Filling a Vacuum

Back in July of 2009 I launched this site as a “hobby” to share my interests in and opinions of all things Apple. Yep, I jumped in with about a bazillion other Apple enthusiasts hoping to get in my “two cents”. My buddy Ken & I thought it would be a good idea to produce and publish a podcast too, so off I went to the audio sites and bought mics, mixers, web cams and a bunch of software to make the whole thing work. Man, did we have a ball. Neither Ken nor I had ever been a musician or otherwise worked with audio/video tech, so our learning curve was really steep. We spent a ton of time keeping up with “all things Apple”. We poured over media, traveled to Apple events like Macworld Expo and WWDC every year and even made a couple of pilgrimages to Cupertino and visited with a couple of Apple engineers we came to know. 

Ken and I managed to publish 36 episodes of “The MacTexan” podcast between early 2010 and mid 2012 before our thick skulls managed to absorb the fact that we were broadcasting to a loyal but very small audience. Alas, our dreams of notoriety were dashed, but boy did we have fun and learned a lot in the process.

I continued to publish articles here regularly, but even those were becoming less and less frequent. This site, which once saw over 5000 unique visits per month has now dwindled into obscurity due to my lack of new content. I chalk it up to my laziness. I’m still as enthusiastic about Apple as I ever was, but generating new content becomes problematic when my give-a-shit meter pegs out low when measuring my desire to spend a couple hours composing my normal 2000-word post. What was once a passion increasingly became a chore. I’m no good at chores, especially since I retired and moved from my beloved Texas to our beautiful new home in the resort town of Sedona, Arizona. When my friends ask what I’m up to since retiring, I give a stock answer,...

“I’m working really hard...

...at being the laziest man alive!” 

So now, Ken and I live 1300 miles apart. Despite the myriad methods of communication available in today’s connected world, we haven’t found a suitable replacement for our regular breakfast meetings at the local cafe. Despite our typical hour and a half coffee & bullshit sessions, we usually  managed to come up with some pretty good content ideas. As good as it is, Facetime ain’t the same. We’re both still as geeky about Apple products as ever. We both spend way too much money staying up to date with the latest iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple TVs, Apple Watches and yes, we both own HomePods. The difference is, we both seem to have lost interest in reviewing and commenting on them. So, MacTexan.com has gotten totally stale.

Time for a refresh. I’ve decided to do something totally different. I’ve been dabbling in this with my “Liberty Watch” section of the site for some time now. You may have seen it. I use the section as a pressure relief. As I watch how our politicians and the media lean further and further away from the ideals this country was founded on, I sometimes need to vent. In today’s politically correct climate ruled by social justice warriors, I am alarmed by how far we’ve strayed from the ideals of our representative republic, imagined and codified in the Constitution by our founders. The left (including the mainstream media), seem to be on some sort of mission to sweep aside the principals that founded our country. Self-determination, individual responsibility and even free speech are continually ignored or attacked as either racist or bigoted concepts. Through ignorance or outright sedition, the left seems to be trying to re-invent America as if our founders were nothing more than slave-trading opportunists or they never existed at all. I believe they are achieving success because of the level of ignorance that exists in our country. Twelve years of public education in the United States yields high school graduates with little to no knowledge of how and why this country came to be nor the principals serving as its foundation.

With this in mind, I’ve decided to take things a few steps further in an attempt to counter this onslaught of ignorance and misinformation. On this site I will begin with posts containing simple education about our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights. I plan to keep things so simple a democrat can understand the facts I’ll be putting forward. Make no mistake, I’m no Constitutional scholar. I’m not a lawyer. Simply put, I’m old enough (62) to have been taught about our country’s founding while attending public schools in Texas. In fact, the subject, American History, was required when I was in the eighth grade and a history elective was required to graduate high school. I chose American History. I keep a copy of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers on all my devices. No, I’m no Constitutional scholar or lawyer, but I have committed the gist of our Constitution and Bill of Rights to memory. Not because I constantly study, but when I hear the 4^th Amendment discussed on the evening news, I want to know what they’re talking about, so I look it up. I’ve been doing this for years. The fact is, only 10% of surveyed Americans can name more than one of the first ten amendments to our Constitution (the Bill of Rights). At best, generations of Americans have been purposely kept in the dark about our founders or have been taught that they were all racist malcontents at worst. So, you know the old saying, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King!” In the coming weeks and months, this one-eyed man will provide a plain talk explanation of why and how our genius founders architected what has proven to be the most free and prosperous nation on earth. My plan is to provide the truth about our nation’s birth and the patriots that made it happen, the story our publicly funded schools purposely omit from our children’s curriculum. Plain. Simple. Truth.

Please stay tuned.