Being Responsible

At the beginning of our marriage, my husband and I got into credit card trouble.  Between my family, learning to live within our means, and a lot of tears and heartache, we learned a hard lesson.  Credit cards are not magical little cards that can give you what your heart desires without consequence.  There is something to be learned from living within your means.  It took us many years to learn that lesson.  I think it is safe to say now that we have.  However, after going through something like that, you have to “rebuild” your credit.  It almost feels like a scam.  In order to be considered for things like a car loan, mortgage, even renting an apartment, and the best way to do that is to have a credit card again.  *Gack!*  I was so proud that we could get rid of them.  I started to research.  What about a green dot?  This way it is prepaid, you only spend money you have, and you can’t let the debt get out of control if it is based on the money you put in.  I found that they were full of hidden fees, wouldn’t actually help my credit score, and really won’t do the good I wanted.  Then I found something called a secured credit card through my bank.  The credit limit is the amount of money put in, but then the card works like a regular credit card.  We just got approved and I am proud.  This is a great way to rebuild the credit and keep us living within our means, as we are supposed to be doing.  So, it took us young kids about half a decade to get back on our feet and learn this lesson, but we are well on our way to making sure that we don’t make the same mistakes again and we have learned how to live within our means, save for the things that we need, and we are rather proud of what we have accomplished.  We may not live in a mansion, but what we have has been earned with blood, sweat, and tears.  So, if we can figure it out in a relative small amount of time, why can’t our government?

If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it.  It’s not about the credit you might have, it’s about the money you do have.  If your credit card bill goes over the amount that you have in your checking to cover it, there is an issue with spending.  This is true if you are a little family unit or a large government.  So, if your debt is outweighing what you are bringing in there are two options.  You can get a job that brings in more money or you can learn how to live within your means.  In terms of the government, they will turn to two things, cutting spending or taxing us more.  Here’s the catch, the tap of the tax will only last so long.  At some point the people will pay so much in taxes that everyone will need government aid.  At that point spending will go up because more people on aid means more money spent.  It’s a vicious cycle.  It’s a cycle our government has been on for a long time.  It hasn’t worked.  In fact, our debt is going up, not down.  Our taxes are going up, not down.  And the problem?  Still a big issue, look at the election speeches this year.  So what does work?  It doesn’t take rocket science, I don’t think.  I takes the same thing that it took for my husband and I.  Cut spending first.  What do you really need?  I think the government would find that if it backed off of certain programs there would be others to take its place.  It’s not that there aren’t privatized programs out there, it’s that the government likes the monopoly it gets out of being the only game in town.  It makes the politicians look good.  Obviously there are certain things that just can’t be replaced.  When my husband and I looked at what we could chop, the electric bill wasn’t on the list. Neither was food.  There are essentials.  That’s a topic for another post.  However, this election season, when the economy is not just “important” but on life support needing a decision on collapse because what we have now is unsupportable, and becoming responsible because that is what this economy needs to not just give our children the USA we started with, but to continue to allow us to live in the USA we were born into, think long and hard about the candidate you vote for.  Romney and Ryan have my vote.  Fiscal responsibility is Ryan’s legacy in my current home state.  I am proud to call him my Representative.  He calls for the tough choices I have already had to face on a smaller scale.  This is the way of the world.  It’s not easy, there’s no magic cure all that will give us everything we want.  It’s not about that anyway.  It’s about being responsible.

Offensive in the Eye of the Beholder

Everyday I hear things that are offensive to me.  From the walk through Walmart to conversations at a restaurant, there are horrific uses of my religious beliefs for others slang terms.  There is no apology, no call for a paradigm shift that would be inclusive of my beliefs that would show toleration to how I live.  In fact, quite the opposite is true.  I am told by those who are the most “tolerant” that  my beliefs are archaic, intolerant, and possibly violent.  I really am just the girl next door.  I am the preacher’s daughter and the preacher’s wife.  I am a Christian.

This, however, seems to be more threatening to some than the most violent criminals in prison.  Battling church’s and even individual Christians at every turn, more and more atheist groups, claiming separation of church and state, are trying to force churches underground, with government support, stating that it is illegal to speak of God in public because it is against the Constitutional freedom of others.  The Constitution was written at  a time when people were coerced to go to church by the government and told how they were to believe and how they were to worship God.  The point of having religious freedom is not to have freedom from religion but to have a freedom to practice religion the way we choose.  I should be just as free to talk about Christ if the subject came up as I am to talk about the cloth pads I use instead of disposable.  It’s about the freedom of choice.  In fact, anyone who truly values their freedom here in the United States should value and treasure the gambit of religious beliefs, from atheism to Christianity, from Judaism to Islam.  The point of “separation of church and state” is to keep the state from mandating a religion, even if that religion is atheism.  So, in fact, each time the court orders an individual to halt any type of religious action, no matter if it is Christian, Wicca, Mormon, or Sikh, it is violating the rights of those it is supposed to protect, not upholding the Constitutional “right” of “separation of church and state”.  (I’d still like to know where in the Constitution that phrase comes from.)  It’s not about whether or not an individual is offended.  If that is the litmus test, then a lot of people should halt their manner of speech as I am offended!  However, I recognize it’s their right, though I disagree, and I will not bother with it so long as it doesn’t become an issue.

Where it becomes an issue is if I am required or mandated to become a part of something that is not my belief.  If, in my speech, I want to thank Jesus Christ for my many blessings in life, that is actually no problem.  Those who are listening can either decide to agree or not to agree, but it doesn’t force them to do anything more than listen to my testimony.  If it is too offensive, they are free to get up and leave, tune me out with the use of an iPod, or start up a conversation with the person next to them.  I have done that on many occasions, from political speeches that I couldn’t stomach to teacher’s lectures that bored me.  However, if I forced someone to hear this or they would be arrested, detained, or otherwise put through the government judicial system, this would be a problem.  The line that the government wouldn’t mandate a single religion would be crossed and that would be a violation of the Constitution.

However, the opposite is true in our country today.  Crosses are being taken down from public and private lands because it offends those who may be of another religious persuasion.  The court then rules against one religion and for another in those cases.  Other examples can be found here in a report put out by foxnews.com.  It’s a fascinating read.