Hello again, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of Freedom's Creed. It is hard to believe, but it's 2023. Wow. Time just keeps on ticking and stops for no one, to be sure. I guess you could say I've had somewhat of an eventful beginning of the year. Back on January the 8th, my dad passed away after a prolonged illness. He had pulmonary fibrosis and he battled it for quite a while. He lasted longer than what his doctor thought he would, and in the end, it got to him, and that is how he passed. I think it was a merciful act because of the way that he passed, and of course, merciful to my mom, since she was the primary caregiver for him. He had the disease for around five years, and he was on oxygen for the last year or so of his life, and his quality of life was just, well, it was non-existent. And it was tough for him to really do anything. He'd get winded just walking from one room to the other. And the big thing to me is that he didn't last for two or three weeks in a bed and not able to do anything. That would have been really tough on my mom, for sure. As it was, he went to bed Saturday night and passed away early on Sunday morning of the 8th of January. And though my mom was the primary caregiver, they did have a hospice nurse come in a couple times a week. And at the time of his passing, he was pretty heavily sedated, so I think he experienced passing from this life into the next in a very tranquil way, I guess, if you can say that about somebody passing away. I would like to express my appreciation once again here in this format for all of those who have reached out in sympathy and compassion for the passing of my dad. And it was something that, though was expected, was certainly hard for my mom. They had been married 66 years, so most of their lives uh were known together. And though no one has a perfect relationship in a marriage, but they stuck it out, they worked hard to raise my siblings and I, and that I can be eternally grateful to them for doing, teaching me how to work and how to appreciate different cultures, different people. Just because they didn't look like me or don't look like me doesn't mean that I have to treat them any differently. And I really appreciated the fact that both he and my mom did this throughout their lives. Even though they both grew up in the country in Indiana, they both were came from really humble beginnings. They were never really materially wealthy, but they did the best that they could in raising my siblings and I. And who could ask for more than that from a parent? And speaking of my dad, he too, like me, served in the military. He served as a Marine Corps officer for about four years and resigned his commission and got out of the service. One of the mementos that I have from his service is a sword. It's really, really cool. It's of course a Marine Corps sword and has his name engraved on the blade, which is really cool. The sword has a sheath, and the way the plaque is set up, it's two pieces of wood with space in the middle. So if you can imagine, on one top corner of that plaque, the blade went through, and then on the opposite top corner, the sheath went through. So they crisscrossed each other, and it had his name and Marine Corps logo on the front. Every time I look at it, I'll think of him for sure, and of course think of my mom because she too served alongside with him, even though she was a civilian at the time. So anyway, may you rest in peace, Dad. The balance of the episode today will just be some thoughts that I've had, and I want to start off actually by referring to a previous episode. It's episode number 73, and the title of it is I feel like I had been communicating with a friend who reached out to me on a social media platform and expressed condolences and sympathy for the passing of my dad. And he set me straight on something that I talked about in that episode. It's no big deal. It's not like it's going to be a spoiler alert or anything, but in that episode, I talked about horse trailers and talked about that in horse trailers or livestock trailers would probably be a better way to say it, that there are these units on top of those trailers, and they're extremely long, and they look like it could be a heater or an air conditioning unit. And I was under the mistaken notion that those were for the animals. Well, I found out from my friend that they are not. Those particular trailers exist with a compartment for people to sleep in, like an RV, I guess you could say. So part of it is for the animals, and the other part of it is for the people, and the people are the ones who have the access to heating or air conditioning, whichever the case may be, depending on the weather. To cover my own butt, as it were, uh I did mention in that episode that I could be wrong, but that I didn't think I was. Well, it turns out I was wrong, and I don't mind being wrong, and I appreciate someone pointing me in the right direction in this particular case. So uh thanks to my friend who will remain anonymous, he knows who he is. I did tell him, however, that I would acknowledge him in this episode, so I want to thank him for setting me straight on that particular issue. And in reality, it's probably not referred to as an RV, which I mentioned just a couple seconds ago. Probably be better stated as a fifth wheel. So anyway, let's be particular and precise, shall we? Now, what I want to talk about now is something that's been on my mind for at least a couple of months, I guess, now, and I would have to assume that most of you know about this as well. It's something that has bothered me and I want to get it off my chest, and it is something that I think is a real problem in our country because it shows the partisanship that exists in politics today. And I'm referring to, of course, the classified documents that were discovered in both former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate compound, whatever you want to call it, and Joe Biden's residence and another place where he had apparently left some classified documents. Now, I couldn't care less what side of the political aisle that you come down on. I'm simply saying that let's treat the similar situations, particularly this situation, equally and fairly. Is that too much to ask? In Trump's case, the FBI was summoned to Mar-a-Lago, and there was a big scene, as you remember, with the FBI going into the home, warrants or not, you can call it a raid, you can call it whatever you want, I don't care. But suffice it to say, a major law enforcement arm of the federal government went in to a former president's residence. Now, as I understand it, the president has discretion about declaring something either classified or not. And I don't know if any of us really knows what happened in terms of the classification of those documents, but it's clear that there was definitely a different set of standards that were applied in both of these situations. Now, in Biden's case, the first set of documents were found in this place called the Penn Biden Center in Washington, and some of those were labeled secret, some of those documents were labeled secret, and they dated from 2013 to 2016 when oh, guess what? He was the vice president. Interesting. We had a former vice president, and I don't think vice presidents are afforded the same latitude that is given to the president, just with respect to classified documents. So here is a former vice president with classified documents labeled top secret in some so-called think tank. If that's not a play on words, well, I just don't know what would qualify as a play on words, but I digress. Now, those documents were found, I believe, in November, and then later in, I believe, this month, there were more classified documents found, this time in Biden's garage at his Delaware home. Supposedly they were kept in the same garage as his classic Corvette. So naturally, if he's got a classic car in his garage, well then secret documents are going to be fine there, right? He's got his car in there, so it's protected. No big deal, right? Well, unfortunately, it is a big deal. It should be a big deal to everyone. I don't care who you are. The contrast between these two cases could not be any more stark. Documents that were found in Mar a Lago last year and documents that were found in two different places with respect to Joe Biden. And in his case, he wasn't even the president. He was the vice president. So why does the vice president or former vice president get to keep classified documents anywhere, especially in a garage? Are you kidding me? With this backdrop that I've just painted, is there any reason why these two situations should be handled any different? Are they not both cases where supposedly, allegedly, classified documents were found? And on one side you have the media, you have politicians, you have all of these people literally crying and demanding that justice be served, that Trump be carted off to jail in handcuffs, and lo and behold, in the other case, on the Biden side, no one's talking about that at all. Now, I defy anyone to tell me that we have an even and fair media. Because we don't. If people were really after the truth and they wanted to know the truth and get the truth out to the American people, then there would be the same attitude going after either one of these situations, irrespective of political party. That should have nothing to do with it. Yet, in our society, that has everything to do with it. And that, my friends, is a real problem. I don't care who you are, I don't care what your political party is, I couldn't care less. Justice and truth ought to be the backbone or the reason that we seek to either exonerate people because they didn't do anything wrong, or convict people because they absolutely did do something wrong. And if both of these cases are the same, and if indeed it is a violation of some sort of law that a former president is not allowed to have classified documents, then fine, let it go to trial. Or in the case of Biden, a former vice president who has classified documents. Doesn't it make sense that these cases ought to be treated the same? It does to me. I don't know about everybody else, but certainly we don't have that in our society today. And it's a pathetic and sad commentary that we don't. And I'll simply add that we're supposed to be presumed innocent, not presumed guilty. We are presumed innocent until we are convicted by a jury of our peers, or we're convicted because of a grand jury, whatever the case may be. The notion that's perpetrated by a certain group of people that there is a presumption of guilt that's applied to some people based on political party, and then there's the presumption of innocence applied to the right people, shall we say? No, this is incorrect thinking, it's nefarious thinking, it's it's something that should be abolished in the mindset. I don't care who you are, what you've done, the founders of the Constitution put in place that you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The media be damned. They have nothing to do with it. It's not their job to decide who's guilty and who's innocent. That is something that gets to be decided by a jury of one's peers. And in the case of presidential politics, obviously it's hard to have a jury of one's peers if you're talking about former presidents or former vice presidents. That jury pool would be pretty small. The bottom line here, folks, is that you best believe that I'm pretty fired up about something like this, and the rest of you should be pretty fired up about it too. Now, that's the end of that story. For real, this time. My last thought for this episode is recently I finished a book called The Iron Triangle. It's a book written by Vince Ellison in 2020. In his determination, Ellison refers to the Iron Triangle as the black preacher, black civic organizations, and black politicians. And really to get the full context of what Ellison says in his book, I would invite you to read it. Now, I don't know Vince Ellison, but I will simply say that he is, in my estimation, certainly a credible individual to be writing a book such as this. Now, it's been said that character is the only thing that matters when it comes to the human experience. Now, if that is true, and I believe it is, then focusing on skin color as something that is more important than character is like focusing on the thorns of a rose bush, I suppose. All of us have to acknowledge that there are thorns in a rose bush, but is that the most important part of the rose? No. The rose is absolutely more important. And I'm not saying that we don't recognize race or we don't acknowledge differences between us. We do. That's human nature. We have eyes, we can see. But when we focus on that as the primary objective of our relationship with someone, and we just dismiss the character of that individual, then we're missing a huge part of that individual. In the book, Ellison says this quote, in an attempt to live a life with as little mental pain as possible, most black people ignore or deny any information that conflicts with existing beliefs. I have seen people close their ears, scream, say, I don't want to hear it, I don't want to hear it. I've seen people sprint away like they were being chased by a ghost just to escape the pain of facing the truth. Some even justify their blind faith by asserting that all Republicans are racist, as if they know all Republicans. All Republicans are not racist. But what if it were true? Why would it matter? Racists are people of inferior intelligence. I don't care what a fool believes. It only matters if you believe they are superior to you. If you believed you were better or at least equal, another person's feelings about the color of your skin would be of no consequence. We often hear people in the media and other places, whether it's sports or entertainment, talk about racism and racists as if there've been no improvements made, or they talk about racism and they say, you know, well, we've come a long way, but we have so much further to go. Do we? Do we really? I think most Americans couldn't care less about the skin tone of other people. They don't care. The people who care about that seem to be the people who are in power and who have a lot of control. They are the ones who are keeping this race and racism issue at the forefront. And then a lot of times what happens is people who don't want to experience the rigor that it takes to improve and progress, they just want to look at something and say, oh yeah, this is a terrible thing, and we have to make sure that it's corrected. Well, in the case of racist or racism, it's a very minute percentage of the population who actually feel this way, who actually believe that they are better than somebody else because of the color of their skin. But you would think, if you watched certain news outlets, that that is the uh one thing that is so preeminent and most important above all other things, and that we've we've got to get this racism thing under control. Well, the racism culture doesn't want to get it under control. They want to perpetuate the myth that somehow racism is the most dangerous thing in our culture right now. It's simply not. It is a myth, and it's only being perpetuated by the people who want to keep those things alive so that they can ingratiate themselves in this heinous need to keep racism at the forefront. It makes them relevant. And if racism doesn't exist, then their relevance doesn't exist, at least with respect to that particular thing. Of course, they're relevant as a human being. No one's saying that. I'm saying if you get rid of racism, then they have to find a new career. Is that clear enough? Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is going to do it for me on this episode. I want to thank you for taking the time to listen. And I would like to end with a quote from the aforementioned Vince Ellison. He has this to say in his book The Iron Triangle. He says quote, If racism is a sickness, how can the flip side of racism, the feeling that your race is inferior, be any less a sickness? The symptoms of this sickness are evident all over the inner city. The self destructive behavior and fratricide are indicative of people who hate each other, but we've done nothing to cure that sickness. We've only insisted that white people cure their sickness. When so-called good white liberals look at the problems in these ghettos, but then decide to still vote and finance political candidates who have changed nothing in years, they are complicit in every one of the crimes. They are taking advantage of the sickness in the black community because the black vote makes their entire liberal agenda possible. Ladies and gentlemen, in this month of Dr. Martin Luther King, that we honor him and his life, isn't it time for us to start judging people by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin? If you can think it, you can plan it. If you can plan it, you can do it.