In this time of national political polarization, one would think by watching our televisions that we are a nation on the brink of disaster. Yet, the world continues to turn as it did millions of years ago, and we here in America enjoy a standard of living that gives us pause to be thankful for what we have. We think that’s a better mindset than being unsatisfied with what we don’t have. My granddad once told me the most despicable animal God put on this earth was the human. He was mostly correct, I think. We tend to screw things up. But we also tend to make things better. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every push, there’s a push-back. That is our reality. Fifty years ago, when there were 3.5 billion of us humans living on this planet, it used to not be such a big deal that the Chinese were burning coal in electric conversion plants that had not a single filter or scrubber on the property. Now that there’s 7.7 billion of us, it matters. 50 years ago there weren’t millions of pounds of plastic bags being manufactured every month in our world. Now we have gigantic islands of plastic bags floating off the coasts of India and China. Most of us can’t even begin to visualize how much $23 trillion dollars actually is. Now we have that amount as our national debt. It will be $24 trillion soon. But, despite it all, we here in America go through our days earning our wages, taking care of our families and mostly doing the right thing. Most of us make the right moral judgment calls. We still make a habit of it. Doesn’t matter that the east and west coast centers of entertainment and news bombard our television screens with upsetting and immoral images and messages. Some of it true. Some of it false. Some of it somewhere in between. However, we tend to mostly ignore it and go about our business of continuing to make the United States of America the greatest example of responsible and positive free enterprise the world has ever known. As Thanksgiving turns the corner toward Christmas, we give thanks to our God for allowing us to be born in this great nation, where we can make a difference for the better. Our friend Brian Walter is doing just that. He has taken it upon himself to challenge the Oklahoma delegation of U.S. Congressmen and Senators to do the right thing by directly asking them to cosponsor the “No Budget, No Pay” Act, which is the first step to begin the process of balancing our federal budget. Very impressive that after hundreds of hours of effort, Brian has now received word from U.S. Congressmen Kevin Hern, Markwayne Mullin, Tom Cole and Frank Lucas that they will support the bill. Next in Brian’s sights are Kendra Horn and U.S. Senators James Lankford and Jim Inhofe. We are proud of Brian for taking it upon himself to encourage our state’s U.S. legislative delegation to embrace self-sacrifice in order to address our nation’s dysfunction and financial mess. The more things change, the more they stay the same. We can’t help but be reminded of Benjamin Franklin’s quote from the early years of our democracy: “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” Hmmm…70% of our national spending each year now goes to entitlement payments. When you add the seven percent that goes annually to servicing the interest on our ever-growing national debt, we see fairly quickly where all of this is leading: 23% for all the rest. Sobering numbers. For many, many years we have had way too many vote-buying politicians in Washington D.C., and not enough statesmen and patriots. I think we do indeed have the problem Mr. Franklin warned us about, and it is in our laps right now. We are there.