During the 63 years of my life, I have been privileged to see and participate in a great deal of our country's important history.

As a first grade student I remember the daily drills held in school that were to protect us from the effects of an atomic bomb. Actually, looking back, as close as I lived to Washington, D.C., it probably was a drill in leaning down and kissing your butt goodbye.

In those days we took for granted that our politicians were honest and our country was pure. Of course, at that early age most of us didn't realize that it wasn't and that we actually lived in a country that did not treat all of its citizens equally.

I attended parochial schools most of my life and as a result lived a very sheltered life and wore the biggest of blinders, which until this past Sunday I continued to wear. Granted they weren't as big as they used to be but they were blinders all the same.

I actually still believed - even after presidential assassinations and assassination attempts, wars that were lost, crooked and philandering presidents, moon walks and cell phones, newspapers that I had admired all my life turning into government-controlled pawns - that I lived in a country that was the most untainted place on earth and a place where right always conquered.

Although I should have been much smarter, the fact is in the 40 plus years I have been in the news business I have witnessed the actions of the most crooked of politicians, and in spite of that, I still believed in the morally sound principles of this country. That was until Sunday, March 21, 2010, - a day that broke my heart and has filled me with deepest distrust of our government and its current leadership.

On that day a group of men and women ignored the will of the people they were entrusted to lead in passing a health bill that has put America on the fast track toward economic ruin.

Please understand I believe we need some type of health reform; we need it very badly.
Just recently, in fact, I have had personal family dealings with the health care system that has left me fuming and frustrated as well as my meager savings trampled into the ground.

I believe that our elected officials could have presented an improved health care system without added taxation, without going behind closed doors and that is easily understood by the American people.

I also believe that 219 people and their president hijacked the Constitution of the United States and tromped on it with glee directly on the hallowed floors of the Capitol of our country, right in front of our own disbelieving eyes.
The smiles and the smirks displayed by the likes of Obama, Pelosi, Hoyer and Georgia's John Lewis after their shady victory made me feel dirty and disgusted.

I feel today like someone I loved with all my heart has died. I can almost hear the millions of men and women who gave their lives to protect that great Constitution of ours, sobbing and wailing from their eternal graves.
So, I am going to mourn today and tomorrow and maybe the next day for our country, for its people, for my family and then I am going to tear my mourning clothes asunder and I am going to work to replace every member of Congress who has sold the American people down the river for their own misguided loyalties and greed.

I looked in the mirror this morning - those blinders of mine were gone - and never again will I be so naive and trusting.

Along with many others I will pick up the Constitution and patch it together, and I will clutch it with renewed energy. With all my will, I will hold it high and fight with everything that is in me to restore it back to its proper place - upon an altar of hope and prosperity and goodness.

I also will thank the good Lord for what he has given and to tell him in the humblest of words that we received his message and we want him to pour his blessings on us once again. This time we will promise to be better stewards of his good graces and we will promise never to take those blessings for granted again. Will you join me?

Those of us that are of the Baby Boomer generation have made our mistakes - the major one being the election of 219 would-be demigods. We need to be the moral leaders that we were taught by our parents to be. We can and I believe we will.

God bless our mighty homeland and protect it from those within who would attempt to destroy its principles.

T. Pat Cavanaugh is the publisher of The Rockdale News and general manager of The Covington News.