"So, you say you want a revolution..."

They both say they want to give us change, but change isn't given--it is accomplished. And, real change ain't never easy. Most often it is a messy, deadly dangerous undertaking--particularly when delayed for want of past resolve.

I wholeheartedly concur with both Senators McCain and Obama that our country's current trajectory through tomorrow's history lesson requires some significant mid-course corrections. What I don't agree with them on, is the direction in which either of them think, as best as I can tell from their amorphous pandering, that they believe we must set our sails. More discouraging is their failure so far to challenge us to take the hard actions and make the serious sacrifices necessary to arrest our plunge toward the dustbin of empires lost to insolvency, invasion and irrelevancy.

Life is not a "let's pretend" game. Every current action has a future consequence. The course on which my generation of politicians has set our nation fails to recognize that unavoidable truth. Politically expedient current, and recent past, actions have the effect of high angle artillery rounds fired above our advance and landing danger-close as we plunge headlong in the attack of hedonistic objectives. And, like irretrievable artillery rounds whose impact and effect is inevitable, the consequences of poor national leadership decisions cannot be avoided. The best that can be hoped for is that crisis will be met by heroic leadership that will rally the survivors and lead then out of the kill zone, and on to mission accomplishment. The worst result is leaderless paralysis of the people under fire and collapse of their national will--leaving them ripe for assimilation by a neighbor, irrespective of the height of their former power and glory. This is not conjecture--it is history.

So, let's change--we need to.

Let's change the way we treat our enemies. Let's either kill 'em or kiss 'em--but let's stop just talking tough and letting them continue to kick sand on our picnic blanket. Otherwise, we better start learning how to speak their language and pray to their god.

Let's change the way we treat the new neighbors moving into our neighborhood. Let's assimilate them before they assimilate us. Let's give them the privileges of citizenship and expect from them the full responsibility of loyalty and patriotism.

Let's change the way we choose our governmental representatives. Actually, let's change back to the way our constitution originally said to do it before professional political panderers amended it. Grab a copy and see the real political genius that began our great republic. A republic--not a democracy.

Better yet, let's change the system by which citizenship is granted. One of my favorite authors, Robert A. Heinlein, had it about right when he described a society that only gave the franchise to vote to those who had first given service to that society. "Enlist and earn the right to vote."

If you really want change, you had better be ready for the pain. Revolutions (that's what real change is after all) require sacrifice. If your idea of change is an easier life, you'll either be killed or enslaved by those whose idea of change is the accumulation of greater power.

Careful what you ask for.