Independence Day -- some thoughts to my
Grandchildren by Daniel New
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!