david-wakefield-11-16By David Wakefield

Let me tell you a little bit about me, so you’ll better understand me.

I grew up poor. To a degree we were dirt floor poor (Our basement was a mere crawl space with a dirt floor). When I was 10 years old, in the 4th grade, I came home and excitedly told my mom “I got a job! I’m a paperboy.” Her reply: “Good! I won’t have to buy your clothes anymore.” I delivered newspapers for a scant $10-$35/month and from that time on I bought just about everything for myself; school clothes, entertainment, an occasional Slurpee, I saved for months to buy a shine new trumpet for Jr. High School band, and a Sears bicycle to deliver newspapers (which was stolen the first week I rode it).

I not only delivered newspapers, but at age 15 I installed guard rail on North Ogden Pass. Between age 15-19 I worked several jobs washing dishes, busing tables, flipping burger, making pizza, building homes and worked at a movie theater. From 1972-1980 we were on welfare, had no car and neither of my parents had a job. At one point, when we were 15 years old, my twin brother and I saved our money and purchased carpet for our living room, so we could have a half presentable place in the house. My twin, Paul Wakefield, bought a car in 1980 with money he received from a 1972 car accident that left our family without a car for 8 years. Life was great after Paul got his car. No more walking to the grocery store and coming back with groceries in a cart. No more waiting in the rain to catch the UTA bus to attend Stake Conference in Ogden, Utah. No more having to pay friends to use their cars for a date.

In 1984 I was a Newgate Mall janitor and met a woman who would become by eternal bride. In 1985 we were engaged. She told me I needed to do better with my life and made me buy my first car and go to college. I worked at the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind form 1985-1989 and attended Weber State. In 1986 I was cut to part-time and was worried about how I would support my new wife. The answer…Joined the Air Force Reserve, then jumped to the Army Reserve, because they had a better college ROTC program.

Until I attended BMTS at Lackland AFB and actually started my meaningful military time in January 1987, I had no problem espousing socialist ideology. I was poor, I worked hard. I thought “Who needs to make $100k/year? They can give me $30K of that money and they’d still have a lot of money left over to have a good life. They’d still be far better off than me, who was only making $9k year.” Yep, I wanted part, if not all, of what other people had.

As I learned about the Freedom Beacon that America really is to the rest of the world, and gained a pride in my country that I never possessed before joining the military, you could say I was an American by name only due to my luck of being born here. As I studied the sacrifices made by millions to gain and preserve MY freedoms I came to realize a free America is the true hope of the world.

I love the scriptures and the Gospel of Jesus Christ and America. By 1988 I had abandoned all of my Socialist viewpoint. Why? Because I concluded nobody can be a good Christian and a Socialist at the same time. Socialism is based on breaking at least one of the Ten Commandments; Exodus 20:17 “Thou shalt not covet…” This combined with Genesis 3:19 where God states emphatically to Adam “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground.”

Socialism is based on getting something, even everything, from someone else. Someone else’s bank account, their hard work, their dreams, their creativity and their diligence in earning their own keep. Socialism does not give to the poor and free them. It enslaves them to the state.

A free America is a generous America. It has proven time and again to be the most generous nation in the world. Socialism would completely obliterate the ability of people to give freely, or even to give at all, because ultimately pure socialism takes everything from everyone. It takes money from the wealthy, so it can be mismanaged and shuffle mostly to a few ultra-elites while the poor continue to suffer. It eventually takes what little the poor have, because the wealthy run out of money. Look what happened to the USSR, Venezuela, Cuba, etc. Worst of all Socialism robs its alleged benefactors of any work ethic or desire to better themselves. I witnessed it first hand at Katrina. People refused to work Burger King for $15/hr ($31,200/year) plus a $5k sign up bonus, because they’d lose their “Free Money.” Free my butt!!! They lost all of their dignity and self-respect along with their work ethic, because of the current method of administering the state’s socialist welfare programs. It is a dole system where people get kibbles and bits allegedly for “free.” The generational recipients have no idea what price they’ve paid for their “free money.” Our nation was built on work ethics for the first 157 years. Then in 1933 a man came to the White house, a Socialist who put us on a path to a fiscal train wreck.

In 1962 Nikita Krushchev said:
“You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands.”

I’m done. That’s a little about me and why I believe, well, I’d say I even know that true freedom in America, including freedom from an oppressive socialist government, is the only hope for the world. I pray for a miracle this November. God bless our citizens to awaken to a sense of our awful situation and stop voting for a party and start voting for honesty, integrity and freedom. I know it looks dim right now. But George Washington and the Continental Army’s fate looked pretty bleak at Valley Forge too. May God bless America.