I have an old clock in my office. Its mechanical movement requires I turn a key in a lock and wind a mainspring to a point of tension. This causes the balanced, well-adjusted gears, levers and springs to work in proper relation to each other. It must be paid attention to and honored for its intricacy. Messing with the mechanism isn’t merely ill-advised; it’s imperative you don’t change anything fundamentally.

This was my Dad’s clock. It was given him when he retired from active duty in the U.S. Navy after 20 years. It’s been in the family over 50 years.

It’s not digital. Its mechanism causes parts to come into contact with each other. They make noise. It snaps the parts together making that once familiar “tick/tock” sound. It denotes the passage of another moment moving us closer to a point of action. The movement appears smooth but isn’t without the drops and lifts creating the sounds. It’s not a linear movement. Starts and stops prevail until the spring, from its natural need to release its energy, weakens and must be revitalized with the necessary, proper action to keep the clock running.

The clock is old and venerated in my family. It’s venerated because it represents something. It attests to the value and respect paid a man and his effort to serve his country and his people.

I listen to the mechanism at times and find it soothing. It endures beyond its utility and strengthens my perceptions of what time’s passage really means. It means endurance; the ability to go beyond the travail of the moment and emerge from the contest as a winner for having participated. It means recognition for the excellence you’ve achieved in your efforts to produce a product to be used by your friends and countrymen. It’s a reminder of what it means to pursue, contest and win that chance to be the best in your field, your arena – the world.

They say you shouldn’t mess with success. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” This is sage advice but it doesn’t say it all. It fails to mention that the mechanism must be maintained following a specific schedule and practice assuring the unit is in ready condition to execute its function. If you fail to do the planned and necessary maintenance, the gears grind against each other. The springs corrode and rust; they lose their strength and resilience under stress. The mechanism fails for the timekeeper’s atrophy of caring for the maintenance of the clock and marking man’s progress in this world.

The clock still works when it’s wound to a point of optimum tension and allowed to release its kinetic energy after it’s been kept and attended to with care and integrity of purpose. It’ll sound its passage of the moments marking man’s progress. It’ll point its direction with each movement of the hands pointing upward, downward and all around the face of humanity.

Tomorrow we’ll vote for a president and many other representatives and senators. We’ll cast ballots to determine whether we maintain a balanced and properly operative mechanism we know as America; or we’ll continue under the improperly tensioned and unbalanced direction of a group of men wanting to monkey with success and change things because they THINK they can do better. They want to engage gears, bells and whistles already proven world-wide to be dysfunctional with hopes THEY know better than any others before them.

The clock is essential to navigation. In conjunction with our observation of celestial bodies (star gazing), their relative positions in the sky along with how well we maintain our awareness of the passage of time from one point to another; we plot our course in this world. For the past four (4) years we’ve not used our time wisely. We’ve not done the maintenance properly.

Obama and his progressive cronies have removed essential parts form the clock. They’ve ignored the proper placement of the Constitution in the inner workings of this essential mechanism. They’ve displaced Americans from participating in America. They’ve redefined American goals poorly.

It’s time to fix this and get this ship of state back on course.

Thanks for listening.