My son stood in that line at Fort Hood twice. His son, Aaron, stood in it or one like it. My grandson, Joshua, stood in such a line during two different deployments to Iraq. The news media won’t come out and say who and what Nidal Malik Hasan is, but all good Americans know what he is. The news media won’t call it an act of terrorism, but what is it when unarmed people are murdered in cold blood?

I think Uncle Sam has enough holes in his feet by now, so I suggest we put the politically correct gun away. If something waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, we had better start calling it a duck and treating it like a duck. When men and women living in this country start talking and working against the well being of the United States, we had better consider them enemies. If I were in charge of them, every one who speaks ill of our country would get a one way ticket out of it. I know that will never happen, but at least neutralize them so this sort of thing can’t happen, and for crying out loud stop them from coming in. Our borders aren’t even respectable sieves.

The American people had better wake up and realize what is happening to the country that has given them liberty. Political correctness, out of control spending, and taxation are about to ruin us. The Congress that is in power now seems bent on ignoring the danger within our borders and spending us into oblivion. It’s time for them to step up to the plate and take on the job they are elected for, and that is the job of protecting the citizens and creating a good atmosphere for businesses to succeed. Having the government run businesses will put our country on the rocks. Look at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both of them government run by failures and needing more bailout money.

I have lived in this country a long time, and Janie and I lived well, but we didn’t live well because the government did anything for us. We lived well because we worked our butts off, and we could have lived a lot better if the government hadn’t taken so much of our money to pay political wages, and support a lot of drones. We always felt secure because we lived during America’s greatness and had faith in our military. None of our previous presidents ever went around apologizing for our strength or bought into genuflecting to the world. What has that gotten us?

Now, the government that has followed political correctness right up to the shootings at Fort Hood is talking about taxing the rich and creating jobs. Do you want to know where jobs come from in this country? Well, I’m going to tell you where they come from. They come from the people who risk every penny they have and mortgage their homes to start businesses. People who bet everything they have that they will make it in a business of their own. These people work long days, and I mean 16 hour days. Sometimes they work 20 and 30 hours before they fall into bed exhausted, and they take stomach medicine because they worry all of the time. The people who work for them usually take home more money than they do, and if they know what they are doing and have a little luck, they might someday be a little better off than others. Long before they reach that point, however, they are in the 10 percent who pay most of the taxes in this land of the free.

I will guarantee you that placing high taxes on the rich will decrease the jobs in this country. Don’t you ever believe for a minute you can tax the wealthy to create prosperity; you will create just the opposite. Poor people never create any jobs unless they are willing to follow the path Janie and I followed, and most won’t. It’s ambitious people and people of wealth who create most of the jobs, and by that, I don’t mean politicians who have the ambition to lord it over others, I mean people with the ambition to build a business they can call their own, and by doing so become better off than they were when they started out.

There is nothing wrong with people being rich. These people already pay most of the taxes in this country. If a man or a woman owns a business and can afford to take a lot of money out of it more power to them, they have earned the right to do so. If a person is intelligent enough to guide a large corporation to huge profits honestly, pay that person well. Don’t place objects in their way, or penalize them; give them a free reign. It’s up to the stockholders to set the wages of the executives in a business.

The only danger is when businesses merge until there is no competition. There are laws to prevent that, which need to be enforced, but let us not forget where jobs come from and kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Let’s hold our government to the job they were elected for, not the one they seem inclined to do.

• Joe Bowyer is a columnist for the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached through the newspaper at ptnews@pharostribune.com