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.

Farmers Get Politically Active

Farmers Protest At The Capitol On Agriculture Day
By CAROLYN MOREAU
The Hartford Courant
10:42 AM EDT, March 18, 2009

The oysters and apples displayed inside the state Capitol were signs of business as usual this morning. But the cow on the lawn outside was not.

Farmers used state Agriculture Day — a trade show for local produce that's been held at the Capitol for as long as anyone can remember — to stage an unusual protest against proposed legislation and state tax code changes that they say will decimate local farms.

Using Facebook, and capitalizing on a national craze for locally grown food that brought the term "locavore" into usage, Connecticut's farmers reached out to consumers, restaurant owners, gardeners, environmentalists and health advocates, urging them to bring signs and placards to the Capitol today.

And come they did. Farmers left their spring chores, and vocational agricultural schools sent busloads of youngsters, to form a crowd of more than 100 (plus one cow) on the Capitol steps.

Read More

It seems like not to many years ago you could safely assume that our elected officials would know how to vote on agriculture issues, after all many of them were involved in agriculture. Today it’s a different story. If there is an issue that is going to affect agriculture, we need to get active and make sure our point of view is being considered. This takes some effort and time away from your real work, but the reality is that this needs to become a regular part of your business.