Should Old Acquaintance be forgot,
and never thought upon;
The flames of Love extinguished,
and fully past and gone:
Is thy sweet Heart now grown so cold,
that loving Breast of thine;
That thou canst never once reflect
on Old long syne.
Thus begins a poem by James Watson, from 1711. I repeat it because it is less commonly known than the one created by Bobby Burns, the one we all sing as we watch that ball falling down in Times Square.
Why would I lean toward the one less common, you ask? For the answer I turn to another poem, this one penned in 1920 by Robert Frost:
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
It’s December 29, 2011.
This time of year a lot of people—the one percent ones, or their accountants, especially—are trying to figure out how to cheat the government out of taxes by using all the loopholes their carefully picked stooges have written into the so-called law for them.
I have a better idea. Don’t cheat the government, or anyone. But don’t let them cheat you either. If you give them your money they are going to use it to kill more people, destroy more civilizations, just like they are now. So, don’t give it to them. They have no right to it. Don’t come up with some pseudo-charitable donation because you want to reduce what you will be paying the IRS. Instead, give money to somebody that needs it, because they do need it more than you do. If you have extra money, give it away.
And above all refuse to support the warmongering politicians. Don’t legitimize them, don’t submit to their false promises and false demands.
If you are going to make New Year’s resolutions, let this be one, perhaps the only one:
Stop giving in, and start fighting back.
I’m not suggesting violence. I propose the same strategy utilized by our foreign-policy folks. Don’t provide the enemy with revenue to pursue his evil intent. Don’t provide the government your money to spend in your name in a misguided and evil attempt to dominate the world.
It’s time to Just Say No.
And now I’ll turn the show over to my friend and co-host, Mike Palecek, an American writer.
================
This was Chuck’s intro to the show on December 29, 2011. Why not listen to the show and hear him read it? Here’s the link: December 29, 2011