What Happened to Good ol’ Fashion Horse Sense?

Once upon a time in a land far away there was a con­cept that was called horse sense. It was a con­cept which all grown up adult type of peo­ple took pride in master­ing. It was some­times called com­mon sense be­cause of the huge num­bers of peo­ple who mas­tered it. To be fair it didn’t re­quire much work to mas­ter this elusive con­cept if only one could take the time to con­sid­er an is­sue as though it was sim­ple enough to un­der­stand. For ex­am­ple, if some­one came to live in that far away land and they strug­gled to adapt to the re­quire­ments of the land it­self they were deemed to be lack­ing horse sense. The read­er may well won­der at this point what strange or even ex­ot­ic re­quire­ment the land may have im­posed on the new­ly ar­rived trav­el­er.

Well, the land would sim­ply re­quire that one pay at­ten­tion to the time of year and the ad­vance of time. For ex­am­ple, in the spring one would plant a gar­den. It was con­sid­ered to be sim­ple horse sense to plant a gar­den. Af­ter all a gar­den would sup­ply food throughout the sum­mer and ear­ly fall for any­one who could meet the re­quire­ments of the land. Of course the land would usu­al­ly be more boun­ti­ful and pro­vide more food than any­one could con­sume in the time the garden would ex­ist, so it was con­sid­ered just plain old horse sense to store the ex­cess boun­ty in cel­lars and in glass jars and even in huge chest types of freez­ers. Foods such as pota­toes and apples would stay quite nice­ly in a cel­lar for months, some­times even un­til the fol­low­ing spring. Foods such as peach­es and toma­toes and pick­les and applesauce could be canned in glass jars and sealed so they would keep un­til even the fol­low­ing year. Foods such as meats and berries and even corn on the cob could be frozen and would keep for years if need be. To do the work nec­essary to keep those foods in their places was con­sid­ered to be just plain old horse sense.

“One of the most ba­sic facets of horse sense was a ded­i­ca­tion to main­tain­ing hon­esty above all else.”

Folks would ac­cu­mu­late a store of fire wood through­out the sum­mer and fall so that in the bit­ter cold of win­ter they would have fuel to keep their hous­es warm. They would keep brooms and shov­els around so when the snow came, they could keep their walks clear. That was con­sid­ered to be mere horse sense. If a neigh­bor had a bad time in the win­ter due to ill­ness or ac­ci­dent, folks would come to that per­son’s aid and bring them food and clean their walks and dri­ve­ways so they could be as self-suf­fi­cient as pos­si­ble. One nev­er knew when one might have the same needs and it was just horse sense to help peo­ple who could, when the time came, help one­self.

One of the most ba­sic facets of horse sense was a ded­i­ca­tion to main­tain­ing hon­esty above all else. I mean how could one pos­si­bly ad­here to the re­quire­ments of the land and of the ap­pli­ca­tion of horse sense with­out first be­ing as hon­est about events as one could pos­si­bly be? One couldn’t have horse sense if one was not hon­est about the re­quire­ments of the land or the re­quire­ments of work and com­mu­ni­ty. Folks could have dif­fer­ent be­liefs yet still ad­here to horse sense as a guid­ing prin­ci­ple. It was con­sid­ered to be just plain old horse sense to re­place a grav­el road with a paved road be­cause a paved road was just way lots eas­i­er to main­tain than a grav­el road. It was more con­ve­nient for keep­ing the dust down and was much eas­i­er to re­move snow. Of course it was more ex­pen­sive to in­stall than a grav­el road but horse sense would in­di­cate that a high traf­fic, main thor­ough­fare would be a pri­or­i­ty for spend­ing mon­ey than a low traf­fic coun­try lane. A lit­tle dust out in the coun­try wouldn’t hurt much of any­thing, that would just make plain old horse sense.

In that land of far away and long ago the ad­min­is­tra­tors of gov­ern­ment were re­quired to be paragons of horse sense. It was a char­ac­ter­is­tic that qual­i­fied or disqualified a folk from hold­ing pub­lic of­fice, you see. A man who could not demonstrate a thor­ough un­der­stand­ing of horse sense just couldn’t be elect­ed to a pub­lic of­fice. Such a man would not be able to serve his com­mu­ni­ty sim­ply be­cause he might not be able to no­tice the dif­fer­ence be­tween real and fan­ta­sy. He might be able to jus­ti­fy self­ish and self-serv­ing ideas and claim them to be feath­ers in his cap.

“In that land of far away and long ago the ad­min­is­tra­tors of gov­ern­ment were re­quired to be paragons of horse sense.”

I some­times wish to once again live in that land of far away and long ago. I was most nos­tal­gic when I see peo­ple such as Kevin Mc­Carthy refuse to tes­ti­fy be­fore the Jan­uary 6th com­mit­tee. Not only is he im­prac­ti­cal and void of any kind of horse sense but he also seems to be spir­i­tu­al­ly bank­rupt. A spir­i­tu­al­ly bank­rupt politi­cian just doesn’t make old fash­ioned horse sense to me. I mean this poor man cannot muster the strength to be hon­est with him­self about what he him­self has said and done. That doesn’t make any kind of sense, much less demon­strate a grasp of common horse sense. Does Kevin think he can fool all the peo­ple all the time? Again, that just doesn’t demon­strate com­mon horse sense.

When Lin­d­sey Gra­ham claims that Don­ald Trump is the leader of the GOP, it appears that Lin­d­sey is spir­i­tu­al­ly bank­rupt. How can a man who pro­motes bla­tant lies be the leader of any kind of po­lit­i­cal move­ment? A move­ment led by lies doesn’t make any sense at all. What will it ac­com­plish? Paving the grav­el road in front of his moth­er’s house in the coun­try? Lin­ing his pock­ets with mon­ey hard work­ing folk have spent their lives ac­cu­mu­lat­ing? How does that meet that horse sense re­quire­ment?

But worse to me than these im­prac­ti­cal peo­ple, are the folk who sup­port them. How can peo­ple with old fash­ioned horse sense back in­di­vid­u­als who can­not demon­strate any sense at all? Pro­mot­ing lies and liars doesn’t make sense and any­one with even a mod­icum of horse sense has to know that. I know that folks with even com­mon sense are aware there can be no good to come of lies and liars. I just do not see how paint­ing peo­ple who pro­mote such non­sen­si­cal no­tions as sav­iors of any va­ri­ety or even as worthwhile hu­man be­ings can be jus­ti­fied as making sense.

“How can peo­ple with old fash­ioned horse sense back in­di­vid­u­als who can­not demon­strate any sense at all?”

Maybe we should ex­am­ine if our fix­a­tion on not mak­ing waves, go­ing along with the flow and be­ing nice to one an­oth­er makes any sense at all, too. I don’t see where there is any sense in jus­ti­fy­ing dis­hon­est be­hav­ior with ig­no­rance. If we ignore lies and liars we get what we de­serve…More lies and more liars.

The most de­ci­sive as­pect of lies and liars is that nei­ther pro­mote even the least amount of Har­mo­ny in our world. In fact, pro­mo­tion of lies and liars can only re­sult in di­vi­sion and dishar­mo­ny. I sup­pose the worst thing about that as­pect is the decid­ed lack of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in­her­ent in such Agree­ments. The re­al­i­ty that lies and liars must per­force cre­ate is fraught with con­flict. Any­one with even a lit­tle horse sense can see that such out­comes can not be pro­duc­tive. The only thing that can come of such ‘lead­er­ship’ is de­struc­tion. It’s just plain old horse sense there­fore, to con­sid­er that what one dreams to be real is ever so like­ly to be­come real. And such a re­al­i­ty just does not make any kind of prac­ti­cal sense at all. Or do you think it does?