On determination and the federal reserve

I have come to speak to you today about determination. Now determination is a force inherent in all living creatures, great and small. As near as I can tell I began to understand the strength of this force after being placed in a high chair by my mother who intended to nourish me with a blended up substance designed to strengthen and feed me. As I sat there with GREAT ANTICIPATION and a hungry little belly the spoon in my mother's hand was extended toward me. Like a baby bird in his nest with HUNGRY mouth open and eyes WIDE with expectation I lunged forward toward this mysterious substance and gladly accepted it. It was then that my taste buds kicked in! At that moment in time I realized that something within me was DETERMINED not to eat this insidious green slime though my belly ached with hunger and my growing body BEGGED for help as it attempted to follow the laws of survival and nature.

Then I looked into the eyes of my mother and realized that there was another side to determination. The side that tells us that we have a RIGHT to live as we see fit but in the process we must also be determined to consider the feelings of others. What to do? Then it hit my little brain. I pretended to eat it but I hadn't yet lived long enough to take into account the concealment required to pull off such an act of deception, though my intentions seemed just. Still, I pretended to chew or rather gum away at what I later came to learn was blended up and watered down spinach. You might say that I was swallowing on the outside as my smooth little baby face soon developed a green goatee. Now my mother still understood what determination was and either thankfully or otherwise moved swiftly from the scene, located a camera and preserved that moment in the annals of our family history. She was determined to do so.

When I grew to manhood I began to realize that there were many spoons in the hands of well meaning people headed toward any hungers I may have on any given day, month or year. I also began to realize that too many of those spoons come with a price. These days the spoons don't come from my mother as I have learned (as we all do or should) to hold my own spoon and feed myself. There are those however who sit in high seats of authority and attempt to spoon feed me though I be a grown man. They do not have the eyes of my mother. There is no personal recognition existent in the color of their irises as they glance toward you or I with a distasteful substance and a media smile as if that could replicate the smile or intentions of one's own mother or father or big sister or brother. I also find it interesting ladies and gentlemen that they do this from their high seats of power because now those in the high chair are attempting to feed the grownups! When I was three or four years of age I might have applauded them. I hadn't yet learned anyting other than basic determination then. I have learned far too much now.

We can talk of social justice as we well should. We can talk of our basic desire to honor and protect the foundations of our society. We can talk of methods to alleviate the burdens of those less fortunate. We can talk of blueprints designed to build a better home that comes in the form of a city, state, country or planet. We can talk of equal rights for all citizens. All of these conversations are pertinent and just dialogues that demand attention and ears. These are conversations about rights that the constitution already grants to each and every one of us in this great nation as well as rights that are granted by a higher power from birth to all peoples of all lands. So I ask today why such high ideals which are not simply ideals but RIGHTS are considered to be the former rather than the latter in the high chairs of Washington D.C. and elsewhere?

Back to my analogy of long ago when I first became aware of determination and refused the blended green spinach on a spoon I must now ask why the bread winners of a nation... male and female are now asked (or rather forced) to sacrifice the fruits of their labour which comes in the color of green in order to fill the belly of a hungry society against our will? It is as if we were still infants not knowing or having the right to do what we choose with whatever riches we may possess though what little we have be ours. I must ask why those who now sit in the high chair claiming to represent us are demanding the green back after we have spewed it out of our mouths because it didn't originate from the storehouses of the United States Treasury but rather from a private institution known as "The Federal Reserve" which is not Federal at all. Something in my taste buds wants to spew it out of my mouth and demands that I do so. Something in my love for country wants to show lady Liberty that I respect her but do not agree with her choice of nourishment. Something within me, the young child learning about the world, wants to please her but my green goatee gives me away. Let us all dawn green goatees and once again understand what determination really means. Let us all understand once again what rights really are. Let us all regain that moment in our high chairs and exercise our God give rights that each and every person is born knowing even before we realize we are making a statement and spew oppression from our mouths once and for all!

Thank you,

Rolland B. Heiss