“When you look down at your feet, you see a very narrow horizon.  But when you look up into the sky, you feast on all of Heaven.” From Ron Ewart’s book, “Stare Deep Into the Cosmos.”

When I was in my 30′s, I learned to fly small airplanes.  I suddenly learned why many wives become pilot widows.  Although I never flew as high as Mount Everest (in my airplane you have to go on oxygen above 12,000 feet) the perspective one gets from three-dimensions, well above planet Earth, is not only exciting, it is exhilarating and sometimes intoxicating.  Flying can be an obsession.  It can draw you into the air like a drunk is drawn to alcohol.

Not long after Mt. Saint Helens blew its top off, in one of the most horrendous volcanic eruptions in the lower 48 since God knows when, I decided to take some pictures of the exposed volcano from the perspective of a high-flying bird and took my airplane to the Mountain.  When I was just north of it, my  radio crackled from a pilot in one of the helicopters that was circling the area.  He warned me not to go into the crater, or fly even near the rim, as the winds were whipping around 90 miles an hour and would flip my little Cessna six ways from Sunday.  So I was content to fly at about 10,000 feet, back and forth on the north side of the Mountain, looking deep into Oregon and out of harms way.  Like the pilots say, I was flying in CAVU, “clear air, visibility unlimited”.

On each pass I took several pictures over my shoulder through the window, not expecting anything fantastic ….. one hand on the yoke and the other clicking indiscriminately at the blown-out crater.

The picture accompanying this article was one of those I took.  From my perch in the airplane I could literally see almost 200 miles into Oregon.  Mt. Hood was just behind Mt. Saint Helens and Mt. Jefferson and the Three Sisters were far in the background.  It was a good day to take pictures on high.  I had done it twice before, but the Sun was at the wrong angle both times and all my pictures were washed out.  Never take pictures from the air at high noon.

In any event, the experience got me to thinking about the perspective one gets from being up high and how much more one can see, given the altitude and the wide angle from which you can view your little piece of the world.  When you are on the ground, so many things can obstruct your view and your horizon is very limited.

The same can be true for the problems we face, either personal, regional, national or international.  When our horizon is narrow, one of our problems can obstruct our view of the other problems and can be so overwhelming, that the other problems are totally hidden from view.  We become so engrossed in the problem in front of our eyes, we can’t focus on anything else.  In other words, we lose our perspective and our point of reference.  We can’t see that many of the problems have connecting roots.

People sometimes blow a problem way out of proportion and that expansion of the problem clouds their view of all else.  They become obsessed with it and won’t let it go.  People with clinical depression are prone to this condition.  Their obsession leads them into fear, paranoia and other maladies that destroy their objectivity.  They become lost in a fog of despair, frustration and the mind-numbing feeling of helplessness.  Their horizon of life becomes so narrow, they can see no way to escape it.  And yet, if they were to just go out on a dark starry night, where the lights of the city doesn’t dim the brilliance of the stars and stare deep into the Cosmos, their horizon would expand exponentially and instead of their head looking down and their horizon being narrow, they would look up into the night sky and feast on all of Heaven.  Suddenly their internal problems should seem small to the external vision of the expanding universe that is played out in a points-of-light display, on a black background.

In our struggle to regain our freedoms and restore our Constitutional Republic, we are prone to take a similar path with those problems that obstruct our view of the solutions that will lead us to where we won’t to go.  We focus on one issue, like Obama’s birth certificate, or abortion, or prayer in schools, or the health care bill, or cap and trade, or the one-world-order, rather than focusing on the solid foundation of our liberties, as contained in the U. S. Constitution that resides on the high mountain of our freedom.  The path to our original freedom came from there and we must return to that path, no matter what it takes.

There can be no half measures here because we are in a war, a war of ideologies ….. one negative and one positive.  The positive ideology leads to freedom.  The other leads to slavery.  But the negative ideology is cleverly wrapped in Motherhood, Apple pie and Chevrolet.  It appeals to our raw emotions instead of our objective intellect.  It makes us want to save an animal frozen in the headlights of an oncoming train, even if our attempts at rescuing the animal has a high risk of killing us, should we try.  Unfortunately, we are trying everywhere and our future is dark, if we continue on this path to destruction.

Rescuing the poor by destroying our financial foundation, that would drive us into national bankruptcy, is insane.  So is giving amnesty to every illegal alien who wants to come here, in that it will only act as a magnet for more to come.  To take on more people onto our “life boat” while we are vulnerable, is an invitation to national suicide.

Nationalizing the entire American health care industry is not insane, it is treason.  So is passing Cap and Trade legislation.  Destroying our freedoms and property rights to “save the planet” by passing draconian and unconstitutional environmental protection laws, is not good policy, it is the path to slavery.  To make every American a criminal at the airport, is punishing those who would not do us any harm and giving special treatment to those who are doing everything in their power to kill us, while that laugh at us for our weakness.  To remain on the defensive when we are at war, is a recipe for annihilation.  To not take the battle to the enemy is a strategy of losers.

With the Constitution as our Mountain, let us look out upon our nation and save it from sure destruction, perpetrated on a free people by a negative ideology and those with pure evil in their hearts.  Let us do it from the perspective one gets from being on high.  Let our point of reference be freedom and let our direction be on the path to liberty.

© Copyright January 10, 2010 - All Rights Reserved

~ The Author ~
Ron Ewart is the President of The National Association of Rural Landowners and nationally recognized author on freedom and property rights issues. Ron may reached for comment via email at r.ewart@comcast.net.

In addition, Ron can usually be heard each Tuesday evening from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. (ET) on Perspectives on America on The Micro Effect broadcasting network, as either Jeffrey Bennett’s guest or Guest Host. Tune in – you’ll be glad you did.

Perspectives on America can be heard from 6:00 until 8:00 p.m. (ET) Monday through Friday on The Micro Effect.