Learning the lesson
As the old saying goes, "When the dog you feed bites your hand, you don't roll up your sleeve and give it your arm. You put it down and get a new dog."
Economic decline is a choice, not a fate, and it is a natural by-product of Big Government. As has been proven time and again, the larger and more intrusive the government, the more precipitous the decline.
If one cares enough to look, examples of bureaucratically planned mediocrity abound throughout the world.
There are many nations in fiscal purgatory, although Greece readily comes to mind because its case is recent and its fiscal situation so dire. But world history, modern and ancient, is riddled with such bloated carcasses, so it is therefore not necessary to solely focus on the hapless Greek foible of socialism.
It is also not necessary for one to gallivant around the globe in order to cherry-pick examples of statist-induced mediocrity or voters voluntarily ceding their rights to authoritative central planners gone bad. Think not?
Dream turned nightmare
Right here in our own backyard, no more illustrative example of a people choosing poorly exists than that of California. California's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is larger than all but eight countries in the world -- equal to that of Italy. But the state once regarded as a socio-economic model for America is now floundering under a projected budget shortfall of nearly $30 billion.
Why? How can this be?
The once-vibrant and economically sound Golden State is now a tarnished, wealth-destroying morass of regulatory despotism, public-sector union extortion, under-funded welfare nannyism, and confiscatory taxation. California voters selfishly over-endowed themselves with a cornucopia of budget-busting social entitlements, multicultural giveaways, and an unimaginable array of economy-killing environmental prohibitions.
They did so while simultaneously empowering the statist-minded "progressives" in Sacramento to bleed taxpayers and businesses -- the engines of productivity and wealth creation -- white to the point of public bankruptcy. Over the course of many years and wrong-headed ballot initiatives, they freely frittered away their social, economic, and entrepreneurial independence -- one right at a time.
As goes California, so goes the nation? Heaven help us.
Awakening is not enough
Obama and his statist regime's demagogic princes and princesses in the Democrat Congress are arrogantly gorging themselves on the power stemming from their manufacture and protraction of crises. They feed on our self-inflicted fears and falsely-perceived helplessness. But living as we do in a perpetual crisis of their making, it is imperative that we remind ourselves that it does not have to be.
If American exceptionalism, individual freedom, the Constitution, and the opportunity to pursue happiness are to be saved for future generations, it will require less government, not more. To eradicate the tandem diseases of authoritative central planning and burgeoning bureaucratic meddling afflicting America today will require massive and repeated doses of conservatism into our political processes -- at every level of government.
Most important, it will require our courage and steadfast resolve to disavow any future unsustainable entitlement wrapped in the seductive, Siren-like guise of beneficent social welfare. Financial ruination aside, the cost for such selfish folly in the loss of personal liberty is simply too great to bear.
We will no longer be Americans.
We will be nothing better than drab, voiceless, unfulfilled statistics in a vast, soulless government system -- dreamless and mediocre -- just like everyone else.
One step at a time
As repeatedly stated elsewhere in this journal because it is the foundation upon which our Republic was formed, conservatives don't want anything from other people, not their money, autos, houses, or anything else. We want government to simply get out of our lives and leave us alone.
We want an end to the nation-crippling, freedom-killing prosecution of hyper-regulation, hyper-taxation, and hyper-spending. We Americans want our children educated as we see fit and where we see fit. We want to choose our own family doctors and decide which car to buy. We want the open market and free enterprise to determine which businesses thrive and which decline, which products succeed and which fail.
In short, we want the America bequeathed us by our Founders, the one that was handed down to us by our elders, the one we were supposed to defend and cherish. We lapsed in our defense and we are now paying dearly for it.
But real change -- not Obama change -- is on the agenda, starting this November.
The lesson
To those of the political class, learn this lesson well:
We require the rejuvenation of Independent America, the one we must have again if we are to survive as an exceptional nation defined by the Constitution. You remember the Constitution, don't you? You know, the document you swore a sacred oath to uphold and defend, yet befoul and soil daily?
It is disgraceful and to our great shame that our nation, guided by the greatest of all documents ever devised by the minds and souls of mankind, was ever entrusted to the likes of you.
Your precious statist government? Less is better -- get out of the way so that we Americans can freely pursue our dreams. Each of you elitists, Democrat and Republican alike, be forewarned that if you do not listen, you forfeit your privilege to serve the American people; You will be removed from office.
Statism is not the reason the United States developed into the most prosperous, productive country in the history of mankind -- and mind you, all in a briefest span of time, an eye-blink of history. No socialist or despotic nation could ever attain nor has ever attained such greatness, much less sustain it.
Hype and Chains.
background:
Image by Gadsden.info
Baby steps
True Freedom Begins With Less Government
Virtue of Inefficient Government