The thrill is gone.  The American people aren’t buying what Obama and the progressives are selling anymore.  They’ve seen enough.  Like the silent, long-suffering hero in a Gary Cooper movie, Americans are fed up and about to assert themselves in defense of what is right.  For example, in my blog yesterday, The Pledge and the Progressives, I wrote about American citizens reciting the pledge at an Illinois House of Representative Debate, hosted by the League of Women Voters, when the Moderator refused to lead it.  The man who led that Pledge wrote me in response to my post.  His story is representative of the majority of Americans:

My name is Joe Ptak and I live in Island Lake, Illinois. I attended the Joe Walsh-Melissa Bean “forum” and I WAS THE INDIVIDUAL who stood up and wanted to know why the pledge of allegiance was not going to be recited…I thought it might have been an oversight. I was flabbergasted and stunned to hear the LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS moderator say to me, and the audience, that it was never part of their program at these events and will not allowed.

Please keep in mind that this “forum” was organized in Grayslake High School for the benefit of the students, who were asking the questions. Furthermore, there were numerous students present (gaining extra credit) as well as 350 adults and media who packed the auditorium.

I served in the USAFR’s for ten (10) years and there were many veterans in attendance. I was so proud when the audience rose up one by one, then in mass to recite the pledge of allegiance with loud and heavy emphasis on the words LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL. The moderator then had the gall to admonish the audience and for “disrespecting her”…my wife told me if that woman did not shut up she was going to get her “Brooklyn up” (being from NY).

I happen to be an Hispanic immigrant from Peru, South America, who was brought to this great country by my parents, along with three other siblings in 1960, when I was eight years old. I was raised in Chicago, have seen, and experienced a lot in this world. People are literary dying each day for just the OPPORTUNITY to live in this great land I call my home.

There are ignorant people in this land who do not have the slightest idea, nor understand, what it means to be an AMERICAN. Our Liberty, Freedom of Speech and the Press are never guaranteed and we must always fight to maintain them. I think our students in attendance witnessed that first hand and gained a lot of extra credit for themselves.

Isn’t is funny how two Americans named Joe: one an unassuming plumber, and the other, a good man, born in South America, who honorably served the country his freedom-seeking parents legally immigrated to, have both so clearly illuminated the anti-American message of the agenda of Obama and his fellow travelers.

Average Americans are the strength of our country.  In eight days, we’ll prove that again.