Why Osawatomie? This Is Where It Started!
Where Osawatomie High School stands, John Brown Memorial Park spreads out around the John Brown Cabin and Museum Historical Site, and a battle once raged between Free Staters and Pro Slavers on Aug. 30, 1856, history has come full circle.
On Aug. 31, 1910, President Theodore Roosevelt spoke to an audience of 30,000 in his dedication of what we know as John Brown Memorial Park.
Many of those listeners President Roosevelt addressed were survivors of the Civil War, that sadness that enveloped the United States with routes beginning right here in this location.
And in a cabin used by abolitionists, the Rev. Samuel Adair and his wife, Florella, as a safe house on the Underground Railroad.
President Roosevelt told those veterans of America’s bloodiest conflict:
We can admire the heroic valor, the sincerity, the self-devotion shown alike by the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray; and our sadness that such men should have to fight one another is tempered by the glad knowledge that ever hereafter their descendants shall be fighting side by side, struggling in peace as well as in war for the uplift of their common country, all alike resolute to raise to the highest pitch of honor and usefulness the nation to which they all belong. As for the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, they deserve honor and recognition such as is paid to no other citizens of the Republic; for to them the republic owes it all; for to them it owes its very existence. It is because of what you and your comrades did in the dark years that we of to-day walk, each of us, head erect, and proud that we belong, not to one of a dozen little squabbling contemptible commonwealths, but to the mightiest nation upon which the sun shines.
Roosevelt also recognized Kansas for its own sacrifice:
It was the result of the struggle in Kansas which determined that our country should be in deed as well as in name devoted to both union and freedom; that the great experiment of democratic government on a national scale should succeed and not fail.
Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” speech came out of a time, not much different than the present day, when Roosevelt felt the need to both recognize the valiant deeds of the past and to call out the evils of his present time like “big business”, and the robber barons of his day, much like President Barack Obama has called for a dialog about corporations doing more to pay their fair share in taxes.
Now, America and the world have been watching as the first African-American President of the United States returned to a place from which a great turning point in American history began.
The President, Barack Obama, had said in a press release, that he would, “…lay out the choice we face between a country in which too few do well while too many struggle to get by, and one where we’re all in it together — where everyone engages in fair play, everyone does their fair share, and everyone gets a fair shot.”
To those who continue to ask, “Why Osawatomie for the President’s visit?” There was no better place for this speech.
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on Dec 7 2011. Filed under Kevin Gray, Opinion.
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There is no comparison between Roosevelt’s visit to your town and the audience he addressed and Obama’s & his audience. While Roosevelt’s audience was made up of citizens who had sacrificed all for their country, Obama’s audience was made up of people expecting and demanding all of their government.
Obama, the first African President of the U.S., is not American at heart in any way that matters. Three years after being elected president under the banner of ‘Hope and Change”, during which he has been systematically changing the country’s economic system from free enterprise to a government-controlled economy, destroying millions of jobs along the way, he has the audacity to tell you that the economic system which is the foundation of the greatest country in the world does not work, and you are too ignorant to understand his deceit. He tells you that the liberty and freedom that your heroes fought and died for is worthless, and you applaud him.
There is no one in this country who truly needs help who does not have it. Only the elderly, the disabled, and the very young deserve to be taken care of by others, and they are. Obama asked for and got nearly $2 TRILLION for two separate Stimulus bills which would create over 2 million jobs, but the money was squandered and the jobs are nowhere to be seen. Then he appeared on national TV, laughing at the fact that the ‘shovel ready jobs’ he promised were not ‘as shovel ready as he thought’, and he is asking for more $$$ for the same reason! How can you believe his false promises for a THIRD time?
Yes, there is greed…but the greed is in those who are filled with envy for what others have achieved and who believe that they are entitled to a portion of what others have earned. This is still the land of opportunity, and the only thing standing in the way of anyone accomplishing their goals is their own lack of determination to do it.
As an immigrant, I can assure you that for every American of any color who thinks that this country is ‘unfair’, there are thousands of people all over the world who would gladly trade places.
The system used in the U.S.A., based on CAPITALISM, FREE ENTERPRISE, and LIBERTY, has produced the HIGHEST standard of living in the entire world! Why do you think everyone in the world dreams of coming to the U.S.A? How can anyone be so ignorant to believe this shyster and be willing to throw it all away? There is NOTHING better than what we already have!
Obama is no friend of the United States. He hates our country. It is not his fault, but American voters should never have voted him in as our president. They paid no attention to how he was raised during his formative years that made him that way.
If he was born in Hawaii, people should not have assumed he felt any allegiance to our country. The Hawaiians did not like the United States, and he was influenced by their hatred. Hawaii became the 50th state on Aug. 21, 1959 and Obama was born two years later on Aug. 4, 1961. He never lived the American experience while he was growing up because his mother, father, grandparents, and step-father taught him to hate the U.S. When he went to college, he gravitated toward Marxists. When in Hawaii, his grandparents were friends with Frank Marshall Davis, a known communist, and they took Obama to him to mentor him. When in Chicago, he gravitated toward people such as Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright who have always hated the U.S.
All the things you mention in your last paragraph about our system in the U.S. are all the things Obama hates. Millions of our voters were influenced by his words, HOPE and CHANGE. Now he has added FAIR as he is promoting class warfare. How can our voters be willing to throw everything away based on two four letter words and one six-letter word?
If you ask most people if they ever heard of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and if they know what Obama’s job was as a community organizer in Chicago, the answer is no. They need to start researching his background and his work experience in Chicago and how he used Alinsky’s radical rules to do his job. They will find out he has been using those same rules to ruin our wonderful country.
Regarding where Obama was born — there are two YouTube videos out there, one where Michelle said they visited Africa and his home country in Kenya, the other where she described Obama as a Kenyan. If he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, it is impossible that he feels nothing but hatred for our country.
This letter represents the heights of idiocy. It is full of the propaganda, lies, distortions, and hysteric lunancy once only associated with the John Birch Society. Sadly, the Republican Party has lost its soul. Once, when intellectual giants like William F. Buckley, there was a time when this kind of knee jerk radical nonsense was not tolerated by Republicans.
William F. Buckley, Dwight Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater must be spinning in their graves because the Republican Party has fallen into intellectual disgrace.
I miss the real Republicans and hope they take there party back.