cannot be denied that there are millions upon millions all over the world who would benefit from living in a cleaner, safer and more prosperous United States. Everyone who looks into the face of a desperate, hungry and fearful child wants to do something for them, wants them to be fed, clean and safe.

And there are several ways that we can, as individuals, play a hand in such things.

But I will say that if the people of those other nations are to be helped as a group, their nations have to adopt some form of what I will call the American Model. The “magic” factor for these nations is not some form of international welfare or to take their poorest off of their hands. That factor is liberty.

Through a few thousand years of history, the vast majority of human beings on Earth have lived in poverty and under tyranny. It is only recently that vast amounts of wealth and across-the-board leaps in the standard of living for all has become common. The advances have been explosive and have pretty well been in proportion to how deeply rooted a nation or society is in this “American Model”.

Many of the components of this American Model were hardly invented by America. It was just in America that they were more fully planted in a soil of liberty and allowed to function more fully than any other place in history. It is a collection of man’s experiences, lessons, hopes and continual exploration of his own existence. It is the trial and error process of securing each person’s liberty and protecting him from tyranny, regardless of its form. It was here that those threads of man’s experiences were woven together into a system built around the vital elements of human liberty.

So what are the vital elements of this model? In the simplest form, it is to grow those things which enhance individual liberty and limit as much as possible those that grow tyranny. A small as possible, limited government as part of a federal system, a market of free exchange with secure, protected property rights for individuals, a commitment to natural rights, a moral grounding in Judeo-Christian civilization and a commitment to freedom of conscience, and a focus on the rights and responsibilities of the individual are all on the list.

But, for now, I will devote the rest of this space to the element which allowed all those threads to come together to form an American fabric whose pattern could be shared with the rest of mankind for its benefit. That is the “soil” which allowed those collected ideas and ideals from centuries to sprout. That soil is culture, a culture of liberty. A culture of individual liberty. Almost left alone on the eastern seaboard of a new continent, those small groups of scattered pioneers breathed life into those concepts far from the hand of kings, lords and even centralized clergy. Each area had its own distinct character, habits, and personalities but they revealed in their independence and the challenges it brought. Settlements grew into cities, all different from the others but united in the traits of independent souls.

All of those regions of the “old world” which contributed threads to this new fabric failed to complete the job. The Greeks, Romans, English and more all were a part of the traditions blended into this culture which could “sniff tyranny on every tainted breeze.” But none of these became what America would make of itself.

One of the great myths of so-called progressivism is the greedy, selfish image of a capitalist free market. This economic model has not just produced the wealthiest of nations in the United States. It has created the fuel for the most expansive humanitarian outreach the world has yet seen. We all are aware of the flood of American government funds which are sent around the world for various reasons, real and imagined. But few also realize that the humanitarian funds from private American donations far exceed the governmental foreign aid. And in almost every case they are far more effective in the real lives of those who need them most.

It should come as no surprise that far too much of the government-to-government “aid” is lost as it moves through one bureaucratic filter and then another.

The same is true of private “charity” within the United States itself. We are by far the most generous nation in the world, past or present.

But, still, one of the left’s constant ruses is to weaponized compassion and paint any notion competing with theirs as cruel and uncompassionate.

The cruelest thing we could do to the disadvantaged trapped in “the rest of the world” would be to lose our culture of liberty. I am afraid we are dangerously close to losing in among our own “home grown” people. Those who are allowed to join this “national family” have to be motivated by a true desire to “breathe free” as a part of that distinctive American culture and not merely better themselves.

This American model can fit into any corner of the world. Just as some parts of it may vary from state to state or town to town, so can it vary some from country to country. It is about the individual. Therefore, it can be personalized to its setting. This why it is so important that we do not lose our own distinctive culture of liberty. The world will lose its model, its clearest example. This is also why, in order to keep it for ourselves, we must decentralize so much of what has grown in the last century and return to the original vision of local powers.

When people are left to innovate they prosper. Hong Kong is now in a struggle to keep their self-control from the mainland Chinese. But they have been a shining example of how a tiny dot without any real resources except the drive and their own people can prosper beyond any expectations. They did so mainly because the British allowed them to during the time of “the lease”. They seized the chance and realized the rewards of economic liberty. The American Model is not just a Western thing or a “white man’s” greedy path. It is for all who realize that individual freedom is responsibility with consequences and are unafraid to plunge in. Perhaps Collin Kaepernick doesn’t grasp that, but Fredrick Douglass certainly did, just read his “Self-Made Men” speech. And then read it again – every week. It is a priceless statement about independent individual liberty. You might mail Collin a copy but due to some of his recent tweets I am not sure he reads Douglass any better than he did double zones in nickel coverage.

Individual liberty cannot survive where it is not understood. It cannot survive without the rule of law and a limited government. Centralized power is always a great threat to that liberty and government is the worst system for handling human relationships.

The most humane way for a strong America to help the oppressed of the world is not to water down the essential elements of its own success. Its most valuable export is the example of what a culture of individual liberty under the law can do when it is embraced, fought for and implemented by a population determined to manage its own affairs. To best help the world’s oppressed, you do not remake America. You reinforce it and its founding principles.

Mother Teresa certainly saw poverty at its worst during her life of service. But she observed that “the most miserable thing about poverty is the feeling of not being anyone, without personal worth.” That personal worth can best be expressed in this secular world by being able to live out the individual rights extended to us all by a divine hand.

As the Civil War drew to a close, a Texas frontier awash with millions of almost worthless, hard-twisted, wild-eyed cattle looked north to find a source of ready cash. The popular image is of the long drives toward the newly built railroads beginning to stretch across the middle plains of Kansas where a $4 Texas bovine would bring $30 to $40 for shipment back to more eastern slaughterhouses.

And it is certainly an accurate image since thousands of Texas cattle made their way to a series of Kansas railheads beginning with Abilene in 1867 and stretching to Dodge City later on. But many didn’t stop there and were headed north for the northern ranges. In fact, the first of these post-Civil War herds to land on the northern plains to be grazed was driven to Montana in 1866 by Nelson Story who used his earnings from a gold strike to outfit a Texas herd that would become both food for miners and seed stock for one of the first cattle ranches in Montana.

By the early 1870s, many Texas cattlemen were driving herds on northward to fatten on the grass of the open prairies beyond Kansas. For the most part, the traditions of an open range applied and many considered it “free grass.” By the mid-1870s the Texas Panhandle had been opened to cattle by Charles Goodnight. Although Goodnight did not believe in a “free grass” approach, he did break ground on an innovation that greatly added to the boom on the more northern ranges – foreign investment. His Panhandle JA ranch was possible because of the major investor, aristocrat John Adair (hence the JA brand). Goodnight put his faith in land ownership and the improvements and responsibilities that came with it, so he expanded the legal boundaries of the JA whenever possible as well as using long-term leases of state-owned lands.

But that was not the rule throughout most of the northern Great Plains. For the most part, it was open range grazing with little or no improvements. The 1870 tax assessments for Wyoming Territory showed a total of 8,143 head of cattle on the rolls. By 1880, the number was 521,213. And there were like numbers stretching from there to Montana, through Nebraska and into the Dakotas.

One of the results from all that “free grass” was overgrazing since there was little or no control on it, making long-range planning impossible. The native grasses of these plains are hardy but like most of us need recovery time. As great as the wandering buffalo herds of the pre-1870s were they tended to graze heavily and move on. After close to a decade of steady abuse, the ability of the ranges to recover in a season was stretched greatly.

On top of this came a very natural factor, drought. A great many of the northern ranches began during a comparatively wet period. As surprising as it may seem to some, there were severe swings in weather patterns before wide use of the internal combustion engine. Actually, a dry period was much more the norm for these central, high plains. And so were harsh winters (and still is).

The winter of 1885-86 was a hard one with plenty of heavy snow. But it would seem mild before another year passed. The heavy snows were followed by a dry spring and blistering summer which saw water sources dry up and the overgrazed grass fail to regrow. Wildfires burned some of the dried grass that was there.

The snow began to fall in by mid-November of 1886 and in many parts of the northern range fell every day through December. Then the temperatures spiked as high as 50 degrees giving some hope for an early thaw. But the melting snow only formed a sheet of ice when it again went below zero, creating an icy crust that had to be broken through after hungry animals had dug into the new snows in search of food.

By this time, the south plains ranchers had strung an inconsistent network of fences known as “drift fences.” They intended to simplify spring roundups and the sorting of cattle by owner. Since cattle had a natural tendency to drift toward the south on the open ranges during the winter, the fences were supposed to keep the cattle of a general area more or less in the correct region. By the beginning of 1887, most of these were buried in snow and cattle drifting southward ran into the hidden barriers. Cowboys rode the stretches of fence and cut wire to let the cattle through but many never found the opening. By spring, thousands upon thousands would be found dead along the drift fences. Many Panhandle ranches put their losses at 75 percent. Many on the ranges north of there would have happily settled for that.

The time surrounding this harsh winter quickly became known across the prairie as the “Big Die-Up.” But what resulted from it was much more than the carcasses of what may well have been a million head of cattle. It changed the nature of ranching on the Great Plains.

Goodnight’s JA ranch certainly had its losses in that frozen period. But he had invested both capital and labor in digging dirt tanks, building dams and trying to control water sources as well as managing grazing on a ranch that was surely vast by some standards but had been divided for grazing rotation. His range had been better preserved but he was still taught a harsh lesson about the need for cutting prairie hay for winter feeding.

By 1900, there were still large ranches on the plains but they were run differently and there were many, many smaller ones which could be more closely managed. The Big Die-Up didn’t kill ranching on the Great Plains. It improved it. It forced changes, adaptations.

Nature has always been ever-changing, unpredictable and often harshly cruel. Man’s greatest asset in dealing with it has been adaptability. It is what has caused him to survive and then to prosper regardless of the surprises or turns of that ever-changing natural world.

That great intellect Walter E. Williams recently wrote a piece in which he made the point that the natural world is anything but fragile. It is tough and resilient.

Climate change is one of the most meaningless terms that can be imagined simply because earthly climate has always been under constant change and, I suspect, always will be. By the relative standards of history, it has not been that long ago that icy glaciers reached southward to cover almost half of what is now the United States. There was a time when the region now known as the Sahara was lust. Where was a time when northern Europe was warm enough to grow the grapes for wine. There were times in the “Little Ice Age” when New York harbor froze.

All of those things changed and affected the lives and lifestyles of the humans caught in them. But human beings were able to prosper despite the whims of nature. They did so not by changing or even managing nature. They did so by adapting to it. Human life, as a part of nature, is always subject to constant change.

Perhaps the best example of the genius of the Founders/Framers is their acknowledgment of true nature, natural law, and their building of a system designed to work within it. The nature of man to be sinful while carrying the individual possibility of great nobility, the natural rights around which a just and free society must operate and the importance of individual private property and free exchange (free market capitalism) are only part of accepting the natural order of “Nature and Nature’s God.”

One of the clear distinctions between progressives (or whatever current title they are assigned) and the conservative mind is their view of that natural order. They seek to control with self-anointed importance a nature that they are supposed to learn from, embrace, and adapt to. To them, rights can be created as time and desires evolve. Nature itself, of both earth and man, can be managed with the insight of experts.

The conservative mind realizes that man is subject to nature, not the other way around. The only nature man has control over is his own. He can individually tap that noble potential within himself. It is a potential placed there by a hand that is both outside of and above nature. That hand, that force, is the only thing that can be outside and above nature and it is divine. Most of us simply call it God.

The almost childish notion that man can control climate or that he can even define the ideal climate is a denial of what has proven to be one of his greatest assets, the ability to adapt. If a thousand-mile ice sheet has not destroyed man, a couple of degrees one way or another won’t either. There is plenty of both real science and history to discount the false panic of those who really are talking about control, not necessity. And they are not talking about controlling nature. They are talking about controlling men.

Man’s relationship with nature is the one given by that divine hand. It is one of stewardship. And, yes, that stewardship involves use. Man has not changed the natural windy, dry climate of the Great Plains. But he has adapted to its features. That trademark wind can turn blades which pump water from deep underground to create food for man and animal alike. The crude oil naturally produced and trapped by the rocky layers resulting from the endless climate changes of the centuries can be released to fuel an ever improving lifestyle for millions of people. The short grass prairies can put millions of pounds of good protein on tables all over the globe while actually improving themselves. Forests can supply wood to a growing population and be replanted to actually increase in size and quality. The North American whitetail deer population can be hunted and harvested by millions of hunters each year and still have a higher estimated number than at the time of Columbus.

These and thousands of other examples demonstrate not changes to nature but adaption to it. And with those adaptions, both man and nature have benefited.

There will be earthquakes. Volcanoes will erupt. Twisters will tear across the plains. There will be floods. Lives have been saved and even improved because men have turned their minds to adapting to those certainties, not preventing them.

One day the Yellowstone region of the United States will literally blow up in an eruption from the huge molten cavity below it. In my simple mind, this will have more impact than an inch or two of sea level. Those who are really concerned with the prevention of natural disasters might best turn their attention that direction.

Within the last few days, much of that same region that survived the Big Die-Up was blasted with a last-grasp-of-winter blizzard of huge scale. The additional feet of snow on top of an already large winter snowfall has resulted in massive flooding. For the most part, that country had just begun to catch a breath after a long session of around-the-clock nights of calving and winter hay feeding. There will be crops lost and unplanted. There will be roads and infrastructure to be rebuilt. There will be loans to be met regardless of weather’s sudden turns. Homes will be cleaned up, in some cases rebuilt and some will be lost. And both nature and man will continue.

What the progressive mind does not grasp (or at least does not want others to grasp) is that the nature of both the world and of man is out of their control. Those things natural do not change with the times. They endure. They are like that hand, that force, which created them, eternal.

Last Tuesday night, January 8, 2019, will prove to be a watershed moment for our republic. The direction the water takes is yet to be determined., for the most part, part will be up to us, or to be more exact to our clarity and will as a free people.

In less than ten minutes President Trump set the stage for a test of wills which will either continue us on a path of the total rejection of our unique heritage of liberty and its transformation to yet another pale version of centralized tyranny which has characterized the vast bulk of human history, or can begin a long, difficult but determined struggle to reestablish the American Character so central to our original national purpose. Never doubt that the question before us is as fundamental as the type of a people we will be. And never doubt that if this moment is lost, we may well never be able to turn the tide of history to save the very nature of our people.

For well over a century, that has been the exact intent of the so-called progressive left: to change the nature of the American people to one which will accept a false security in place of the independence of personal, individual liberty. Along this decades-long progression, we have been asked to gradually alter basic elements of our founding character be it in regard to family, faith, tradition, property, culture, duty or any one of several other “minor adjustment” to a more modern and supposedly insightful age. Regardless of their title at the time, these elements have really been about such vital issues as constitutionalism, rule of law, individual natural rights, limited government, personal responsibility and all the other things which make up the fundamental culture necessary for a people to independently govern themselves.

This culture is a human one, not a national one. It is born of the very nature of man as gifted to him by his Creator. But it is one requires protection for growth. It requires borders because it stands unique among all the cultures of the world. It has been the world itself that has suppressed those natural rights of man since the beginning. For the good of mankind, it is not the world that has to brought to America. It is Americanism which has to be brought to the world.

All of the points used by President Trump during the short, direct message were clear-eyed, pragmatic and real. There were, of course, a couple more which could have been added to dig even a deeper hole for the sorry pair which waited to give a response. But the message was exact, clear, true and, yes, most “presidential”.

I will disagree only slightly with some of the “pundits” who say that the Dems only now fight border security so hard because of their hate for Trump. The truth is, they were this much against border security all along. They just never had to be so open about it before.

They did not really mind the European radicals who showed up during the early 20th century. In fact, they embraced them. They just could not be so open about it. They have always had a soft spot for communists, socialists and central authority types. Such people wandered through New Deal agencies almost at will, just without banners.

In 1965, the stage was set for the immigration crisis we have been under by the LBJ administration with the help of a young Ted Kennedy. Along the way, there have been any number of “deals” and “measures” to give a false look of concern to the issue. Of course, the current Speaker and Minority Leader spoke out strongly for money and measures that exceeded what Trump is asking for. They knew that to do otherwise would not fly with the American people as a whole. They felt free to appear in favor of these things for basically one reason: they didn’t think they would ever have to live up to them. They knew that because of the lack of political will on the other side.

The left has certainly betrayed our culture, our values and our heritage. But so have those who have sat comfortably at the top of the single political party with a chance of leading in the preservation of those things. While it is true that the Democrat Party never intended to follow its promises to Reagan as a part of the 1986 “immigration deal”, Reagan could not count on real support from much of his own party either. The bulk of the GOP were hardly “Reagan men” and provided plenty of their own resistance to the Gipper. And from 1989 forward, they have turned a willing back to open violations and opened both arms to the Chamber of Commerce crowd.

Yes, the Left hate Donald Trump, and so do most of the upper level GOP types. The media has a special hate that can be not just heard but tasted every evening.

But they don’t hate him or reject him because of his street-smart brashness, braggadocio, tweeting, his crudeness or even his views. If he were a flaming liberal spouting off about all the newest “social justice” causes and still writing big checks to Democrats, he would be a “refreshingly outspoken” character to Hollywood, Democrat politicos and almost all media types. If he simply wrote checks to GOP establishment types, shook their hands at all the right cocktail parties and listened to them as if they were wise and worldly men, he would be allowed his special oddities. He might not really be considered “one of us” but would certainly be allowed the space to be (somewhat) himself and make all the contributions his hotels could support.

No, all of these hate him exactly because he is not “one of them,” sees things through his own glasses and he has the will to actually oppose them. They hate him because they believe he will actually do something. Trump is hardly Reagan philosophically but he has two things in spades that no GOP “leader” since Reagan has shown nearly enough of: conviction and will.

One does not have to be a great scholar to see that our immigration policy of the last several decades as a disaster for any nation hoping to preserve a lasting culture and national identity. It would help but is hardly a requirement. A functioning brain and some common horse sense will more than fill the bill. One does not need to pour through piles of data to know without a doubt that millions of American citizens suffer because of the path we have taken.

I do, for the most part, believe an observation about President Trump made this week by Vice President Mike Pence. Without quoting directly, I will paraphrase the Vice President as saying Trump simply does not see situations from political standpoints. I believe that mostly the president sees matters in pragmatic terms and hardly political at all. The issues for him are; does it works, how does it work, what would be better. It is much more the world we all have to live in. His convictions are not based on politics but a pragmatic realism that often the politico avoids at all costs. His convictions are not based on what position he will hold ten years from now or even if he will be liked ten years from now: he left a much better job to take this one.

But what the left, the establishment types and media hate about this president most of all is that behind that conviction (whatever it is) stands a will that shows them little, if any, respect. It is the type of will accompanied by action. For almost nine decades, the left has maintained a step by step march of their agenda that was only interrupted during the Reagan terms of office. In all other times, they knew they could advance, often with the help of an ingrained establishment of the GOP, the ball if only a few yards at a time without any retreat. The Republican approach to a hostile and biased media was either quiet toleration or to kiss up by vainly trying to “meet in the middle”. But it was always so-called progressivism that advanced. It was Americanism that lost ground.

The only Republican leader who actually challenged and “handled” the media was Reagan. So does this president, certainly in a different way, a different style. But he answers and he acts. If I agree with it or am even comfortable with it is not the issue. The issue is that we are at a national crisis point that can change us forever and the fight is a desperate one. This president fights, not just with a wet finger in the media winds but with a will to win, with substance.

I will now make an observation that I would not have dreamed of at this same date in 2016. But for any fair-minded conservative thinker, it should be easily seen. Since the turn of the 20th century, there have been three (and only three) constitutionally consistence administrations. The Trump administration is easily one of those three. And whoever you would put in the number four slot is not even close.

For those who have spent decades pondering about conservative values and the vision of the Founders/Framers, a real moment of truth has arrived. If those values and that vision are more important than style, personalities or even the perceived character of any single individual, then there is no choice but to show to all an iron will about securing our national border. Doing less will be a betrayal of those values and that vision no matter how one tries to rationalize it.

The will of the GOP establishment cannot be counted on. There are already plenty of moves to “cut a deal”. The will has to come from a determined president and a solid, vocal base believing more in liberty than false promises of collectivism.

Some say that we human animals tend to favor critters from other species which reflect ourselves. I have found that to be only partly true. There are far too many humans who seek those weaker than themselves regardless of their species. It gives them a comfort of sorts and even a chance for dominance. But a real working relationship exists best when trust and respect (even a grudging one) is built between two independent and strong individuals. Dominance in these cases is only defined by directions shared.

The only thing of substance I have left to remind me of that stubborn, strong-willed, competitive horse of an odd but distinctive color is an old and faded photo taken after he had reached maturity. Which is odd. There seems to be an abundance of photos from those days taken of colts foaled by mares, horses ridden and plenty of his mother at one stage or another. And in many ways, he was the best one of them all, strong from the ground up and built to travel.

He came by his independence honestly. As much importance is normally placed on the stallion in a colt’s pedigree, most who know will tell you that the mare is more than half responsible for the youngster’s personality. And this colt had a mother with a will, more than a little bit of attitude and a twist or two all her own.

I was in junior high when I bought the mare as a two-year-old. At the time, appaloosas had become a hot item and Dad was actually riding a couple of them for different people. This filly was owned by an elderly farmer of German decent only a few miles down the road from a horse breeder, part-time trader in cattle and bucking stock as well as a former bull rider who would let me sneak around to mount his stock without my mother knowing too much about it. The man owned a big, over 16 hands, App stud out of Canada whose mother had once been the faster thoroughbred north of the Medicine Line, at least according to the owner.

The Canadian stud had sired the young mare who was out of a grade mare the old farmer owned. The two-year-old lacked her sire’s height but was well made and had a nice “blanket” over her hips, was easy to register. She had also spent most of her life as a pet and was maybe the most spoiled rotten colt I had seen to that point.

Since I had bought her with my own money, I was allowed to take care of most of the breaking. And it did become a test of wills at times. She had to be learned. She was cold backed and always would need to be saddled and tied for a while even as a finished horse before you could expect to do much with her. She never did take a bridle well if it was put on her normally. It was best to unbuckle it and slip it behind her ears and re-buckle it. Her son carried on both of those traits.

The bay mare with the blanketed hips had a light touch despite her independent attitude and when she was a finished horse she was ridden mostly with a small, thin bosal and no bit. And without a lot of specific work, she did pick up a few reining and cutting points in App shows.

When it came time to breed her, it was decided to cross her with what had at one time been, according to his owner, “the fastest Appaloosa alive” before going through a rail on a Colorado track. His breeding could be traced back to Man of War on his dam’s side and he had a distinctive color that could best be described as dark peach with a pure white “blanket” and big spots. The owner was what Dad would call a typical “running horse” man in that he had “that one story” where he was within an inch of the big strike but it slipped away through a turn of fate. I have since found that the same can be said of many cutting horsemen, reining horsemen, cotton farmers, football coaches, stockbrokers, car salesmen, etc.

That morning when we first saw the colt already up and walking around his dam, he might well be the best looking new-born colt I have seen. Later that day when my grandfather walked around two sides of the grass trap and gave a single nod of the head with a trace of a grin on his face, I was sure of it.

The only problem was that despite inheriting his sire’s peach color (perhaps a shade lighter), he failed to get spots. In those early days of the Appaloosa Horse Club that meant one could only get “pink papers” on him. He would have to “spot out” before getting regular registration papers which would allow him to be shown. He would live his life as a “grade horse.”

The spring when he was two, I began breaking him. First, he was driven under saddle with a pair of long cotton rope reins until he was responding well enough to the touch of the heavy 5/8 bosal. I don’t recall the exact timeline at this stage of life but that phase was normally 10 days to two weeks before we actually mounted one. I do recall that he was as strong as anything I have ever felt on the end of the reins. But he did respond well.

He also had to be learned, much like his mother. His back wasn’t as “cold,” not quite. But he did have a thing about his ears. And he could almost feel your spur heel before it ever touched him for a queue. When the calf of the leg turned at all, he was responding. He couldn’t be ridden sloppy.

If I ever had any doubts about his strength, they disappeared the first time I rode him outside of the pen. North of our house was a stretch of road that gradually led downhill to a creek bottom where a 50-acre hay field that belonged to a friend often served is a great staging ground for young horses. A few steps beyond was also the wooden bridge that crossed the creek and put one on a steep climb of just more than half a mile to the top of the ridge. This was my regular route to run in the summers between various seasons of football, track, and baseball so I had measured the distance of each segment.

Instead of turning the colt into the hay field, I kept going toward the old wooden bridge. There the colt leaned forward to study the structure, smelled of it a couple of times before he allowed me to squeeze him on to it. After a few nervous steps across the boards, he leaped to the other side and I saw this as a chance to “lope him out” by taking him to the top so I squeezed a little as he hit the ground and we dug hard in a driving lope to the top of the half mile climb. When I pulled him up at the ridge’s crest, I expected to have ridden some edge off him but instead only heard a single heavy breath and his recovery was over.

He would always take a lot of riding to warm him up and I am not sure I was able to really wear him down even with a full day of working cattle, including dragging some calves. And he was competitive.

After a spring and summer of working with him, football season set in and I didn’t get on him for probably two months. Dad had gotten on him a few times but had plenty of his own things to do. So he was fairly “fresh” by the time I saddled him again.

I had saddled and tied him, and longed him some at the end long cotton lead, but probably not enough. I was also talking to someone on the other side of the fence as I climbed on, not nearly carefully enough – something that can be chalked up as a typical sophomore mistake. As I hit the saddle, he “broke up”, dropped his head before I really had control of it and went right to bucking straight for the far end of the rectangle pen behind our house. By the time we got to that far end, I knew that I had weathered some really strong bucks (although in a straight line) and might have even believed I was on the verge of being an actual bronc rider. But at that far end, he made a slight faint to the right and was gone to the left quicker than a blink to leave me sitting on air. He was not only stronger and in better shape than I was. He was a better athlete.

He was always a dependable horse, as long as you paid attention. But he had learned something that day and seemed to always be aware of just how aware you were! If you became sloppy or proved to be not paying attention, you were in danger of being afoot quicker than a hiccup. He would never run off, just snap a couple real hard and turn or perhaps turn hard while snapping off the first one and then stand there as if to say, “Got ya again.” I still believe it was just a competitive game to him…….and I was a lot younger then.

But there was also the young pride of being able to show up to work cattle and knowing that I had the fastest, toughest, hardest-working horse there, even if I had stay on the awares. It probably made me a little better than I would have been.

When I finally gave into the “real world” of full time coaching jobs, bills and a move every couple of years, I sold the horse to a good cowboy who not only could “give him a job” but also appreciated who and what he was. The likes of him were made for doing and not sitting around waiting for the next pleasure ride.

There are some who might consider it a tragic ending when just a few years later he was victim to a lightning strike on a knoll overlooking the north side of the Concho River. But he was well past “smooth mouth” although not quite yet slowing down. He was still an independent, almost defiant being who had not quite lost “who he was” (and had always been) to age and worn joints. And he would never have to.

To give the truest impression of the animal, I would have to go back to something when he was just shy of being a yearling. He was dropped off in a pasture with three others of his same age; another “horse” colt, a black foundation bred stud colt, and two filly colts. Among my duties that spring was the task of driving by the pasture and feeding them by scattering some oats both in some old pans and on the ground. After just the first day, the black colt was starting to look really bad and for no apparent reason. He was losing weight and acted dull, for lack of a better description. After another day of the same, I dropped the oats off and drove off as usual except this time when I had gotten behind the dam of the downhill stock tank, I parked the old truck and crawled up the dam to watch the young horses.

That corner of the pasture has a small recess in the fence about 10 feet by 12 feet caused by an old lane that once led to a barn since gone. What was happening was that as soon as I was out of sight, Peach would get after the other stud colt, work him much like a cutting horse would work a cow and put the black in that small notch in the fence and make him stay. I watched them for some time and Peach would drift away to graze but throw an occasional glance the black’s way to make sure he was still in his place. At times the black would start to inch out of his confinement, but the other horse would raise his head and look him back to his assigned spot. The black had simply not been allowed to eat or maybe even drink since his lighter colored counterpart had arrived.

That peach colored horse came up a few days ago as two of us had finished another long day guiding elk hunters. It was late and we were looking at an early start the next morning. As we discussed the plans for the next day, and with some help from plain old weariness and our brother John Jameson, the subject drifted from which ridges to call from to horses we had ridden. Although the night actually netted only a couple of hours sleep for me, a first-time elk hunter was able to score a fairly nice bull by mid-morning and I was set to search for an old, faded picture when I made my way back to my home station.

Each can draw their own conclusions about the horse’s ability and instincts as well as his personality. They might even draw some about my own. As with most things, I am always a word or two short of drawing as true a picture as I would hope. But there will always be a place all its own for that bull-headed, rawhide tough, joyfully competitive, distinctively colored horse in that special corner of my memories.

The swirl of media around the meeting of Kanye West and President Trump spent most of its energy on personality images of the those two men and not the real issues represented concerning minorities and their actual benefit in a growing economy operating more and more on our intended liberty and less and less on the centralized power of the state. That was to be expected from a media committed to the defense of an expanding “progressive” state.

Those issues involving all American citizens, not just those considered minorities, should be the final focus of that meeting. But it was impossible for me not to look more toward the third man in the meeting. To some, he has always been a hard one to assign to any single box. In many ways, his presence there was what added the most credibility to the meeting.

I will readily admit to being a popular culture hermit despite the efforts of a 14-year-old granddaughter. I have hardly taken notice of Mr. West (or his extended family). But that man sitting to his left with the still broad shoulders, the balding and now shaved head, the graying beard, the walking cane and the still quiet, commanding presence; I have seemingly watched my whole life.

Before I had entered what was then simply known as “junior high” and played in a football game, Dad took me to two NFL games a year to watch the newly-minted Dallas Cowboys play in the real Cotton Bowl. I was allowed to pick one of those games. The other was set in stone. We would watch the Dallas home game against the Cleveland Browns. We would watch Jim Brown run the football. Even as unperceptive as I was at that stage (and some would say still am), I could tell Dad considered it something different from the rest, special. We never missed a chance to see Toots Mansfield rope or Jim Brown run.

In those ancient times, the general admission seats were under $10 and most of the programs that I have saved in the old file cabinet were sold for $1 or less. I saw an aging Bobby Layne set what was then a new but short-lived NFL record for career pass completions. I watched John David Crow run the ball taking the handoff from a youthful Charley Johnson who threw to Sonny Randal and Bobby Joe Conrad. I saw Sonny Jurgensen not just destroy Dallas with an ultra-quick release but play around behind the bench snapping behind the back passes more accurate than most could throw regularly. I watched Y.A. Tittle during his last season, Fran Tarkington scramble and deliver, and the duo of Hornung and Taylor line up behind Starr in their last season together. And for six straight years, I saw Jim Brown run the football live.

In later years when a good deal of my so-called professional life involved both instructing and evaluating those who ran the football, my youthful impression of Jim Brown the football player became even deeper and set in stone. He was the greatest ball carrier ever, period. If one doubts that, it can be discussed another time. The raw numbers are too many and too obvious to commit the space to. And there are a few boxes of taped game film I can dust off that were used for instruction at one time which speak for themselves. To convince of his place among running backs is not the reason to bring him up. And my opinion will not change.

Brown has hardly lived a saints’ life but he has probably lived an honest one. He has certainly had a couple of legal scrapes, mostly from disputes with the women in his life. As far as I am aware of, all have resulted in either acquittal or dismissal except for an incident between him and an officer.

What I am aware of about the post-football Brown is that he has been a quiet (but not silent), strong, and consistent “activist.” I believe in many ways the face he shows the public tends to compare with his philosophy on the field. He would slowly get up after each carry and make take his own time to the huddle. Some didn’t appreciate his easy manner after each play. His reasoning was that when you carry the ball 20 times a game, there will be times you are hurt and punished. He wanted to look the same each time and never let the team know they had affected him. He treated them as if they were not a controlling factor to him. He didn’t have to show others he was hurt.

But in the same vein, he never turned down a physical challenge. He would always meet it head-on. He drew some attention in the 1970s by remarking on the running style of the Steelers’ Franco Harris. He felt Harris was “soft” when he stepped out of bounds on plays when it seemed no more yardage could be gained. Brown’s theory was always that he was the dominant player and would never concede that to the defense. He would not turn down a challenge. Of course, it helps if you are the finest athlete the country ever produced. But he recognized the quality it others when it appeared. The first time he saw Walter Peyton run, he said that he was someone worthy to break his rushing record – and he did.

Most know that Brown put together a movie career that netted him both top billing and plenty of money. But the real success for this man with the skill of Greek gods and feet of clay has been directly working with the youth of gang-infested areas of Los Angeles and Cleveland. It has been a decades-long work.

He has literally put both his time and money where his mouth is. His instructional program is called Amer-I-Can and is designed to create young men who will take charge of their own lives. It teaches fiscal skills and encourages financial independence. Its objective is independent, self-sufficient individuals who will stand up for whatever they believe but still work to be a part of the community as a whole. In other words, it strives to create worthy, responsible and productive citizens. I have reviewed it and find it very Frederick Douglass-like, which I consider a high compliment.

I hardly agree with everything Brown has ever said or stood behind. But I do see him as a strong man who speaks with a strong, direct voice without a lot of chest-beating. He just drives his point home with a smooth but powerful move much like when he scored his touchdowns and then simply dropped the ball to the ground, letting the run speak for itself.

Recently, he publicly made it clear that he would always stand for the flag and not kneel. Others could do as they wished but he considered it his flag. This was hardly playing to the moment. I can recall years ago when as he recalled the greatness and courage of Jackie Robinson in breaking baseball’s color barrier, he made a point of also saying that it would not have been possible without the greatness of Branch Rickey. In fact, he speculated that perhaps Rickey displayed the greater courage. It was up to Robinson to grasp individually the opportunities before him. I believe Brown was saying we are a human nation – but a very good one. Men will always have fights and challenges no matter their surroundings – but we are a good nation which allows those fights and challenges to be played out as they should. I don’t believe Brown fears either fights or challenges.

The visit to the White House was about a president doing what he said he would and creating real opportunities, not gifts. Such black “intellectuals” as Don Lemon and Michael Eric Dyson might refer it as a “minstrel” show but I don’t believe that the old man with the cane ever danced to anyone’s tune except his own.