Our Most Cherished Right

I am excited! Tomorrow is Election Day. It is the day guaranteed to me by my Constitution to vote for the people I want to represent me in governement. It is the day I am privileged, and obligated, to vote for the men and women candidates that I believe possess and demonstrate the skills, wisdom, character and conviction to lead our nation for the next few years. It's an invaluable, inspired process by which we are empowered to self-determination.

Personally I feel my freedom and individual liberties increasingly rewstricted and/or removed altogether by the encroahment of a presumably well-meaning government. To some degree I have come to the conlcusion that our government at all levels has become 'self-aware', seeking more to preserve itself than to preserve the welfare of the nation's population. The growing differentiation referenced by public officials when speaking of "the people" and "the government" is alarming. It's as if they do not grasp nor value the instrinsic 'one-ness' rooted in the Declaration of Independence and reiterated by Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address:

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth"

We are one nation under God. We are Americans all. We face many great challenges but history has shown time and again that by God's hand we have overcome those challenges to become the greatest nation in the history of the world. We always come together in the face of great hardship and sacrifice to rise above ourselves for the good of another.

I love my country. I will vote with exhuberation and relsih the freedom to do so. At day's end the voice of a free people will have once again been heard. Please vote. God bless America!

Celebrate freedom of choice!

This coming September 1st our company will celebrate it's 36th anniversary. I remember joining the Oberlander companies early in 1977 when the communications division was a fledgling operation made possible by the opportunities created when AT&T  split up its monopolistic hold on the telecommunications industry. The intent of this historic move was to create an environment that would foster competitive alternatives in an otherwise stagnant, monolithic industry and result in benefits typically manifest by a free-market. Conusmers in turn - not providers - would determine the value of products and services by excercising their freedom of choice at the point of consumption. It was a brilliant and warranted plan though, arguably, sometimes painful in execution.

Freedom of choice is one of those privileges I excercise, and take for granted, daily. From beginning each morning choosing whether or not to get out bed with the alarm, to deciding if  a blanket is needed when settling in for the night - a day's activity is an endless series of choices bookended by slumber's bliss.

Our forefathers fought tirelessly to guarantee that we would always be free to make our own choices, to pursue our interests and seek our destiny. I love how our manufacturers respond to customers' needs and desires. I can pretty much guarantee that a solution exists to virtually any challenge. And most of the time there are mutilple solutions from which to choose. It typically becomes a matter of ferreting out the best choice. It's what I love to do. I'm anxious to see what happens in the next 36 years!