PrintSeptember 18, 2010
Back to the Future
Thank God that B. Hussein Obama was elected to shake us from our complacency and apathy! From someone preferring the notion of Americanism over the mob rule of democracy, socialism, or whatever similar form of collectivism our dear leader is selling, this may seem a strange exclamation.
As explanation, consider this quote attributed to Alexander Tytler regarding the progression of civilization:
From bondage to spiritual faith
From spiritual faith to great courage
From courage to liberty
From liberty to abundance
From abundance to complacency
From complacency to apathy
From apathy to dependence
From dependence back into bondage
Where do we stand today in our country in this algorithm assigned to civilization's progress? For the most part, we have lived abundantly since Ronald Reagan unleashed the greatest engine of ingenuity and productivity in the history of the world, the American people. When untethered from stifling government taxation and freed to produce wealth, lives have been lived relatively abundantly as the norm for those who have chosen to participate in our American society.
Independent citizens conducted their lives freely in the pursuit of happiness and participated in the American dream. While not everyone became extremely wealthy, a popular phrase was coined by a fellow believer in tax cuts to stimulate economic expansion. John F. Kennedy so plainly stated that "a rising tide lifts all boats."
Today we teeter upon the edge of the 1980s-triggered abundance. Our most recent economic issues, combined with the grip of an insatiable government grown large at all levels, have slowly been squeezing the life out of our abundance. It is not yet clear whether we will trade our individual freedom for the false promise of collective economic security -- a trade that will, as a matter of course, involve our progressing toward a more comprehensive dependence on government.
There is no need to try to envision what dependence will look like. As an example, we have all observed the dynamics of recent presidential elections, the usual red-versus-blue county-by-county summary of the winner and loser. The typically blue urban centers are the hotbeds of a complacent and apathetic citizenry, people who feel a sense of hopelessness over their lives' conditions.
These urban areas are populated by many citizens who pay little or nothing at all to fund the government and who are provided goods and services passed through the government, taken at the expense of their fellow citizens. There is a demonstrated, many times generational dependency on taxpayer-supplied government largesse for their basic needs and a continuous din for ever more. Too many of our fellow citizens live dependently at the expense of other individuals and businesses.
Dependency thrives where autonomy and the notion of self are given to another person, institution, government, or sometimes to drugs. Dependence is voluntary.
Bondage is the one-way street where we have no choice. Bondage is imposed, not offered. Many of America's poor are dependent upon the government, while, as examples, the people of China, Cuba, and other repressive regimes live in bondage.
In our abundance, we grew complacent. We diligently woke early every morning for the better part of three decades, filled our commuter to-go mug of coffee, and headed off to work, living what we believed to be the American dream. While we were busy living our lives, the insidious creep of government was overtaking more and more of our fellow citizens, culminating in the humanity-killing dependence upon government handouts by so many.
The safety-net protection against short-term life issues became the government-induced hammock of long-term dependency. The slow-drip drug of dependence on government from the left and even the right seeped into our political system, empowering government to expand and displacing individual freedom to create a more collective society. More government means less liberty and abundance.
It seems as if many of us were suddenly shaken from our complacency on Election Day 2008; complacency was postponed by the cold slap of reality. Soon thereafter, Tea Parties broke out. Missing from much of the news coverage, and what can only be assumed to have been purposefully omitted by the party-detractors, is the real acronym of the TEA Parties -- Taxed Enough Already.
The old media and the progressives seem to have missed the significance of the taxed-enough-already notion as they busied themselves slandering their fellow citizens with various pejoratives unbecoming of thoughtful adults. "Taxed enough already" directly confronts the government bloat and related dependency-inducing economic issues.
Julius Caesar changed the course of history when he faced his own critical decision of whether to cross the Rubicon River with his Legions, an act of war upon the Roman government. Here we stand at the American Rubicon, deciding at the Rubicon point of this November's election day whether to begin the process of setting the algorithm back to liberty and abundance or continue the trajectory toward dependence.
Julius Caesar changed the course of history when he faced his own critical decision of whether to cross the Rubicon River with his Legions, an act of war upon the Roman government. Here we stand at the American Rubicon, deciding at the Rubicon point of this November's election day whether to begin the process of setting the algorithm back to liberty and abundance or continue the trajectory toward dependence.
Thank God that B. Hussein Obama was elected to shake us from our complacency and apathy. Marcus Tulius Cicero wrote, "freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered." Let's rally for Americanism's progress -- one step back to liberty and abundance, back to the future of our country.
