The Cowboy Way

Cowboy Ethics and Cowboy Values
By Patrick Dorinson Political Commentator

When it comes to analyzing America’s current economic woes and how we got here, I have heard just about all the whining, navel-gazing, excuses, television talk show psychobabble, hand wringing and pundit puffery I can stomach. This is not just about lost home value or diminished 401(K)s.

In all my born days I have never witnessed a spectacle quite as ridiculous as this. America is on the psychiatrist’s couch looking for a cure to a self-inflicted problem.

The cure for this disease is not more group therapy. It is as simple and as old as America itself and it still lives in the hearts and minds of the most iconic figure in our history-the American cowboy.

For all you tenderfoots and high buttoned shoe Easterners let me try to explain.

Unlike politicians and our current crop of business “leaders”, a cowboy still makes a deal with a handshake and his word is his bond. A cowboy does not make rash decisions because the wrong decision can be the difference between life and death for him, his horse and those he works with.

And a cowboy lives by a code-a set of unwritten principles that no one has to teach him because it is instilled in him at birth. Cowboys don’t whine and stomp their feet like spoiled children as some people seem to do when the going gets tough. Read More

I saw this article posted in a couple different places late last week and I wanted to continue passing it along. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that when the nation’s ethics and values become corrupted that people look to the cowboy, agriculture, and rural America for the solution. You see, we didn’t have to read a book to learn these, it was taught to us at a very young age with the expectation that we would live our lives this way. This is what made America great in the first place. If the cowboy was every kids role model instead of athletes and celebrities, we could probably eliminate several of the problems we are seeing today.