Happy New You

Two great beasts were thirsty and arrived at a small watering hole at the same time to drink. They fiercely disputed which should drink first and soon were engaged in a mortal battle. After several advances of attack, they both stopped to catch their breath. When they looked up, they saw vultures circling above waiting to feast on the first one to fall. The beasts at once reconciled from their quarrel saying, “It is better for us to be friends, than to become the food for vultures.” The New Year can seem like this when the resolutions you made with yourself in the past year do not come to fruition. You can come up with all the reasons why you fell short and battle with yourself. Or you can notice the vultures circling and come to an agreement with yourself to do better and greet the new year as a new opportunity to reinvent, reposition, rethink, repurpose, remind, and revise your goals. If you reflect on what worked and do more activities that won you success, you won’t dwell on what didn’t work. Time will pass whether you choose to do something to improve yourself or not, therefore it makes sense to try and take past successes and combine them with a goal you can achieve for an outcome that gets you to where you wish to go. There will always be interruptions that will deter you and make you lose focus on the goal you wish to achieve. It’s bound to happen. Take it as a short break and start once more. I have many friends who tell me they want to write a book. I will smile and ask, “How many pages have you written so far?” The topic usually changes quickly. I have been trying to write a book for years. Each year I set it as a goal, and I seem to always fall short. I have written hundreds of pages. Many of my stories have nothing to do with each other. That’s OK. Many do and they can be woven together into an interesting grouping of ideas. Instead of sitting down and writing a book, I decided to write short essays at least monthly. Eventually I will have enough material for the basis of a book. I set a goal that would not work in a traditional way, so I structured it in a way I can and will make it happen. There are many paths to create your success. Just start with something small. Tweek it as you go. Be persistent in your work. Be determined in your outcome. Celebrate your small successes. Rinse and repeat. I have found once I deconstruct my goals or opportunities down into small, bite size pieces, over time they come together. At the end of the year there is always a countdown to the New Year. Why not create a countdown to the new you. Write your own top ten ways you will need to meet your goals this year. There are many books and blogs on the internet that can help guide you. Here are mine. Start. Set time aside each day to advance your goal. Dream. Envision what your outcome will look like. Write the steps to achieve your goal. If you write it down, there is a record of your movement, and you’re more likely to hold yourself accountable. What is the time frame to accomplish your goal? Set your days, weeks, months, or year up to help you achieve success. What resources do you need to accomplish your goal? What things, people, money, etc. will you need to outline your success? Focus on your outcome. When you achieve your goal what will it look like and then work backward. Stay determined and persistent in reaching your goal. Situations will arise and events will seem to get in your way. Don’t lose sight of the prize. Adjust to any obstacles you encounter. You may need to temporarily reassess your goal, time frame, or needs. Setbacks can bring out creative solutions for success. Celebrate your achievement and evaluate your next step. Enjoy the outcome of your success. Enjoy the completion of the journey. Then think, how can I challenge myself to make it better. I read a story of a Rabbi’s mother who would tell the following. “There was a tall tree in the yard of her home. The neighborhood children used to climb up and would often fall out of the tree. When the Rabbi was young, he would climb up and reach the top of the tree without falling. When asked, “How is it that you don’t fall, and all the other children fail to make it to the top?” Her son responded, “As others climb, they look down and get frightened and fall. When I climb, I continually look upward.” Like the wise sage, keep looking upward and your success will be achieved. https://open.spotify.com/show/7FqEyZLXxp2lGzTYBcS9hQ

Now that the election is over, I have a bone to pick with some of my fellow citizens. Let’s stop the tribalization of our nation. Let’s stop projecting the mental anguish caused by thinking that the other side will do terrible things to you. For too long our politics has developed into the morass of name calling and opposition hatred. It is nothing new in politics, yet as we have seen, one side is disparaged by being called “garbage,” “deplorable,” “Nazi,” and “un-American.” The other side is afraid of losing their body autonomy, except during the Wuhan lockdowns, their democracy otherwise known as mob rule, or being locked up in concentration camps, like when Franklin Delano Rosevelt wrote Executive Order 9066 incarcerating Americans of Japanese descent. Even if we see and experience this vitriol it manifests itself in counterproductive ways. Afterall, we are family, neighbors, friends, and the smallest minority of all, the individual. I am not suggesting that you stop fighting for your principles. I am suggesting we take the time to understand why we fight and how we use our skills of persuasion to change hearts and minds. Many people I know were taught that it’s not polite to talk about politics, religion, and rock-n-roll, yet these are exactly the types of dialogs we should learn to have. Civil conversations are a skill set that was dismissed when the family was dismantled during The Great Society and schools lost their focus to indoctrination rather than eduction. Good debates and discussions can be feisty, loud, and sometimes uncomfortable. Yet this is preferable to another internal conflict such as the American Civil War where brother slaughtered brother and over 700,000 of our fellow citizens were killed. I would rather be passionate in a debate than have firearms pointed my way whether it be by a fellow citizen or our government. It’s our fault that we have let our politics become more important than defending our rights as sovereign individuals. The purpose of a constitutional republic is to protect individual rights, including property both physical and intellectual. The only social system consistent with human nature is through Capitalism. Ask yourself then, what is Capitalism? It is a social system based on the recognition and protection of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. I can now hear you saying, “what about________” Fill in the blank. Kim Monson Show Sponsor As my friend and author Ander Ingemarson states in his book, “Think Right or Wrong. Not Left of Right,” he discusses the importance of individual responsibility and moral clarity. The key point of the book is to make decisions based on rational principles rooted in objective reality. He explores the nature of good and evil, the role of free will, and the impact of moral choices on personal and society’s well-being. Many people push the idea of the separation of church and state, and they never ask if we should therefore consider separating the economy and state? These ideas are worth exploring and considering if we wish to remain free. Many of our fellow citizens have no understanding or don’t take the time to investigate these concepts. They believe in collectivism and altruism, which by its very definition are focused on other people’s needs, and entails sacrificing the fruits of your labor for others by force. We should focus on upholding and protecting our rights as citizens, not on team blue or red or because of someone else’s need. I would suggest we should focus on building our character through the choices we make and the actions we take in life, not blaming others for our expedient and hedonistic decisions. We should build our traits of excellence and those classical virtues of prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude, not point our fingers at others because we lack the discipline of self-mastery. We are the most fortunate people on the face of the planet in human history. We are secure at night and have neighbors bordering to our north and south that are not lobbing bombs at us. We have all the accommodation and luxury that the richest kings and queens in human existence never had. Still, we fight over who will be the next president as if it should have mattered. We must examine how to best move past this siloed behavior and get to agreeing on what priorities matter most. Consider this. The sun will come out. Your kids and grandchildren will go out and play. You will still get to go to work and earn a living. We trust in these everyday occurrences. Likewise, we need to be able to trust our representatives by demanding they respect and know where their source of empowerment is given, by the People. Our elections should not matter as much as they have in our lifetime. Our representatives must understand that their fellow citizens do not need to be bought by graft or shiny things rather, they need to have their individual rights protected, PERIOD. Presidents and elected representatives are bound to protect and defend the Constitution, and we should hold them accountable within the law no matter who gets elected. Imagine if you got to choose how to best spend your wealth, rather than someone throwing bumper sticker slogans your way to get elected to office. Imagine a time when you could say something that was controversial, and your opponent would have the command of the English language to discuss it rather than try to cancel you because they are offended. Fellow citizens, it is time to rediscover and understand it is our duty to govern ourselves. If we take this challenge seriously and become informed by having personal responsibility to govern ourselves through benevolence, trust, and mutual respect we can prosper by using the source of our actual wealth, our minds. The opportunity is to make a personal commitment to working on yourself first and leave others to work on themselves. Make your life a shining example for others to mirror. The insightful Lawrence W. Reed, President Emeritus of the Foundation of Economic Education wrote, “If you do not govern yourself, you will be governed.” https://kimmonson.com/featured_articles/now-that-the-election-is-over/?vgo_ee=A5haMrmV70%2BQ2%2FilO3XWFUdVI1fHFeoASMACGejvBR82QeDGdfqjGnuO%3AQQk%2BmIso5eC%2BmUNu4JJ6lN6G35T1Z2Hc

There is an old Aesop Fable about the Wind and the Sun engaged in a dispute as to which was the most powerful. Suddenly they saw a traveler walking down the road and the Sun said, “I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause the traveler to take off his cloak, shall be declared the most powerful. You begin.” The Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveler. The harder he blew the more closely the traveler wrapped his cloak around himself, till at long last the Wind had to give up in despair. Then the Sun came out and shone in all its glory upon the traveler, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on and took it off. The classic moral of the story is persuasion is better than force. Using persuasion, rather than force to influence your opposition in their decision-making takes a different kind of disputation. The ancient Greek view was to appeal to ethics or credibility, emotions and logic known as Ethos, Pathos and Logos. The use of this technique takes applying the source of one’s wealth, the mind, rather than the brute force of the body and practice its use. The classic Sophist used rhetoric or the art of persuasion to inform, influence, and motivate their audiences’ beliefs and behaviors. Today, propaganda is used to indoctrinate people with the news, and social and mass media towards a particular agenda bordering on coercion. Public policy developed by interested parties aggressively threatens us by use of fear or to shame a person’s behavior. Pundits, politicians, and provocateurs are exceedingly expert at blowing these winds of discontent. My preference is using the disinfecting rays of a cogent argument to illuminate a problem, and to use pinpoint persuasion to find a suitable answer. Consider any contested topic such as illegal immigration or concerns about the climate. As Aristotle explains, there are four reasons for perfecting and using persuasion. To get at truth and justice. To teach others as a tool. To be able to argue both sides and understand the whole problem. And to defend oneself and their position in a dialog. The alternative is the use of force which is the failure of persuasion and threatens an individual’s sovereignty. A young man was walking down a street and happened to hear a dog give a painful YELP! and soon came upon an old man sitting in a rocking chair on his porch. On the porch floor next to his chair was an old dog whose tail would get caught under the rail of the rocking chair every time the old man moved back and forth. Just then the old dog let out another painful YELP! The young man asked, “What’s wrong with your dog.” The old man said, “Every time I roll back, the dog’s tail gets run over.” The young man continued, “Why doesn’t the dog get up?” The old man replied, “I guess it doesn’t hurt bad enough.” Most people lament about how bad things are, yet they have no interest in finding a solution. They just prefer to complain. It’s time they quit whining and improve their ability to persuade by learning the skills available to make better arguments. Learning to use rhetoric in a positive way and to confront the fierce winds that seem unending is a skill worth pursuing. With determination and persistence, you can start to get proficient at any task. The first one to convince is yourself. When my daughter was young, I would read to her before she went to sleep. One of her favorite books was, “The Little Engine That Could.” Remember the refrain the Little Train would say repeatedly; “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” This is not just a book for children, but as my business mentor Jeffrey Gitomer states, “It’s a philosophy for life.” Our ability to persuade and to tell better stories that make a point is the best alternative to what has happened throughout recorded history by force, and that outcome never ends well for most. It is never moral to use force unless you are physically attacked and are using it to defend yourself from harm or injury. The forceful use of a clear and compelling story that demonstrates a point is the most powerful tool we have. Consider joining a Toastmasters Club to practice your persuasion skills. www.toastmasters.org https://kimmonson.com/featured_articles/practice-persuasion-against-pundits-politicians-and-provocateurs/?vgo_ee=pL4O5Lr/VgzQQtQBNjWGT5pdqx+A93nPtHfFKMS7AZnbtl+I6UNSf2/T:EXJ2UYqSY+KkyDTa1tlTUKAZflDQ+aQR

Bringing the past Into the Future

“Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read,” wrote the English philosopher and statesman, Francis Bacon. This prudence from the past can be updated. I recently bought tickets to a concert, and they arrived digitally. I was disappointed when I could not add them to my ticket stub collection of multicolored strips of heavy stock paper of all the previous concerts I have attended. I wanted to listen to the bands on the way to the concert, yet my vehicle did not have a CD, cassette, or an eight-track player. Oh sure, I could print out a commemorative ticket for the concert or stream the band’s music in the car, but it’s not the same. There is something tactile missing in the world today. I could speak into a software program to write this essay, yet I chose to use the hundred plus year old technology of the keyboard. This helps me think about what I am writing. In a world where speed and efficiency rule the day, old things help us slow down to reflect. This reflection helps me clarify my thoughts and allows for deeper penetration of meaning and understanding. There is a place for the coming Artificial Intelligence revolution, and I embrace its ability to speed up the gathering of information and doing mundane tasks, yet there is something familiar, comfortable and even magical in the experience of opening an old dictionary, encyclopedia, or a thesaurus and exploring an idea or the discovery of information. It seems like Western society is losing the sensation of wonder that one used to engage in and touch real things. Think about the convenience the digital world brings. In your smart phone you most likely have thousands of photographs. You can carry them with you to show and share with ease. Yet, I enjoy looking at my family’s old photo books with square Brownie quality images of long past relatives and my mind goes to what life was like back in those days. I don’t get that same experience scrolling on glass like I do with holding a piece of the past. I find myself longing for a simpler time, although it was harder and not nearly as palliative. Nostalgia, like an old story among friends, brings warmth to the heart and feelings of better times. Remember in grade school the sweet smell of activity sheets reproduced from the mimeograph machines with their purple ink? And yes, I did place the paper to my nose and inhale. Do you remember opening a can of Play-Doh and the aroma wafting over you or playing “cops and robbers” with your cap gun and that sulfur stench once the trigger was pulled and the sparks flew. All these experiences trigger my memories of days gone by. Were they truly better days or is my mind only remembering the pleasant parts of those years? There is a recalibration of society going on and it causes me to reach back for those familiar things of certainty. I know that’s why I enjoy visiting records shops, used bookstores and antique markets. I like the taste of familiar foods like meatloaf and mac and cheese. I enjoy listening to familiar music and listening to long ago tales that make a point. They are evergreen and lasting. Production, innovation, and technology make our lives better in almost every aspect as they transform our world. However, old wood makes lasting furniture, old wine ferments the brain and loosens the tongue for conversation, old friends are honest and will tell you the truth, and old authors share their lives, experiences, and wisdom on paper. Perhaps the things of the past can be integrated and balanced with the technology of the present. Only time will tell. In the meantime, write a letter or send a postcard to someone. They will be grateful for the time you took to write them. Find your old film camera and take a walk and photograph what you see on a roll of film. Pull out your old vinyl records and read the liner notes like you did when you first bought that new artist album. Read a physical book and enjoy the tactile experience of holding the words. Participate in a local organization that teaches calligraphy, stamp collecting, or coin collecting. You’ll meet amazing people who share your interests. Incorporating these older technologies and activities will bring meaningful interactions and points of view that create bonds, community, and a more grounded pace of life. Perhaps the knowledge of the past can be incorporated into the wisdom of the future. https://kimmonson.com/featured_articles/bring-the-past-into-the-present/?vgo_ee=%2FjdE9GR6Ov%2Fg7ZEHhte%2BEArXIvSuBsR3gk1pUFbcnpGKe1Ky4roTkHdw%3AVUsr5jE9GVj86d8oNROUyyKQlxR5oiI3

Looking Up

At the edge of an old town square was a tall clock tower that chimed every hour and on the half hour. Throughout the day people would glance up at the clock and check the time to see if their watches were correct. This helped people stay coordinated with each other for appointments, meetings, and their daily activities. Even with this helpful asset some townspeople would complain, couldn’t the town lower the clock, so it is not so high up to look at? Others chimed in, why can’t the town lower the clock to eye level and make it more accessible to fix? Still others would question, is the clock on the tower always right since it recently chimed a thirteenth strike rather than one. Some people thought the prior hours must be called into question given one wrong strike is one too many and perhaps all the strikes could be wrong. The noisy clock watchers were so persuasive that the town council held a meeting and made a decision to lower the clock. Then, once lowered, people noticed the clock was wrong more often than their watches. They started to demand the clock be readjusted too often and soon the clock broke. The townspeople no longer cared if the clock was being maintained so it was dismantled and thrown away as trash. Traditions like that old clock in the tower and its chimes are rapidly being destroyed because we find it inconvenient to look up and ask why the clock tower was created in the first place. Clock towers had been built since antiquity, initially without faces and solely as striking clocks with bells to call the surrounding community to work or worship. As they became more common designers added a dial on the outside of a tower so that townspeople could read them. This gave townspeople a sense of time and place. Those few who were deaf could now see the time. Kim Monson Show Sponsor Roger Mangan State Farm Insurance Today, we are so used to having our eyes fixated on our phones, tablets, and computers for information, it causes us to miss the opportunity to have meaningful interactions with each other. We miss the human connection of looking up at each other and engaging in shared interests and ideas. There are places where people can connect with each other such as in Toastmasters. In my Toastmasters club we practice public speaking and listening by hearing fellow members inform, inspire, persuade, and entertain by speaking and telling stories that make a point. We practice the oral tradition of rhetoric which can have a powerful connection between people if a speaker can transfer their emotion to their audience. I often practice my Toastmasters speeches while driving. When I do so I must still look up and forward through the windshield, otherwise I will crash. When you watch a movie or TV, you must look up and forward to see the screen or you miss the story. When you fly a kite or stargaze into the night sky you must look up and forward. Why then do some reject the traditions that brought us to the point of looking up and forward? Why is the old way perceived as bad and the new way better? Why do we let the noisy few rule the day? I embrace technology and new innovations which make our lives better. I am looking forward to seeing how artificial intelligence will enhance our standard of living. I am by no means a Luddite. Yet, for me nothing is better than actual intelligence, having a conversation with an actual person, and looking in their eyes during a dialog. I relish reading the expression on their faces and exploring ideas that are worthy of looking into, looking up to, looking forward to. There have always been those who want convenience or to take the easy path. I question whether they are seeking knowledge (information) or wisdom (prudence)! We have become so affluent in our society whereby patience, persistence, piety have become elastic and malleable. Our social norms and culture are rapidly changing and those who wish to control the boundaries of what is acceptable keep pushing the Overton Window. The situation we now find ourselves in reminds me of the fool that eats too much at a buffet and blames the restaurant for offering an abundance of food to choose from. Finding himself uncomfortably full, he points at others to blame for his gluttony. He does not have the discipline of self-mastery. As election season intensifies and the noise gets louder, as nations battle each other while not respecting the rights of others, and as the old things and ways are continually being replaced, my challenge to you is take time to look up and see what is true, good, and beautiful. It takes effort to seek objectively higher things and that is why we need more clock towers to keep us grounded while looking up. https://kimmonson.com/featured_articles/looking-up/?vgo_ee=Jsy965JEx2YnsoYAu5yUJl%2BnjqJQKQAGdgUvmnvyZyEdTok7nSIrGOYJ%3ASlVcTxY1RxZqo5qP19jFwaXVukQ1BGUQ

We Need More, Not Less Carts

Sylvan Goldman was the owner of a chain of grocery stores called Humpty Dumpty in Oklahoma City. He observed the difficulty women shoppers where having, trying to balance a hand-held shopping basket full of groceries and hold her child. He wanted to alleviate this problem in his self-serve store in 1937. Plus, he was thinking of how he could increase his business for shoppers to buy more goods while in his store. The solution was a wire framed cart with wheels that had multiple baskets or as his patent was titled, “Folding Basket Carriage for Self-Service Stores.” Today we know it as the shopping cart. At first this wheeled buggy did not catch on. Women thought it too much like a baby carriage. Men thought it too effeminate to push. Frustrated with the lack of acceptance of his invention, Goldman hired models to push his invention in his stores to demonstrate its use and hired greeters to invite shoppers to use his shopping carts. In time they became wildly successful. Even today online websites refer to their customers purchases as filling their cart. In politics, the goal of any political party is to increase the number of voters for your candidate or public policy position. You must make it easy for the voters to like your ideas and platform. You must help make the voters comfortable with their buying decision and get more of them to vote your way and fill their cart with friends and family to vote with you. This proximity impact moves the needle and wins elections. The political party one belongs to needs more people pushing more carts of like-minded people voting, supporting, and investing in people and thereby getting their candidates elected to represent them. The goal of a political party is simple; to get people elected to represent their party and fundraise to do so. They should have some philosophical platform that guides them, like protecting individual rights, or advocating for a limited government, or leaving people alone to pursue their own happiness by embracing freedom and rejecting force. A political party should activate citizens to get involved and work towards these goals. Imagine being an active member of a political party and holding the position of Vice-Chair, District Captain, and Precinct Committee Person. Imagine having the responsibility of administering the party’s social media, participating in their communication team, and volunteering for the last ten years conducting their monthly morning meetings. Envision yourself a participant in the county assembly and a delegate to numerous state conventions. Walking in parades, knocking on doors for candidates, making countless phone calls and attending innumerable executive committee meetings. Investing your time tabling at countless community events and having been called every name conceivable for representing your party. You have volunteered in the trenches and worked tirelessly for your party, which has led to lifelong friendships with the best people, who you value for their fortitude and prudence. The County Party you worked with built relationships in the community, by attending community events and working with all involved to protect rights. A trust and an understanding were created over time. Then, imagine a new regime is elected to lead your state party and the new leadership, and its chairman no longer do the one thing they were elected to do, bring party members together. The new regime’s leadership is tasked with building unity and coalition with volunteers to elect and fundraise for candidates. Instead of showing how shopping carts work and adding more people to push and purchase the ideas and the candidates you’re selling, the leadership divides, demigods, and destroys the very thing you and many others have worked to help build. You have read leaderships divisive emails calling out people they disagree with, and they use their religious viewpoint to proselytize. They demonstrate a lack of ethics and leadership by excluding rather than building a bigger tent and filling their carts with more people. They endorse candidates prior to a primary, even if it is permissible in their rules, which is not good public relations for their party. They allegedly use party infrastructure to run their own Congressional campaign, while remaining as party chair, which also has the appearance of a lust for power. Their behavior, choices, and actions define their character and as such you can no longer follow the leadership of the state party. In effect you resign from your local party activism because you can no longer support what the state leadership represents. In my opinion, that state party needs their own Sylvan Goldman to build and fill more carts to hold more people who believe in the principle of individual rights. That party should encourage more people to join the cause through electing and fundraising principled candidates. It should be encouraging free people to innovate, create, and produce, not indoctrinate, and tyrannize. That state party should use the power of persuasion for bigger and better ideas, and not use their position for personal gain. Carts are for filling, not emptying. https://shorturl.at/ajynW

This Independence Day

Every year on Independence Day I listen to a CD recorded by Dr. John Ridpath titled, The Declaration of Independence – America’s Saga. I met Dr. Ridpath in 2010 at the Leadership Program of the Rockies Annual Retreat. He was an Associate Professor of Economics and Intellectual History at York University in Toronto, Canada. Dr. Ridpath always made the moral case for capitalism, individualism, and reason. He loved America and the American founding. He was most fond of Thomas Jefferson and his penning of the Declaration of Independence. His lecture on Individual Rights and the Founding of America is a classic. Sadly, he passed away in 2021. Dr. Ridpath was a Canadian. In his lecture recordings, one can hear him become choked up when he speaks of “those host of worthies” of the American Founding. He recognized in these men, as they did for the first time in human history, the universal, equal, natural rights of all men as a basis to build a new society. Stop and let that sink in. Never in the history of mankind did a group of men gather to discuss, argue, debate, and take action on an idea that had never been done. I marvel at the concept of recognizing individual rights. Throughout history, men have been ruled by other men through force by a king, tribal chief, potentates, and despots. The American experiment was different. The former Prime Minister of England, Margaret Thacher was quoted, “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.” This philosophy of recognizing individual rights was a radical idea that revolutionized America as an exceptional nation. We were founded on the morality of protecting individual rights whether they be intellectual or physical property rights. I am often amazed at my friends born in other countries, yet as Americans by choice, recognize the difference from their birth countries. Whether from China, Cuba, Mexico, or Sweden they came to this country and became Americans for the one thing they were seeking, freedom. Freedom to succeed or fail. Freedom to practice a religion or not. Freedom to print, read, and say what they want. Freedom to assemble and petition their representatives. And freedom to protect themselves with the one caveat of not harming others. They knew once in this country their individual rights would be protected. The other tradition I do on Independence Day is recite my favorite poem from one of my favorite musicians, Charlie Daniels. His simple melodic words in his song, “My Beautiful America” remind me of the beauty of this land and the people who inhabit our shores. The lyrics at the end of this song are thus; “This then is America! The land God blesses with everything. And no Eiffel Tower; no Taj Mahal. No Alps; No Andes. No native hut; nor Royal Palace can rival her awesome beauty. Her diverse population, her monolithic majesty. America the Free! America the mighty! America the beautiful.” As this Independence Day approaches, I am grateful to live in the greatest country, at the greatest time. Despite all the problems and turmoil in our nation, I am optimistic and hopeful because of the American people and that uniquely American idea of Individual Rights. Remember this gift on this Independence Day. https://kimmonson.com/featured_articles/this-independence-day/?vgo_ee=KRjfrgu3UOoxOuDo%2FD7%2FOBx%2BqIGNBudi9Prh3hYbUHTlQ%2B%2FbzI1T0d16%3ABZaaepYMTNQoAl0voOkxJgbrMXuJS7co