New's Analysis and Commentary   |  Independence Day — some thoughts to my Grandchildren

Independence Day — some thoughts to my Grandchildren

Once upon a time, Children, in the United States of America, the Fourth of July meant celebrating our freedom with firecrackers and picnics, baseball games and public speeches about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It was a festive occasion, and we never entertained any notion that we could be defeated by any external enemy.  We exulted in our strengths, and we had many of them.  Among them was our material wealth, the direct result of our hard work in the context of private property and a free market.  Over time, we began to celebrate more and more, and to work hard less and less.

America was, with some ups and downs, a free country for 150 years or so.  Your grandfathers could go out and become anything they wanted to become, with virtually nothing to prevent them but themselves and their cut-throat competitors.  The road to success meant long hours, doing without luxuries, and even of essentials, but in time it brought both individual and national prosperity without government regulations.  This system, known as “laissez-faire capitalism”, made America the strongest and most prosperous country the world had ever seen.

The French author and social commentator, Alexis de Toqueville, writing in 1825, pointed out that, “America is great because America is good, and when she ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”  He also noted that, “When the People figure out that they can vote money from the public funds to their own personal pockets, that will be the end of this grand experiment in liberty.”  (I’m paraphrasing, to make it simple for you, Kiddies.)
This business and political climate was predicated upon a number of moral premises, among them:

  • there is such a thing as right and wrong;
  • the purpose of government is to protect our lives, our liberty and our property, but no more;
  • the Creator of the Universe will bless us as long as we recognized Him and obey His laws;
  • those who do not work are not entitled to eat, except by the voluntary charity of those who do work and earn wealth;
  • that private property is inviolable;
  • that government is to serve the people, not to be their master;
  • etc.

There are more, Children, but this gives you the idea.

Being busy pursuing our own personal self-interests, we eventually neglected our collective self-interests — the important Constitutional rights for everyone to have the opportunity to succeed … or to fail!  The Right to Fail was a crucial component in our Right to Succeed.  You cannot have the success, unless the possibility of failure is there as well.  We grew lax in our prosperity, and began to enjoy those fruits of our labor, working shorter hours, demanding more pay for less work, taking earlier retirements, etc.  And in that time frame there arose certain politicians who called themselves “progressives” — men who eloquently pointed out that there were poor people who also deserved our help — appealed to our sense of guilt, and passed legislation to mitigate the harsher effects of poverty – at the direct expense of the productive taxpayer.

Being clever men, these “progressives” then registered every single person who received any aid from any government program as a voter, and made it abundantly clear to them that, in order to continue to receive their free hand-outs, they must vote to keep the progressives in power.  This system fed itself (on the tax money of the productive citizens) until it grew and grew to a point of instability.  When one third of the adult population found itself on welfare, and another third working for the government, largely to dispense the welfare in all its various forms to the voting welfare recipients, then two-thirds of the voters were in complete agreement — the working and tax-paying public needed to pay more, more, and still more into the system.  Sometimes ascribing guilt, at other times resorting to playing on our pity, these “progressives” built their empires larger and larger, and the taxation reached a point where it could go no higher without killing the goose that was laying the golden eggs, unless some “miracle” could save them and their new “Great Society”..

The political “progressives” quickly found themselves assisted by a class of experts known as Banksters — who showed them how Fractional Reserve Banking could expand the money supply many times over our real wealth, thus inflating the dollars and literally exploding the money supply, and mitigating the crunch of taxes.  They added “Deficit Spending” to their arsenal of seductive “wealth-enhancing” tools.  Easy credit became an easy sell to Americans already determined to play harder and work less.  Besides, they were told, you would be a fool to save when you can do all these things on “other people’s money.”

Because it was clear that we could not be destroyed from within, Children, an unholy alliance of “progressives”, banksters, politicians, bleeding hearts and “champions of the downtrodden” worked day and night for decades to concentrate more and more power into the hands of government, which meant their own hands and the hands of those who worked with them.  They strove to break down the social standards that had made us a strong society, always in the name of helping the poor, the unfortunate, the minority.  Anyone who spoke against them was assailed from all quarters as being racist, or elitist, or greedy, or selfish.  Imagine, after all, not wanting to share “your fair share” with those who were in such dire need.

And what did your productive grandfathers and fathers do?  They did what they always do — they worked hard, they pretty much stayed out of politics, they grumbled about “big government” and, “what the younger generation is coming to,” they paid their taxes, and they saved their money — placing it (I am not making this up, Children) — in the hands of the Banksters and the Nice Government Men.

The Bible tells us that “the Borrower is a servant (slave) to the Lender.”  Truer words were never written.  America was once a proud and independent nation, but our strength has been drawn down by leeches posing as “progressives” who have bled us to death, financially.  We are today a debtor nation.  Most individuals, and virtually every level of government, is in debt — that means they are in bondage to the lenders.

America, once the beacon of Liberty and Strength, is now on the auction block, about to be sold to the highest bidders, piecemeal.  It’s the greatest Estate Sale in history.  Those same Banksters who loaned us money will be among those doing the bidding.  Along with a lot of banksters from other nations, people with funny  names and different languages.  But like the vultures they are, they smell a dying animal, and they are gathering around.  Where once we saw proud eagles, today we see hungry vultures.

Clever “progressives” have come up with a way to postpone this estate sale, by printing money.  This will cause hyper-inflation, and money will become worth less and less, until it becomes worthless.  They are doing that, not because they have not read of what happened to other countries who did it many years ago, but because they think they will get away before the final axe falls, and that we, the People, will not treat them as they deserve to be treated.  Sadly enough, they are probably right.  So many light poles, just going to waste.

This Fourth of July, Children, remember that we were once a proud, free people.  We have not yet become as humble as we are about to, but our flame of Liberty is dying down lower, by the day.  Read, study, and understand those documents that our Founding Fathers wrote, such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and maybe, just maybe, you will live in Freedom once again, for Freedom without Prosperity is to be preferred to Prosperity without Freedom.  Don’t you forget it!

© Daniel D. New, Permission to copy, with credits, is hereby granted.-

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