Veterans Day is a national holiday, and next Wednesday, Nov. 11, America will remember those millions who have served their country in preserving America's freedoms and liberties with events designed to honor all veterans, especially those who have paid the ultimate price of freedom with their life.

There will be parades, speeches, flag waving and the laying of wreaths on the graves of the veterans in cemeteries nationwide, including Cherokee County's own beautiful National Cemetery.

Veterans Day should remind us that freedom is not free and that the price of freedom is the blood of its people. Veterans Day should also remind us that "when the wicked rule the people mourn." Those of us old enough to have lived through the tyrannies of Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, those tyrants who not only destroyed their own nations but millions of their own people with their fascist governments, understand how hard it is to restore freedom once lost. And many Americans now wonder if this is what is in store for America today.

Millions have paid the ultimate price for the liberties Americans enjoy today. It has ever been so since that first shot was fired at Lexington on April 19, 1775. No compromise is possible with those evil people who enter into secret combination and seek self glory and power over their subjects. Freedom was the issue in 1775, and freedom is still the issue today as men's souls are being tried nationwide as we watch President Barack Obama do exactly what he said he was going to do: "transform" America. Some believe it is to "transform" America back to that form of tyranny the Revolutionary War was fought over.

As I watched the people in New Jersey being interviewed regarding their upcoming governor's election, I was reminded of Thomas Jefferson words when he said: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was and never will be." Sobering words then and now!

America is badly divided today. On one side, there are those who "hope" Obama's leadership is in the right direction, having the government providing cradle to grave care while totally controlling their lives. Those on the other side see Obama's "transformation" of America in a far different way.

This latter group see Obama's efforts to "transform" America as destroying the principles of government that has made America great and of transferring the responsibility of government from "We the People" to the government in order to control all aspects of our lives; and in the process destroying the free enterprise capitalist system that has brought more freedom and prosperity to more people worldwide than any other form of government devised by man heretofore. These are the people who have finally awakened from a deep slumber and now realize that the principles of freedom and liberty deeply embedded by the founders into America's foundational documents are being destroyed.

They also remember what candidate Obama said during his campaign about those he surrounds himself with. During the campaign, he surrounded himself with affluent capitalists, but once in office, they were tossed aside and replaced by his real friends: those self-admitted socialists and communists who publicly admire Communist Mao, who slaughtered over 50 million; Stalin, who murdered millions; as did Hitler, and Castro and his proteges in South America, who are destroying freedoms in their countries today. Those surrounding Obama today, with help from Congress, are silently trying to control America's basic freedoms: religion, speech, and free assemble, the very heart and soul of America's liberties.

To keep from being totally discouraged over the events happening today, I often turn to the scriptures and search for historical events that are similar to what America faces today. And there are many such recorded events in the scriptures! One event that parallels today's events tells how the Israelites, who lived under a theocratic republic, went to Samuel and asked for a king, basing their request on the "corruption" that then prevailed in their government following 230 years of self-government - a government created by God, via Moses, the Moses who had led the Israelites out of Egyptian tyranny and bondage.

The Lord told Samuel to give them a king but warned them of the consequences of rejecting their God. And sadly, all of the consequences came to pass. Israel was destroyed and scattered and freedom was lost to the world until God again raised up wise men to restore God's "perfect laws of liberty" via the wise men we call our nation's founders. And it is Jefferson who reminds us that our freedoms are embedded in "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God."

Today, America is in need of new wise men and women to replace those who now only "counsel among themselves, and deny the God of Heaven." Could America's consequences be the same? We hope not. Change is needed, but not the kind being offered in Washington today!

Donald Conkey, a retired agricultural economist, lives in Woodstock.