The Authority Disconnect, Part 1: Obama v. American Business

I'm not what you would call much of a political aficionado. I used to be big into the political game back when Bush was fighting off Gore and Kerry and people still cared about 9/11. But since I graduated high school and moved to college, I've been swamped by engineering work and just haven't had much time or desire to wade into the morass of current events and political debate. Especially with Obama's election and the unyielding, entitlement-loving, spending-crazy Democrats taking the country in dark directions, there didn't feel like there was anything I could do to make much of a difference in the outcome. So I retreated into my world of college homework, video games, and Ohio State sports teams.

Don't get me wrong, either. I love my country and care very much about anything that affects its well-being. When I'm not bleeding Scarlet & Gray, I'm bleeding Red, White, & Blue [Side note: I have weird colored blood]. Seeing the flag waving in the wind fills me with pride; singing the National Anthem gives me chills. Anything or anyone that threatens my country earns my enduring hatred, including the increasingly idiotic clowns that call themselves politicians.

Recently, I have had a bit of time to dedicate to news and keeping up with the elections (if you read my last post - no, not the Fourth of Urb-ly post - you'll understand why this is so) and I've begun to see a disturbing trend in the authority figures of this country. I've decided to call it "The Authority Disconnect" because I feel like that encompasses the heart of the issue here: there is a severe disconnect between the people that run this country and the people that lie under their authority. The government doesn't understand its own citizens anymore.

The biggest demonstration of this disconnect occurred Friday, when Obama made the following remarks in a speech in Roanoke, VA [Side note: I thought that town disappeared in the 1700's?]:

--- "If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet." ---

The sheer hubris and disrespect of these comments was glaring to me, particularly because I've grown up with parents who have worked extremely hard to build up their business. My dad is an orthodontist who has put years of effort into building his practice into a profitable business. He still puts in long hours each week to improve others' lives through his work, and he does it through no help from the government. In fact, I would say that due to the thousands of taxes, laws, and regulations, the government has actually been a hindrance to the success of my family's livelihood. The "fair share" of taxes that my parent's pay [I would give numbers, but I don't want to give away financial information. Suffice to say it's ~(292/5.84)%] alone have prevented them from investing as much back into the local economy or from hiring more employees to help reduce that ubiquitous unemployment percentage. So it's safe to say in our case that the government isn't doing anything to benefit our business.

 Strangely I would almost agree to Obama's central point, in that anyone who has ever made it to the top in the business world received help from others along the way. But the two implications he made - 1) that business owners deserve none of the credit for their work and 2) that the government had a hand in the success of American business - are completely ridiculous and illustrate how out of touch the leadership of this country really is with its people.

This story, which inspired this post, particularly resonated with me. The author's story - typical of many small businesses in America - serves to convict Obama even more. Obama is a man hell-bent on destroying capitalism. He is determined that the poor, oppressed masses be dependent on him, his party, and the government for survival, in order that he can obtain their votes for his reelection bid.

According to this article on CNN, one in three Americans is dependent on Medicaid, food stamps, or some other type of government assistance. Factor in Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment, and "nearly half of the nation lived in a household that received a government check". To me, that is an absurd number, one that shouldn't even be close to that high. And what does it all mean? That the government, Democrats in particular, has created a nation comprised of dependents. And if Obama can succeed in breaking down the other 50 percent, then he will have the entire nation beholden to governmental power. America will once again become a totalitarian state, a step way back to the times before the country's beginning.

 If Obama really believes the comments he made - that business in America owes its success to the government - and if he really is dead set on destroying American business, he is as loony as he appears in this picture. At the very least, it is apparent that he never really paid attention in his elementary history class. And, as the saying goes, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (George Santayana, Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense).

The American Revolution did not start for petty reasons. The people of the American colonies decided to throw off the British government because of the heavy-handed rulings handed down by the king. Dating to the 1730's, the kings of Great Britain began passing successively more restrictive legislation, designed to wring the wealth from the colonies with taxes and levies. Parliament and the king continually discarded their citizens' wishes as unimportant and pilfered the riches of America, denying the colonists the fruits of their labor. All of it, of course, came without the consent of the colonists, who eventually decided that they had tolerated the abuse of their rights long enough. In July of 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed and the rest is history; the colonies won their freedom through hard fought battles, until the British were defeated and fled. From there, America grew on the backs of its citizens' determination and ingenuity in building industries and commerce from the wealth of the country. Yet, more than 200 years later, here we stand in a strikingly similar situation as that which birthed this great nation.

Our nation's government, led by the pro-tax, pro-entitlement Democrats, seems poised to pass even more taxes on American business owners. Not only is this unfair (Obama calling on top earners to pay their "fair share" is borderline imbecilic, as this graph shows) due to the uneven division of the taxes among the classes, it is unwanted by the American citizens. People do not want to be taxed. As I've experienced over the past six weeks of having a job, there is nothing more demoralizing than getting a pay check and seeing how MUCH of it is being taken by the government. And I'm not even a "top earner"! It horrifies me to think of how much those "top earners" are paying in taxes. Yet, in spite of this, the Democrats insist on continuing to pilfer the pockets of hard-working Americans everywhere, while distributing those earnings to their government-addicted constituents.

I call Obama and his cronies disconnected because it seems to me they don't realize how this country was founded in the first place. While America does owe some of its freedom to unfair government legislation (Old Obi seems to stick on this part), in that the unjust tax laws of Britain incited the colonies to revolution, which in turn won American freedom, the majority of the credit goes to the individual citizens who rose up to fight tyranny. It was on the back of the individual that this nation grew to be the greatest country in the world, individuals like Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, Sam Walton, and Bill Gates, who worked and struggled and built up the American economy through innovation and ingenuity and business.

Even in war, it wasn't the government making the sacrifice, it was the individual, the soldier in the trench, slogging through the mud and bullets, sacrificing themselves to keep our country safe. I highly doubt that Obama would argue that because the government supplies their equipment that soldiers should give more of their lives to serving in the military. So, why do the same to the people who are, in more ways than one, working to bring about the betterment of our country. Its strikes me as ridiculous that you would penalize the hard work of the American people by taxing them to death, when it was their work that built the country in the first place.

Obama would take more of American's money simply because the government built the roads on which they drive to work. Instead of encouraging success, he's empowering laziness and breaking down the very foundation on which our country was built. By threatening to oppress the nation's businesses, Obama has spit in the face of American freedom. All I have to say is,

Disconnection complete.

Happy (Late) 4th, Buckeye Nation!

A Belated Happy Fourth of July from OSU Coach Urban Meyer!

Go Bucks!

Bored at Work: July 9

"What to do?... What to do?..."

That is the quandary that I find myself in at the moment. I'm currently trapped in one of those dead periods at work when there is not a whole lot to do. Nothing new has come along yet and everything else has been done already. And so I sit here wondering how to fill the gaps between nothing and something. Which, of course, led me to write this blog post nearly 10 months after my last posting.

A little update then: it is currently summer vacation for this guy, and I happened to secure a summer internship at Honeywell Process Solutions. I got hired as a summer intern in their engineering division and am currently involved in setting up and recording testing procedures for different types of gas meter measuring and reporting devices. This requires a lot of email sending, meetings, and waiting for parts to come in, periodically broken up by moments of intense activity when actual testing gets done.

Now, Honeywell is a large company, but this isn't one of the big offices. I work in a small building of maybe 50 people, and of those I see maybe 3 or 4 on a busy day. This bears a lot of responsibility for my mostly uneventful work schedule and, like I said, unless something critical comes up, there are large amounts of down time between projects. Still, the atmosphere is very relaxed and casual, and the freedom to get work done how and when I want (deadlines notwithstanding) is a blessing. Plus, I can come in and leave work whenever I want to, provided I get my 8 hours in. Lunch is even flexible: I can take one early or late; it doesn't matter! So instead of being tied in to rush hour traffic like the 9-to-5-ers, I can come in at 7:30 and be done by 4:00. Not having to deal with the slow death that is highway traffic is another relief.

The people here are nice to work with, not very uptight at all, which makes it better to work here. The other interns (there are 3 of us here) are pretty cool, too, and hard workers. Overall I'd say the atmosphere here is a good one, not at all unpleasant. The pay is good, the hours are good, the people are nice; what more could I ask for from a summer job?

And at the very least, I have a job, where some people have been without one for a very long time. I get to work in my field of choice and get paid to do it. And for that alone I have to thank God.

I'm not just saying that, either. Without God's provision, I would not be working where I am right now. In fact, I probably would not be working at all. The story of how I got this job is still so crazy to me, and it will probably be crazy to you. Here's how things went down:

It was maybe a month or so before I came home for the summer and my dad was bugging me again about looking for an internship. I had dilly-dallied on looking for a job (admittedly the job market intimidated me and I didn't feel like I had much to offer a big corporation) so I opened up OSU's Engineering Career Services site one Monday evening and browsed through the job postings, most of which didn't really apply to/interest me. I came across Honeywell's posting, which was very brief but seemed promising, and sent in my resume on a whim.

The very next day (Tuesday) I got an email from my current supervisor asking if I wanted to set up a phone interview on Wednesday. Seeing as how I hadn't had ANYONE bite on my resume before, I happily agreed to do the interview the next day, then spent the next 24 hours in nervous anticipation at what was my only shot at a job to date.

Wednesday came and I set up my computer and phone for the interview. The time came and the phone rang and I was off. We did the standard interview things: intros, what I knew about Honeywell, what classes/labs I had done, what I wanted to do with my career. Things went really well and I felt like I had gelled with the interviewers (plural; there were two people interviewing me. No pressure, huh?). This was my chance to snag a real job. They told me as we hung up that they would be making final decisions by Friday and let me know sometime the next week.

Well, Thursday came and classes along with it, so I was busy for most of the day, but when I got home there was an email in my inbox from my supervisor. I opened it up, read the words, then proceeded to do a victory lap around my house, fists held high in triumph and joy. They had offered me a job! In the span of 4 days, I went from not knowing at all what I was going to do this summer to having a clear (and lucrative) plan. And I honestly can say I had nothing to do with it. All I did was submit a resume and then answer questions during the interview. I believe it was only by God's plan and blessing that I ended up with a job.
 After all, even the stuff on my resume, I owe to the talents and abilities He has given me.

It still seems crazy to me how I got this job. Mind = Blown. Just because of that story, I am thankful so much for this job, including those down times where I just don't know "what to do..."

Return to Columbus

It's finally that time again: I'm going back to Ohio State. It feels like forever and a day since I last stepped foot on campus for a class. The last time I was at school was June 8th, over three and a half months ago, which feels like forever when all your friends are back in school already. At least next year we'll be on semesters like everyone else, but for this year I'll have to deal with one final dose of quarters, meaning I go back later and get out later, not a very fun situation.

But still, this year is bringing with it a lot of excitement. On Friday, I'm moving in to my new house (new in the sense that I have never lived there before. It's not in the best of shape) where I'll be living with nine other guys. All of us are in Cru, so it will be fun to live with other Christian brothers for a change. Our house is called the Bruderhof, which either stands for brotherhood or house of brothers, I'm not sure, but I'm looking forward to creating a lasting brotherhood between all my housemates. It's definitely going to be a cool experience and I look forward to what God will do in our house this year.

Other excitement comes in the form of new responsibilities on campus. I am deeply involved with the Campus Crusade (Cru) movement on campus and this year I've been given the opportunity to act as head tech guy for the weekly Cru meetings. I almost stumbled into the job by accident. I was in Indianapolis for Christmas Conference and got to talking with an OSU Cru staffer about how I used to do tech for my high school youth group. As it happened, the guy who ran tech was a senior who was graduating so the staffer introduced me to him and the rest of the crew and everything went from there. I got training for most of Spring quarter and now this year I'll be heading up the Cru crew. I'm really excited because I love technology and making sure things run smoothly for meetings, so this year is going to be fun.

I'm also planning on leading my Bible study with one of my buddies this year. We lost a couple of our leaders to graduation, so I felt like this was an opportunity to step up and live out the gospel more by leading underclassmen and freshmen to Christ. I want to make an impact on my university before I graduate and this will be an awesome way to maybe change a few lives or the whole campus for Christ. It will be interesting, as I've never lead a bible study full time before, but if God really wants me to do this, He'll give me the words to say.

Classes will be different as well, since I'm out of the freshmen sequence finally. I'm excited to try new and different subjects and to get a taste for what being an ECE major is like. Hopefully things won't be too terribly difficult, but as an engineer, there's not that much hope on that front. I just pray that I end up enjoying what I'm doing because I don't know what else I would do. Maybe become an orthodontist like my dad. (He says he doesn't care if I do or not, but I know he wants me to ;-P)

Other than that, I'm looking forward to seeing all my friends again, especially the ones I made during my time in Chicago. I feel like I'm building a bigger, more solid group of friends and I'm hoping to build that group even more. Chicago taught me a lot about socializing, something I am desperately poor at doing, so I feel more confident around different types of people. This year is going to be exciting!

Home Again, Home Again

Well, I'm back, both on the blog and back at my home in beautiful Lebanon, Ohio. I sincerely apologize for keeping everyone out of the loop for the past 3 1/2 weeks. 'Twas a busy time on Chicago Summer Project and I was experiencing life to the fullest with all of my fellow project students. And oh, what a life that was! So many things happened after I last blogged. The "Five-Dollar Prom" was just the beginning.

But first, an update on our ministry. As project began to wind down and more and more students finished up their time working at real jobs, we began to spend more and more time on campus and around the city, sharing the gospel and engaging people in conversation about what they believed. We were able to do several outreaches, as well. Twice groups went throughout downtown handing out sandwiches to the homeless on the streets. Several students shared stories of how grateful people were for simply being blessed with a sandwich. It was awesome that our group could be a blessing to those in need.

On UIC's campus, we did a poster/prayer outreach for finals week. We created posters with different thought-provoking questions like "What burdens you?", "Who/What inspires you?", and of course "How can we pray for you?". People were able to come up and write down their thoughts and we would talk to them about what they wrote. It gave us an interesting avenue to present the gospel and it worked pretty well.

I don't have exact statistics for our outreach from the entire summer, but I heard at one point a few weeks ago that we had initiated over 150 conversations with students on campus, presented the gospel 60-some times, and presented the "Spirit-filled Life" (a message to believers on living a life filled with the Holy Spirit) over 50 times. So the students of Chicago have definitely been seeded with the Gospel.

Besides blessing our ministry in the city, God also blessed me with a great many opportunities to explore the city and experience Chicago at it's best. That experience included going to see a Cubs game at Wrigley Field when the Reds were in town. About 15 of us went, and while it was not as enjoyable to see the Reds get hammered into the ground, it was fun to go out as a group and see a classic part of the Chicago experience.

My favorite experience by far was going to see Coldplay at Lollapalooza. I, two of my roommates, and another guy from OSU trekked out at 8:00 in the morning so that we would be first in line at the gates, which didn't open until 11:00am. So we sat and waited, while the line grew behind us. When the gates did open, we raced to the stage where Coldplay was going to play at 8:30 that night and promptly took up residence in THE VERY FRONT ROW. More and more people came as the day wore on and eventually we were wedged so close that we couldn't sit down or even hope to get out. It didn't help that it was sweltering and we were woefully short on water. We also suffered through five other bands blasting out music right into our ears before Coldplay came on stage. But when they appeared, it was so worth it. They played hit after blessed hit, serenading our ears with beautiful waves of sound. And the new stuff they played was phenomenal, only increasing my enthusiasm for the new album, which comes out October 24th, btw. And when it was over and the crowds dispersed out into the city, I couldn't help but feel like I had just been in heaven.

After the concert, the only big event left was the Final Banquet. Think prom for Christian college students and you'll get a good picture of what it was like. Everyone on project got dressed up and looking all fly and flossy. Then we headed out to the banquet venue, a cozy loft-type building on the outskirts of town. We had awesome food catered by a french restaurant that I can't recall the name of; the staff project directors made a cameo with words of encouragement and advice; there was another dance party, though it was shorter than that first one; we had a project slideshow, with superlatives for everyone; and we ended with an acoustic worship set. It was a great cap to a wonderful summer, and reinforced the great community that we had built in just ten short weeks. And now we can take that back to our campuses and grow our movements all across the country.

I am so glad that I was able to go on this trip. God definitely used these ten weeks to change me, both spiritually and personally. He taught me to trust in Him through the good and the bad, that the Christian walk is not always easy and is often very difficult, and that if I trust in Him through everything, it will all work out for my good in the end. He also taught me that it is okay to be social, that girls can be my friends too, and that I need my brothers in Christ dearly. I have been blessed with a great number of new friends, especially at OSU, and through all I've learned and experienced this summer, I feel more prepared to take on a new school year and to grow in the Lord.

Thank you so much for all your support. I would not have been able to do this without your help.

Thanks, and much love,
Brad Girdwood

Back to Normal

Another week. Another update.

Well, it seems I'm back in my 7-or-so-day cycle of posting updates. I hope the past week has been kind to all of you and that God has been teaching you more about him and his character.

Thursday was another meeting day, so not a whole lot to address there. The projector has been nice to me the past few weeks, I think because it felt bad for all the trouble it's given me, and has worked like a champ. The student leadership has been doing a great job organizing the meetings, too; it hardly feels like the staff is gone at all. We've also been seeing a lot of students from campuses coming to the meetings, which is encouraging.

This weekend was an awesome community-building experience for me. I've been getting to know people better and better on the project and we are all coming together as a group. Friday I went out with a group of guys to play basketball in a park near where we live. That was an awesome community time, and good exercise, too! Friday night I had dinner with some of the OSU girls and then we watched "Country Strong" and laughed at how confusing and terrible it was.

Saturday I went to Goodwill with a group so that we could get outfits for our "Five Dollar Prom" on Sunday. We were such kids in a candy store as we mixed and matched superbly absurd outfits. It was a really fun and goofy time. I ended up going as a bro, with a crazy patterned shirt and tacky pants.

On Sunday, we had a progressive dinner, which was basically the girls making the guys dinner as appreciation for all our appreciation to them. We split up into groups of eight guys and then traveled around to different rooms for different courses. First there were appetizers. Our girls made us buffalo chicken nuggets and nachos with sausage cheese dip. It was so good it ended up filling us up pretty good. For the main course we had stir-fry, also tasty and wonderful, though I think only one of us finished a bowl because we were so full. By the time we got to dessert, I didn't know if we could eat anymore, but since the dessert was Oreo cheesecake and sugar cookies, I had to try some. It was so worth it.

The icing on this awesome cake of community was the dance party Sunday night. We set up a computer with tunes in the meeting room and then partied like it was Twenty-Eleven. It was a hot, crazy time - I was sweating buckets by the end - but so fun, and yes, I did break it down several times myself. I think we all enjoyed just being able to go nuts and have a good time after the past seven weeks.

We are definitely getting closer as a group, and in these last three weeks we have here I think God will continue to build us up as a group. If there's one thing that God has taught me in the past week, it's that community is so very important. Don't neglect community.

Trials

"In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."
- 1 Peter 1:6-7

I will admit that the past few days have seen all kinds of trials shoved my way. From disappointed hopes to juvenile arguments to tense moments of uncertainty and even to anger and frustration toward my brothers, the past few days have been a whirlwind of emotion, and I can say that I easily eclipsed in a couple days my amount of tears shed from the first half of the year. Satan has been attacking me full force, dragging me away from my brothers and my God, trying to convince me that he is right and not God. But I think all of this has been serving to teach me a lesson of dependence on God and Christ's salvation.

One of the guys on project made a comment last night that took me aback. He said that regardless of whether we got hurt or injured, exiled or ostracized, if anything bad happened to us, as long as it brought us closer to Christ and into a better understanding of him, then it was all worth it in the end. At the time, that really bothered me, mostly because brothers had really been hurt (albeit unintentionally) in the name of community building. It seemed ridiculous to me that someone getting hurt could result in anything good.

But after thinking about it for awhile, and listening to a sermon on trials by Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, I have actually come to believe that that is the right attitude. Bad things come into our lives not to harm us but to bring us closer to God and Christ. As Peter says in his first letter, trials work to strengthen and perfect our faith, to prove that it is genuine. If we stick with God through the hard times, He will build us up and continue to shape us into the sons and daughters that He wants us to be. "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose." - Romans 8:28. God works in ALL things, good or bad. He never guarantees our lives will be good, so we should not expect things to go well all the time, but we should take heart in the trials because God is working in us.

In fact, we should rejoice in our trials, because God is trying to improve us. I, being a perfectionist, am always trying to make myself better, but inevitably I fail in my efforts. So the thought that God Himself is trying to make me into a better person is actually kind of exciting. That he cares enough about me to want me to be a better person is humbling and astounding. And we must also remember that we have the greatest gift that has ever been given: Jesus Christ! How we do not rejoice in that always, I do not know, but whenever we face hard times, we should hold on to the fact that, no matter what the world throws at us, we still have Jesus, and when this brief span of eternity called life is over, we will be taken up to heaven to spend eternity with the Creator of the Universe, our Savior and our God.

I hope that you all take heart in this truth, and remember that we have Jesus and that, through trials, God is trying to bring us into a better understanding of Him and His love.