America is a strange place these days, suffering a critical identity crisis—to adhere to the plan set forth by its Founders for a nation conceived in individual liberty, or to alter their dream and remake, or change, our country into one unrecognizable to them where individual liberty is spurned.
The other day an official looking correspondence arrived in the mail. My wife and I tore into it, as it looked like it might include a check, something for which an infrequently paid writer is ever alert. But this little piece of mail, although appearing innocuous, proved nefarious. It was an offer to reduce our debt through a, “mini-bail out,” if you will.
The offer proclaimed that if we owed more than $15,000, in unsecured debt, the U.S. Government had made provisions for this company to eliminate a certain amount of our debt, possibly all of it up to $24,000. Wow! Now, I am totally opposed to the bailouts, but I had to admit that a chance to reclaim some of my hard-earned tax money, even by these means, was enticing.
But wait a minute; there was a problem. We didn’t qualify for this debt reduction offer. Why? Was it because we hadn’t made our payments on time or failed to pay our debts—been deadbeats? No, in fact quite the opposite; we didn’t qualify specifically because we had been responsible with our debts. Seems that all this time we’ve been making the egregious error of actually paying our debts, and apparently unforgivably, on time.
Seems that had we been deadbeats—late payments, or not paying at all—our tax money could have been used (reclaimed) to reduce our debt. So, instead, we are still accountable for our debt (as it should be), but seems we’re also now responsible for our less- or un-productive neighbor’s debt too. Apparently, the government is rewarding my irresponsible neighbor for having the “good” sense to fail to pay their debt on time, or at all. Seems all this time we’ve had it backward. The concept of wealth transfer had just become real to me in the form as powerful as a kick in the teeth.
Does this sound like the America our Founders intended? When Americans play fair, work hard, pay their bills, including their taxes, only to see their hard-earned tax money used to bail out millionaires and the poor alike, while failing to qualify for any “reward” for that hard work and loyalty to our Founders vision for this country, discontent must follow. This circumstance can’t help but make productive and responsible folks see the government as a corrupt entity, which exists to transfer wealth from the undesirables (hard working Americans like you and me) to the desirables (those societal “victims,” or those “too big to fail,” deemed so by subjective, political reasons by government).
I think the actions taken so far, tea parties and such, have been relatively limited because Americans, who tend to favor a constructionist view of the Constitution, aren’t really the protest rally types—they’re busy earning a living and being productive. Another reason is the sheer onslaught of America-altering legislation and policy engineered by the new administration and their “scorched earth,” socialistic, wealth-transferring battle plan. They’ve hit us with a fast and furious barrage of changes so we’ve had little to no time to recover from one bombardment before we’re assaulted by another.
We simply can’t let the anti American-ideal forces win. With a savage force they’re rending the very fabric of this nation conceived in individual liberty, and to which our Founders placed in us, their posterity, its care and survival. We mustn’t let them down.
Although it’s tough out here for the liberty-minded, of Americans alive today, I take considerable pride that I’ve chosen to live my life as one of the “posterity” to whom our Founding Fathers referred when conferring the responsibility for maintaining our Lives, our Liberty, our Pursuit of Happiness, and our very Republic.
When strolling home following the ratification of the U.S. Constitution at the Constitutional Convention, a woman approached Benjamin Franklin and asked, “Well, doctor, what have we got?” Franklin replied, “A Republic, you can keep it.” He was speaking—to us.
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