We have covered a whole lot of ground answering the question “What can I do?”…and I am not done yet. There is still this whole area that I have labeled “non-conventional”…and I think it could easily be the most interesting.
Granted, “What can I do? (Principles)” was pretty cool to dive into who you are as a person and what you believe in and are truly committed to. But this area is pretty dang…well, non-conventional and that alone I think makes it interesting.
Start becoming a non-conformist.That’s pretty non-conventional…yeah?
Basically a conformist is a person who 
behaves and thinks like most other people, often avoiding actions or ideas that are different or unusual. The term is often used in a disapproving way to describe someone who follows societal norms and standards without questioning them. What? Yeah, a true sheep.
Think about it for a minute…what does public education do more than anything else? Teaches you to conform to their standards. But…who sets the nation’s educational standards? A bunch of federal and state level bureaucrats and politicians.
If you join the military what do they teach you? To conform to a very rigid set of standards without questioning and without hesitation. Why? Because they want you to be able to kill people and destroy stuff without question or even without thought.
Daily we see law enforcement officers who work for various levels of law enforcement agencies doing what? “Enforcing” laws. Sound weird? Well, they are almost complete failures at actually solving crimes…statistics prove that. So what is their actual job? Teaching everyone to conform to every law, rule, regulation, code, ordinance, and even their own personal commands…without hesitation, without questioning, without even thinking.
So what does that all mean? Sheep, with plenty of herding dogs, are easily controlled, produce lots of wool…and give birth to lambs for the slaughter.
Governments’ goal is to make the population conform, to make the population easy to control (power)…while making the population produce (funneling money/resources to the government).
Let me clear this up right now…I am not advocating becoming an outlaw…I am suggesting you become less of a conformist. Why? It was Thomas Jefferson who said to “question everything”. Not in the context of rejecting all laws, norms, morals, etc., but simply to challenge them to prove them right or come up with a better way. Such as when the Founders challenged the right of the British Empire to exercise tyrannical rule and excessive taxation over the colonies.
Conforming…Society now pictures the perfect family as two persons (unknown and undefined gender) raising one, maybe two, children (unknown and undefined gender) in a house (they can barely afford) where both adults work a job and the children have been surrendered to the government education/care system at the age of 3 – 4…for the next 15 – 19 years. Oddly, we know statistically that this is the worst possible scenario for children and families.
Non-conforming…Statistics are everywhere that show families with a mother (female) and 
father (male) both present in the home, the father working, the mother at home caring for their children is the best parental/family model. Additionally, statistics show that children who are home schooled have better SAT scores, and do better in college than government educated students. And everyone involved in this traditional family setting are less likely to get involved in drugs, less likely to catch STDs, less likely to become criminals, more likely to have a happier home life as adults, far few instances of suicide, and more likely to be willing to serve others.
But the government (at all levels), and society in general, pushes people away from the more fulfilling lifestyle into situations that strap a family financially and push mothers out of the home into the job market…and throw children into the hands of the government education and care system. Think about these items of fact:
- Homes cost 80 times more now than just 60 years ago.
- Vehicles cost 10 – 20 times more than the average home did 60 years ago.
- Middle class % of US population down by 20% in the last 60 years.
- Middle class % of US wealth down by more than 20% in the last 60 years.
- Top 1/10th of 1% of wealthy people have seen their % of US wealth double in the last 60 years.
- Federal government workforce up over 30% in the last 60 years.
- Household debt is up 1500% in the last 60 years.
- US national debt is up from $300billion to $36trillion in the last 60 years…that’s an increase of 1100%.
Notice anything there? Anything stand out to you there? Any little whisperings come into your mind and/or heart?
So society paints a picture of a large beautiful new home for families, two new(er) vehicles in the driveway, fancy vacations and/or cruises each year, latest in phones, jewelry, computers, TVs, and clothing. And of course government providing home loans, consumer purchase incentives, tax credits and motivation to keep people buying and borrowing.
Honestly, answer this…Why do you think that is?
Government at all levels push back against church based charity, community self-sufficiency, and neighbors taking care of neighbors. Government provides highly-paid firefighters and LEOs, multiple levels of disaster agencies, hundreds of welfare programs, and of course FEMA to care for us in the event of emergencies and disasters.
60 years ago average families had large gardens, most families preserved some amount of their food, many families even raised chickens and rabbits for eggs and meat, and farmers were self-sufficient. Now…well, the city, county, or the HOA will fine the hell out of any family that tries to color outside of the lines. The USDA is even regulating (i.e. putting out of business) most small farmers who want to provide food direct to consumers.
Why do you think all of this is? Why has society so radically changed for the worse over the last 6+ decades? What do you think their end-game, their end-state, their goal really is?
Why do you think society wants us dependent on a small group of health providers, a small group of grocery providers, a 
small group of retailers, a small group of corporate farms, and a small group of professionals…who ironically enough are all tightly regulated by the government?
Maybe you can answer all of those questions…maybe not. But that is not my real point. My point is this…everything the government does, everything that society is all about, is to make you conform…conform to their vision of who you should be and how you should live your life. And that conforming process starts as soon as you enter the ‘system’…usually ‘childcare’ at the age of 3. And it is surely in full swing by the age of 5 when children enter kindergarten.
So how do you not conform?
Don’t get caught up in the debt trap. Buy only what you can afford, and be very prudent on what that is. Avoid debt…it becomes the master and you become the servant!!! You end up working to pay your debts…not paying to enjoy life with your family.
Don’t get caught up in the job trap. Your job is NOT you. Do you have a job to provide for your family and your family fulfills you? Or does your job define you and you look to your job to fulfill you? Should your job should be the mechanism to provide for your family…and your family fulfills you?
Don’t get caught up in the food trap. Raise some amount of wholesome food that you grow personally. You can also buy food from local sources such as farmers and ranchers. Cook food for meals…yeah, actually cook it not heat it or microwave it.
Don’t get caught up in the government schooling trap. Homeschool your kids, give them the education that teaches them, that gives them knowledge, and encourages them to think for themselves.
Don’t get caught up in the 2-person income trap. ALL stats show that a man working to provide for his family and the mother caring for the children is the #1 way to raise a family successfully.
What???? Challenge a 2-person income family setting???? Yup!
Let’s say you are a family who wants 3 children. Slightly larger than the average family but way smaller than many families. You ready for this?
Try this on for this scenario…the US average cost to raise a child is about $1,400 per month (mostly day care, schooling, clothing, transportation, etc.) The average cost of clothing, make-up, etc for a working woman is about $300 per month. The average employed woman spends about $200 more per month on their car payment. The average employed woman spends about $175 per month more for gas than stay at home moms.
Conservatively the stay at home mom who home schools can save the family between $2,800 – $4,800 per month…and that doesn’t include any accounting for a garden, home cooked meals, thrifting for clothing and household goods, and a ton of other accomplishments.
Think this through for a minute…a stay at home mother would need to make over $33,000 per year at a job just to break even…and then hires out everything to someone else to raise her children. Oh wait…factoring in income taxes, social security tax, medicare tax, etc…it is actually over $46,000 per year.
Bummer…the median income for a woman in the US is just a slight bit higher than $42,000.
Think about that…the average wife/mother gets a job outside of the home…gets paid about $42,000 per year. The family 
loses about $4,000 per year…PLUS the government and strangers get to raise their children…instilling into those children morals, ethics, principles, and knowledge straight out of the hands and minds of government workers, politicians, and bureaucrats NOT the parents. Does this bring to mind any thoughts or ideas about why the country is where it is right now?
Challenge everything!!!!!!
Become the non-conformist. Do things the way it works best for you and your family. Take charge of your life, raise your children with standards and morals that match what you know to be right NOT what the government wants to brainwash them with. Raise a healthy and happy family according to what you know to be right…don’t let bankers, the government, lawyers, politicians, or bureaucrats dictate to you what is right.
Look, life is short. I am knocking at 70 now…and I can tell you this…life is real short, it goes by in the blink of eye. If you live your life by the dictates and expectations of others, especially the government…you cheat yourself and you cheat your family. Don’t lose this precious gift of life and family…stay away from the tyranny of government and the oppression of society. You can control your own life…so go do it!
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It’s been an interesting couple of weeks…to say the least. Trump is full-on going after all of it! Yeah, you’ve heard of asymmetrical warfare? Well, Trump is engaging in all-out asymmetrical politics. He is going after the political establishment, the federal government, from all angles, in varying degrees, in dozens of ways each day. And the opposition is in chaos and reeling back on its heals. Yea Trump!
citizens back home. And this program of buying out federal workers…simply genius in action. Think about how better off the entire country is with far fewer freeloaders…now if Trump gets the federal workforce down by 90%…that would be the best thing to happen to the US in the last 200 years!
January 20th and you have an amazing amount of activity taking place at the national level. The Dems, and some Republicans, are simply overwhelmed by all of it. Lawsuits are being filed, court orders are being issued, retaliatory threats are being made, and some smokey backroom meetings are being held, as well as nefarious deals being made by the opposition.
scanning app feeds on our cell phones 24/7. And that ain’t good…not good at all. It is entirely too distracting!
bad, nothing new when you get right down to it. I called it “Asymmetrical Politics” earlier…it is political warfare…it is dangerous, it is brutal, and we don’t know who will win when the dust settles. And unless you are someone I am not aware of…you have ZERO influence on it…and it probably has no direct significant affect on you personally. So why worry about it? Why get involved in it?
and your congregation. Keep working on that which you know makes a difference…especially when it comes to prepping. If you are in doubt on what to do…read the series “What can I do?”
Yesterday I hit on the “
A.H. Trimble - Emergency preparedness information for disasters and grid-down 