Calvin Coolidge
Today is Presidents' Day in the United States. It has become a bland, generic Monday holiday, mostly remarkable for clever print and media ad campaigns featuring the images of former presidents. It is quite common to see cartoon versions of Washington and Lincoln touting furniture with zero interest for 14 months or a special automobile clearance sale with mega-deals and great "incentives" to buy. I am disgusted at the circus this so-called holiday has become. However, it is possible to take a moment to remember our past presidents and what they have meant to our nation and privately honor them with quiet remembrance and personal reflection. A prayer for our nation wouldn't hurt, either.The holiday was created to combine Abraham Lincoln's birthday of February 12 with George Washington's of February 22. In the pre-Presidents' Day era BOTH of those days honored these famous and courageous Americans. Both men still rank as the two most popular presidents of all time, regardless of the political bias of the pollster. Leftist pollsters rank Franklin Roosevelt number three and conservative pollsters rank Ronald Reagan in the three spot.
But today, I am honoring one of my personal favorites -- Calvin Coolidge, our 30th president. Be sure to view the tiny video on the first page when you visit the website above. The quotation section is well, quite enlightening. Right about now we could use an astute and low-key leader with practical, down-to-earth solutions for putting the country back to work. My favorite Coolidge quote is, "After all, the chief business of the American people is business." But go here to read the rest of the quotation. [It's in the section titled "Business."] Check out some of the other links available here, as well.
I ran across the following interesting video of President Coolidge. I like what he has to say, even if his presentation is quite old fashioned and charmingly awkward. No teleprompters in sight, either! LOL
If you have a favorite president please feel free to mention him below in your comments. [I would ask that you pick someone other than our current president or his immediate predecessor. I think we should let a bit more time go by, rather like the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, where a player becomes eligible only after he has been retired for 5 years. LOL]
Thanks!
2 comments:
I learn a lot about the U.S.A. - for me that totally unknown country - through your blog and its' comments.
It worries me that it seems to be losing its'optimism.
Good Morning Fly!! I am so glad to provide some useful information to you about the USA. Unfortunately, you are correct. It is losing its optimism.
But the American spirit is not completely dead. There is a roll-up-the-sleeves can-do attitude with people who still believe in what we call the "American Dream" which is basically personal freedom and the opportunity to succeed.
Our current trend is leading toward the social welfare state with cradle to the grave meddling and ridiculous laws and all the rest. Criminals are coddled, children are spoiled & "dumbed down" in school and the middle class is being taxed out of existence.
People are fighting back, though, against our Congress and other politicians who would continue this madness. We're tired of watching industries taken over by the government or shut down completely and more importantly, we've had it up to the back teeth with the idea and execution of wholesale redistribution of wealth. It's not the high-end earners giving up their wealth, it's the middle and lower classes who don't have much to spare and now face destitution.
That's why Coolidge is so appealing. He believed as many of us do that the best government is small and keeps out of the way of law-abiding citizens. We refer to the "Founders" or the "Founding Fathers" of our nation, those serious gentlemen who fought the Crown for our independence and the right to form a new nation. Their ideas of a representative republic have worked fairly well since the late 1700s.
Many of us wish to return to those principles and abandon the overwhelmingly failed socialist model we are now pursuing.
Oh, my, I am on my soapbox again. Sorry about that! This crisis with the sky-high debt, unemployment, general dissatisfaction with greedy politicians and their failed policies, the erosion of our wealth -- has shaken ordinary middle-class Americans like me to the core. We have nothing to lose but everything if we don't speak up. I am afraid I sometimes go a bit overboard. But I do thank you for reading this. It helps the sufferer to talk, but it doesn't always help the listener. LOL
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