Betty Freauf -- Can One Person Make a Difference?

Have you ever been in a meeting around a conference table or perhaps in chairs in a circle? The coffee or the punch is on a table in the corner. Everyone sees the punch bowl or smells the coffee but no one makes a move until the first person gets up and goes for a cup and then the rest follow?

Everyone has the desire to instinctively conform to one extent or another. Most people at least subconsciously have a great fear of standing out especially if it means standing alone. And it is this conformity that keeps people in submission.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a pastor, his wife and their son had three Christian kindergarten schools in their home town. It started out with just the wife. Parents were so pleased with the kindergarten and enrollment grew to the point where she needed more help so her husband retired from the ministry and he started a second school. The son graduated from college and he came on board with a third school. Things were good. And then one parent accused them of sexual child abuse and it was curtains for this lovely family after that.

Instead of uniting together and standing up for these innocent people, the church leaders instead chose to turn their backs on them. All three ended up in prison for 10 months to five years. Their lives were destroyed but can you imagine what the outcome might have been if thousands of Christians with picket signs appearing in front of that courthouse every day? This was not to be. In fact, after the two men were imprisoned and the woman had yet to go to trial for "touching the breast of a four-year old", she was volunteering at her church calling on visitors but she was told she could no longer do that even before her trial.

Mark Twain said, "In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man and brave, hatred and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."

This first draft is being written on the Fourth of July and I'm reminded of the fifty-six men who signed the Declaration of Independence knowing when they signed they were risking everything. And as many of you already know, they gave up their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

Where are our mighty men of valor today? Great numbers of these men could walk arm in arm to the neighborhood porn shop and in a non-threatening manner ask the owner to leave town. He'd get the message. But today we'll see a few men on the sidewalk but mostly it is the women with their signs and soon they tire and disappear and the porn shops continue to spread throughout our neighborhoods and now that the child molesters are being released from jail due to the recent Supreme Court decision, business should be active at these porn shops and on the internet.

Whether we agree with some of the people who take stands or not, let's look at some of them that may be in your memory.

Probably the first one that comes to my mind is the Lord Jesus Christ when he stood up to the Sadducees and Pharisees of his day. Bible believing Christians say he is Lord but Bernard Shaw, a Fabian Socialist and a free-lance journalist, thought Jesus to be a lunatic. The Soviet Encyclopedia relegated Jesus to the status of a legend and a village atheist insisted Jesus was a liar but as this old world as we once knew it winds down, we are seeing how wrong they were.

But more recently, in May 2001 an extremist senator from Vermont, Jim Jeffords defected from the Republican party thereby giving the Democrats control of the U.S. Senate which had been a 50-50 split with Republican Vice President Cheney casting the deciding vote when there was a tie. Jeffords has now written two books for six figures! One book is called "My Declaration of Independence." Jeffords' voting record illustrated he was a R.I.N.O (Republican in name only) but the party kept supporting him. And about the time they needed him, he jumped ship and gave the Democrats the advantage. Those who say appease, appease.

It was a 1995 vote by Oregon's Senator Mark Hatfield - another R.I.N.O. with globalist leanings - that defeated the Republican's Balanced Budget Amendment. However, a sufficient number of uninformed Oregon voters thought this guy walked on water and they kept re-electing him over and over. After years in Washington, D.C., he finally quit of his own accord and was replaced by another just as bad only without Hatfield's seniority that brought mega buck$ to Oregon.

Hatfield was one of the signers on the subversive Declaration of Interdependence virtually calling for the repudiation of the Declaration of Independence. He has a building named after him at the once Christian college, Willamette University in Salem, Oregon and Salem is now one of two cities in the United States that flies the United Nations flag in it's City Hall/Library "Peace Plaza" with no opposition.

The one person who got me interested in doing research more than 20 years ago was a $10,000 a year janitor from a Catholic school who had compiled in a book official public documents exposing the United Nations and its connection to land use planning. At his own expense he published and sold REGIONALISM: The Shadow Behind Oregon's L.C.D.C. (Land Conservation and Development). On the cover of the book he quoted Abraham Lincoln: "I am a firm believer in the American people. If given the truth, they can be depended on to solve any national crisis." And folks, America is in a national crisis! I recently spoke to a business man who credits Joe Spenner for alerting him about the same time as he did me to the dangers of U.N. regionalism. Joe's e-mail is: spenjoe@navicom.com

Then we have the much maligned Lon Mabon of the Oregon Citizen's Alliance (OCA) along with his wife, Bonnie, who have worked tirelessly since 1986 to try to stop the homosexual agenda. All their efforts may go down the drain due to the recent Supreme Court decision legalizing sodomy. Bonnie's e-mail is: bjmabon@oregoncitizensalliance.org.

And by the way Oregonians have voted down all of Lon's Initiative's on the state ballot, drafted, to protect little children from Homosexuality.

The former executive director of O.C.A, Scott Lively, went on to become an attorney after O.C.A. had been hit with a frivolous lawsuit. Scott now heads Abiding Truth Ministries at 6060 Sunrise Vista Drive, Suite 3050, Citrus Heights, CA 95610. Phone 916-676-1057 and defends pro-family freedom of speech.

Nurse Joyce Riley has been traveling the talk show circuit since Gulf War I telling about the men and women exposed to chemical agents that were causing the Gulf War Syndrome and how our elected officials and the defense department until recently refused to believe these people were sick.

While oftentimes whistle blowers become unfairly maligned, CBS/Sixty Minutes told of a park worker who exposed the corruption of D.C. union officials and he was later elected president. Sometimes justice does prevail but more than likely, it is a long time coming which brings us to the now infamous Erin Brockovich, who took on a big corporate polluter in San Diego County and won a huge financial settlement for the victims. In addition to the movie about her, she now has her own TV show telling stories of the heroic efforts of other women.

Let me tell you about a man who escaped from behind the Iron Curtain, emigrated to America and later became a American citizen.

He picketed abortion clinics, kept an eye on elected officials by attending public meetings and he wrote endless letters to the editor of his local paper. He became alarmed about an encroaching corporate police state coming to America. Religious and political leaders labeled him an "extremist" and an "alarmist" and no one paid attention UNTIL he started his own website.

Are there lots of time and some costs involved? Absolutely. Ask the signers of the Declaration of Independence if you want to talk about costs and sacrificing.

Paul Proctor in his article "Taking America Back" asks the question "What do you suppose we would do with America if we could take it back? He answers his own question by saying, "In light of our fallen nature and track record, probably just what we did before -- lose it." One of our Founding Fathers said more than 200 years ago, "We have given you a Republic. We hope you can keep it." Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty and generations before us dropped the ball so it's up to us to try to retrieve it but how can we possibly take America back if we can't clean the corruption up in our own back yards?

Our country is bankrupt. Our cities are clamoring to raise taxes so they can continue supporting all the rotten unconstitutional socialist programs implemented since the era of FDR and yet tonight they will be spending thousands of dollars on fire crackers to entertain spectators who don't even realize they will become slaves in a forthcoming one-world dictatorship.

Some have taken the attitude, "But I am only one person. I have mouths to feed, I may loose friends, a mortgage and car payments. Do I want to risk all that to expose corruption?"

You may be only one but you can do something and what you can do, you ought to do and by the grace of Almighty God, you shall begin to get out of your complacency mode and ask the good Lord to show YOU what your giftings are and then get busy using them because the future of your children and grandchildren are depending on you. God uses all types of insignificant people.

I don't even have a computer. I have a $150 webtv consisting of a black box on top of my TV set and a remote control typewriter keyboard. Your name may never end up on some marquee or in special recognition in the obituaries when you die but you'll know in your heart you did all that you knew what to do.

This lack of will on the part of God's soldiers is taken up in the song of Deborah and Barak (Judges 5). It is one thing to be paralyzed by fear and confused in combat that the soldier fails to use his weapon. In that case there is at least the plus factor of his presence alongside his buddies that keeps the morale from completely crumbling. But to stay home minding the sheep like Reuben and not be involved at all is sin.

It is to those that the angel of the Lord speaks and says, "curse ye Meroz...because they came not to the help of the Lord..." (Judges 5:23) God does not act independently of His people. His opportunity comes when his faithful ones will determine to use their weapons against His enemies. The first step toward becoming a first-class American citizen is to become informed.

Joe Spenner reminded me today that Aristotle said: "The search for truth is in one way hard and in another way, quite easy, for it is evident that no one can master it fully nor miss it wholly but each one adds a little to our knowledge and from all the facts assembled there arises a certain grandeur."

Sign Up For Free E-Mail Alerts

Betty is a former Oregon Republican Party activist having served as state party secretary, county chairman, 5th congressional vice chairman and then elected chairman, a precinct worker for many years and twice ran unsuccessfully for the Oregon State Legislature. The Republican tradition is to stay neutral in Primary races but in Betty's case. They supported her opponent. E-Mail: bettyfreauf@webtv.com

Home

"Everyone has the desire to instinctively conform to one extent or another. Most people at least subconsciously have a great fear of standing out especially if it means standing alone. And it is this conformity that keeps people in submission."