Tea Party Patriots meeting note: There will be a DVD shown on the subject of the United Nations (Westside Grange, 6 PM).

I'm without details; however, anyone chortling and eye-rolling over the seemingly conspiracy-minded cries of Agenda 21 might consider that being paranoid doesn't mean no one is ever out to get you.

Finding plots to undermine America's Constitutional system in plain sight under the disguised imprimatur of the UN doesn't negate their existence, or their threats to our way of life and self-governance.

Will there come a time when we must decide which America to love, cherish and defend: One of limited government, fiscal prudence and personal and economic freedom and responsibility? Or an unlimited debt-laden state of ever-encroaching, minutiae-controlling and centrally planned redistribution?

The two visions cannot coexist any more than America could remain half-slave and half-free.

After weekend outages, some thoughts: There are probably a lot of folks that occasionally find that the advances in technology they dragged themselves to embrace (and take or leave) 15 or 20 years ago have become indispensable to daily life, even while traveling.

Having an interruption to Internet broadband (anyone remember dial-up when you still had one phone line that was inoperable for talking while surfing?) that is weather-related can deprive one of knowing what's going on, for instance, after choosing to abandon packaged news from networks. Why rely on someone else's judgment of how much of the story to tell in their predetermined time slots when I can "drill down," as they say, anytime into details and perspectives they don't find newsworthy? Shedding major newspapers, likewise.

Simply watching broadcasted entertainment becomes a guessing game when you've come to rely on online program listings and customized grids as an alternative to the ever-shrinking paper grids that come with the Daily News. How to know, say, that overlapping shows will require recording one on my PC, while watching the other on my old tech, picture-in-picture, cathode ray tube with converter boxes. I'm not complaining, mind you, but having equipment fail on top of the weather, on the weekend, brings about adjustments, scheduling delays and a sense of getting behind on the web sites and blogs I like to keep up on.

Enough about that. I have in front of me numerous articles, charts and graphs that all show what should be disturbing trends, polling results and economic statistics. Combine them all with the apparently unbridgeable disconnect between Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, Red states and Blue states, and city vs. country dwellers, and you have what I think are two Americas.

Consider the local and passionate debate, tiresome to many, over the use of half staff or inverted flag flying. Such venom from those who had no unkind words for "Occupy" campers walking and defacing American flags. Personally, while finding the presidential reelection of Barack Obama to be beyond disappointment, bordering on hope-crushing, I am reminded that it was an election, after all, sanctioned and carried out under Constitutional provisions and freedoms.

America is not distressed by foreign military onslaught upon our soil; the Earth has not opened up to swallow entire cities nor have the oceans swept into inland valleys and plains ala science fiction novels.

While having lost some ground at the federal level, about 30 states are now under Republican governance, a modern day maximum. Red states voted around or above 60 percent for Mitt Romney, as did Tehama County; local liberal loudmouths should take note that many of us literally seethe and clench our teeth at your lecturing and ideological preening. Almost 20 states have chosen to defy the ObamaCare mandate to set up health insurance exchanges, as is their Constitutional right.

I have some foreboding over the growing resistance by Republican states to Democrat-driven legal, regulatory and taxing overreach that may indeed escalate to forceful imposition and violent opposition.

The Federalist Papers expounded on how the most sophisticated governing document ever devised, the U.S. Constitution, while expressly enshrining and protecting the individual citizen and state and local independence, could still be manipulated in implementing tyranny. Yes, it was and still is possible and, as Ronald Reagan said, we are only one generation away from losing our liberties, never to be regained.

The siren song of government-provided benefits soothes the gullible into giving up their God-given rights to self-provision.

My flag is not used to make political statements. However, it is now flown strictly on "Fly the flag" days, rather than at every opportunity. That expresses my disappointment that one of the smallest majorities to ever re-elect a sitting President is being used by Obama's party to proclaim debates and disputes over taxes, regulation and federalism to be over and decided in their favor.

Consider the many signatures, including mine, that have been placed in the record asking for secession for our states from the federal government (WhiteHouse.gov/petitions). Of course it is an empty gesture, an exercise in futility and, for the 15,000+ Californians who signed, an outcome that would be undesirable anyway, unless our fair state divided in a north/south manner, along the red/blue county lines of most elections.

I found it laughable that loony leftists started a petition to deport those of us signing secession petitions.

Yeah, you and all your tofu-eating, Occupy-encamped, dope-smoking, parents'-basement-dwelling Internet trolls just try.

Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988, is a past president of the Tehama County Association of Realtors and was licensed from 1994 to 2010. His column runs Monday. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@yahoo.com