Observations©

By Donald S. Conkey

Date: June 4, 2009 - # 9923 - Title:  America provided me with freedom, liberty and opportunity (821)

Having lived through more than a third of America’s 222 year history I have been privileged to have lived in a nation that has provided me with more freedom, liberty and opportunity than any other nation worldwide. And I am grateful for the life that America has allowed me and my family to have. My life span likely represents the most prosperous 82 years in world history. I pray America will continue to provide my 17^th  great-grandchild, Samuel Benjamin Conkey, born May 16 to grandson Donald and his wife Emily Black Conkey, those same freedoms, liberties and opportunities it has provided me.

            But it won’t just happen. Don and his new son will have to face the same challenges every generation has historically faced – opposition by those bent on enslaving mankind. This is an ongoing battle between the forces of good and evil. And these forces of good and evil are as real as the sun rising each morning. They are forces of ‘the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God’ according to Thomas Jefferson.

My youth was lived during the great depression. I saw and felt the fear of my parents when dad lost his teaching job in 1934. Neighbors lost farms. It was difficult times. An orange was often the only Christmas gift we received. Pigweeds were cooked as greens as a spring tonic. Saturday night baths were in a large tub in front of a hot pot bellied stove. My high school days were lived during World War II, a war to end all wars, but didn’t. And every thing was rationed. Gold Star flags hung in many front windows and represented a loved one killed in defense of America’s freedoms.

That war ended but Stalin attempted to re-enslave the world and the Cold War ensued. Even as the Cold War raged North Korea invaded South Korea (is history repeating itself) and President Truman ordered U.S. troops into Korea. It was then my time to go to war – serving three years, two in Japan.

Following my discharge, and with dreams of farming shattered, I returned to college at age 28. I lived on a $160 monthly GI allowance and the 75 cents an hour I earned for washing dishes and setting up bowling pins. I graduated during the 1958 depression and was the only member of my graduating class to get a job, a job that required me moving 2000 miles to accept, but it was a job.

And life moved on. I lost a job or two, a home, witnessed the assassination of John Kennedy, saw Johnson’s Great Society and the Viet Nam War change America, watched Martin Luther King’s funeral cortege move through downtown Atlanta, agonized over Nixon’s Water-Gate and Carter’s disastrous Iranian rescue effort, was affected by Nixon’s wage controls, and saw interest rates reach 18 percent with banks requiring 50 percent down payments to buy a house. But I survived my generational challenges and today life is good and my family continues to be the center of my life.

Has much changed? North Korea is again threatening to attack South Korea, we have escalating home foreclosures and unemployment rates, many have lost wealth, and there are wars and rumors of wars worldwide. And there seems to be growing fears regarding the direction the new administration is taking America with harsh political rhetoric continuing to be the norm and continuing to dominate all politics.  

But today, as I ponder the generational challenges my grandson and great grandson will face during their turn on earth, I see more clearly the cycles that come and go during one’s lifetime. The key to surviving the generational challenges of life is to have a clear understanding of the non-bending and eternal laws that govern mankind and how personal choices determine just how free individuals and nations will be.

Individuals who ignore or are ignorant of natural law and God’s laws become enslaved (hooked) to their own self-destructive habits. Nations who choose to ignore God’s laws of liberty pay a price – a loss of their freedoms. D. Todd Christofferson recently wrote, “Freedom of choice is the freedom to obey or disobey existing laws – not the freedom to alter their consequences. Law exists as a foundational element of moral agency with fixed outcomes that do not vary according to our [personal/national] opinions or preferences.”

He then quoted Dallin H. Oaks, a former law school dean and state Supreme Court Justice, who wrote: “We (individuals and nations) are responsible to use our agency in a world of choices. It will not do to pretend that our agency has been taken away when we are not free to exercise it without unwelcome consequences.”

Again, I pray that grandson Don and great grandson Samuel Benjamin Conkey will continue to be blessed with the freedom, liberty and opportunities that has blessed my life – and the lives of all those in my generation.