How Much Can You Tolerate?

The other day I was blessed to wet a line with best selling author and leadership guru Orrin Woodward,(Don't hate because my job is fun, it's still 95%ing), and he brought up an incredible point during conversation. He noted; " Most people won't even notice a difference in their daily lives when this country falls into socialism." His point was, most people live the drudgery of earning a living and are so involved in that, they just accept whatever is thrown at them. Which brought to mind an old saying; "That which you can tolerate, you will never change."

We have a high tolerance level before we finally get going and solve a problem. Winston Churchill once said; "You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing. Once they exhausted every other possibility." Isn't that so true? Look at the terrorism problem, we tolerated their unorganized attacks until 9/11 when they finally did some damage, and the resulting restrictions limited our freedom. They bungled an attempt to drop the World Trade Center and there were only "some" casualties. The blew a hole in the USS Cole and there were only a "few" soldiers lives taken. Only after they took down the towers and plowed a plane into the Pentagon, resulting in mass casualties, did we take notice and "Do the right thing."

Now the terrorists are at it again. While the Homeland Security chief was deciding how to change the colors on the terrorism alert system, they recruited an American soldier to shoot up Fort Hood, and now they've tried to blow up a plane full of people over Detroit. I can't help but wonder how much more we'll tolerate before we, "Do the right thing."

We need to seriously look at what we are tolerating, here's a small list. North Korea is establishing a nuclear program. Hezbollah, runs a terrorist network. Al-qaeda is running amok in the Middle East plotting to destroy our nation. The Taliban is working in unison with both networks. Then there is Iran, who is developing nuclear capabilities to turn Israel to dust. These a just a few of the threats we've chosen to...tolerate.You will lose you freedom if you don't fight for others, because soon that threat will be on your doorstep.

Since we created freedom, we shoulder a responsible for insuring it's survival. Every single group in the paragraph above is as dangerous to us as Nazi Germany was to England. We've learned nothing from Pearl Harbor, World War 1, or the Terrorist Attacks of 9/11. Everyone of those organizations threaten our freedom. We already sit in lines for security to board an airplane compliments of their attacks. We're no longer free to walk about an airport with a bottle of water. Our shampoo has to be in tiny containers to board an airplane. Yet we tolerate this in the name of security, and for good reason. We've not eliminated that threat, we simple accept it. The lesson will be repeated until the lesson is learned!

England threaten us with a 1% sales tax and our fore fathers fought like dogs over that injustice. Where did that attitude go? How does anyone justify living in fear of terrorism in the freest, most powerful nation in the world? The world looks to us to be the example of a free society. Are we really doing a good job? We can change as soon as we learn not to tolerate!

God Bless
Capt. Bill