A Letter from a Dying Veteran to His Senators: Heartbroken With My Corrupt Government -- Courtesy of Mr. Conservative

"Their lives they held their country's trust; They kept its faith; They died its heroes."

- Quote inscribed on the northeast corner of the University of Nebraska'a Memorial Stadium

There will be no introductory or body paragraphs, nor will there be a conclusion in this article because it will be clear in its intentions. President Obama won convincingly in both the 2008 and 2012 Presidential Elections against his Republican opponents, and has enjoyed to a large degree the phenomena of both the cults of personality and leadership that some of the world's most notorious dictators have experienced throughout history: Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, the Kim family in North Korea, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, and finally Hugo Chavez.  As a recent college graduate, this phenomena was painfully obvious on the campus of the University of Tennessee in my hometown of Knoxville.  The city of Knoxville is very conservative, except for the predominantly-African-American section of town and the university itself.  However, I am comfortable in knowing that the majority of Tennesseans were aware of the dangers this man not only posed upon his first election to the presidency in 2008, but of the policies he has implemented both constitutionally and not.  A few young people, mostly ones who have persevered through the onslaught of the Left's persecution of Christians and Jews nationwide in favor of the violent virtues of the Islamic law Shari'ah, are successfully maintaining a healthy resistance against the rising levels of tyrannical rule we have in our midst in the White House.  As a conservative-libertarian, I am cognizant of the fact that there have been Republican presidents and politicians who have been utterly profligate either morally or politically, as none of us can forget the guilt-by-association of GOP presidents Warren G. Harding and Richard M. Nixon with the Teapot Dome Scandal and Watergate, respectively.  However, neither of those presidents ever were discovered to have directly ordered or surreptitiously enacted policies with the aim towards infringing upon the American people's constitutional rights, particularly those located within the First, Second, Fourth, and Tenth Amendments. Luckily, a large number of middle-age and senior citizens are mature enough to realize that with idolness comes dependency, irresponsibility and unaccountability for one's own actions, and lastly, a society that becomes imbued through its guilt in these endeavors with the stench of decadence and decay.

Our military personnel, both past and present, have traditionally known these facts to be true with regards to presidents who are members of the Democratic Party. While I have not read any articles specifically dedicated to this phenomenon, the incident involving Obama failing to salute the U.S. Marine as he was preparing to board the presidential helicopter had to have been offensive to the Marine and his fellow members of the Semper Fidelis fraternity of officers.  Of course, all the media could do was report how the president returned to shake the hand of the Marine and then brush it off as a non-incident.  You and I, though, patriotic and reverential towards the patriots who have sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears for our great nation, know better than this.  This all occurred after Obama asked Marines to hold umbrellas over the heads of both he and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan in the White House's Rose Garden so they would not become wet while delivering a press conference.  For those who do not know this, Marine Corps regulations prevent Marines from carrying umbrellas while in uniform.  The article written on the subject can be accessed courtesy of The Washington Times. 

Upon reflections of the dozens of websites I found where wounded veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars wrote to President George W. Bush in protest of the conflict, I read on my Facebook news feed an article presented by Mr. Conservative that presents a letter written to Washington State U.S. Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, both Democrats, from a dying veteran, aged 79 years, which lifted my spirits. It was a letter by and of a man who had seen much in his life and had many times engaged in reflecting upon the natures of life and the state of our government in our society.  The man, named Bill Schoonover, is a sage, but then again, does it really take a sage to be capable of sifting through the junk with which the Obama presidency and the congressional Democrats have presented before the American people for so many years? With the continuing flow of revelations of the Obama scandals comes yet another truth presented by various polls that are conducted: there are far fewer people who trust the president or even approve of his policies than those who do.  Most believe he is directly responsible for the constitutional rights violations of the American people, though Obama denies it vehemently and even justifies his abuse of the Fourth Amendment with the PRISM program under the guise that he is "protecting the people."

To conclude this article, it is my great pleasure to present before you the letter by Mr. Schoonover.  Liberals will no doubt regard him as an "ingrate" or an "old, senile man," but even on Death's Door, he is wiser than they (Courtesy of Mr. Conservative):

To:
Senator Patty Murray
Senator Maria Cantwell
Washington , DC , 20510

Dear Senator:

I have tried to live by the rules my entire life. My father was a
Command Sergeant Major , U.S. Army, who died of combat related stresses
shortly after his retirement. It was he who instilled in me those
virtues he felt important – honesty, duty, patriotism and obeying the
laws of God and of our various governments. I have served my country,
paid my taxes, worked hard, volunteered and donated my fair share of
money, time and artifacts.

Today, as I approach my 79th birthday, I am heart-broken when I look
at my country and my government. I shall only point out a very few
things abysmally wrong which you can multiply by a thousand fold. I
have calculated that all the money I have paid in income taxes my
entire life cannot even keep the Senate barbershop open for one year!
Only Heaven and a few tight-lipped actuarial types know what the
Senate dining room costs the taxpayers. So please, enjoy your haircuts
and meals on us.

Last year, the president spent an estimated 1.4 $billion on himself
and his family. The vice president spends $millions on hotels. They
have had 8 vacations so far this year! And our House of
Representatives and Senate have become America’s answer to the Saudi
royal family. You have become the “perfumed princes and princesses” of
our country.

In the middle of the night, you voted in the Affordable Health Care
Act, a.k.a. “Obama Care,” a bill which no more than a handful of
senators or representatives read more than several paragraphs, crammed
it down our throats, and then promptly exempted yourselves from it
substituting your own taxpayer-subsidized golden health care
insurance.

You live exceedingly well, eat and drink as well as the “one
per centers,” consistently vote yourselves perks and pay raises while
making 3.5 times the average U.S. individual income, and give up
nothing while you (as well as the president and VP) ask us to
sacrifice due to sequestration (for which, of course, you plan to
blame the Republicans, anyway).

You understand very well the only two rules you need to know – (1) How
to get elected, and (2) How to get re-elected. And you do this with
the aid of an eagerly willing and partisan press, speeches permeated
with a certain economy of truth, and by buying the votes of the
greedy, the ill-informed and under-educated citizens (and
non-citizens, too, many of whom do vote ) who are looking for a
handout rather than a job. Your so-called “safety net” has become a
hammock for the lazy. And, what is it now, about 49 or 50 million on
food stamps – pretty much all Democrat voters – and the program is
absolutely rife with fraud with absolutely no congressional oversight?
I would offer that you are not entirely to blame. What changed you is
the seductive environment of power in which you have immersed
yourselves. It is the nature of both houses of Congress which requires
you to subordinate your virtue in order to get anything done until you
have achieved a leadership role. To paraphrase President Reagan, it
appears that the second oldest profession (politics), bears a
remarkably strong resemblance to the oldest.

As the hirsute first Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834 -
1902), English historian and moralist, so aptly and accurately stated,
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great
men are almost always bad men.” I’m only guessing that this applies to
the female sex as well. Tell me, is there a more corrupt entity in
this country than Congress?

While we middle class people continue to struggle, our government
becomes less and less transparent, more and more bureaucratic, and
ever so much more dictatorial, using Czars and Secretaries to tell us
(just to mention a very few) what kind of light bulbs we must
purchase, how much soda or hamburgers we can eat, what cars we can
drive, gasoline to use, and what health care we must buy. Countless
thousands of pages of regulations strangle our businesses costing the
consumer more and more every day.

As I face my final year, or so, with cancer, my president and my
government tell me “You’ll just have to take a pill,” while you,
Senator, your colleagues, the president, and other exulted government
officials and their families will get the best possible health care on
our tax dollars until you are called home by your Creator while also
enjoying a retirement beyond my wildest dreams, which of course, you
voted for yourselves and we pay for.

The chances of you reading this letter are practically zero as your
staff will not pass it on, but with a little luck, a form letter
response might be generated by them with an auto signature applied,
hoping we will believe that you, our senator or representative, has
heard us and actually cares. This letter will, however, go on line
where many others will have the chance to read one person’s opinion,
rightly or wrongly, about this government, its administration and its
senators and representatives.

I only hope that occasionally you might quietly thank the taxpayer for
all the generous entitlements which you have voted yourselves, for
which, by law, we must pay, unless, of course, it just goes on the $17
trillion national debt for which your children and ours, and your
grandchildren and ours,ad infinitum, must eventually try to pick up
the tab.

My final thoughts are that it must take a person who has either lost

his or her soul, or conscience, or both, to seek re-election and

continue to destroy this country I deeply love and put it so far in

debt that we will never pay it off while your lot improves by the

minute, because of your power. For you, Senator, will never stand up

to the rascals in your House who constantly deceive the American

people. And that, my dear Senator, is how power has corrupted you and

the entire Congress. The only answer to clean up this cesspool is term

limits. This, of course, will kill the goose that lays your golden

eggs. And woe be to him (or her) who would dare to bring it up.

Sincerely,
Bill Schoonover