PrintMay 30, 2011
Memorial Day: We Honor Warriors While Surrendering Our Civilization
If you live in the Western World, the debt you owe to brave men who died fighting for our principles is huge. Their sacrifice in armed conflict allowed enterprise and self rule to flourish, lifting the lives of billions of people toward a hopeful future. We speak proudly of our fallen heroes -- as well we should -- honoring those who gave their lives for our freedom.
But what have the citizens of the West done with that most precious gift, one so often described as a debt that can't be repaid? The very civilizations saved by the heroics of our warriors have surrendered -- to a statist tyranny of enormous size. Our citizens will soon know the true cost of our failed vigilance, as we pay for the gigantic theft by our sovereign leaders, with a debt-fueled collapse that will most likely be chaotic.
Theft too strong a word? Not really. You see, every penny, yen, or euro a government spends (or promises to spend) it simply doesn't have. Governments must get the money they spend -- from us, the citizens. When governments believe they won't get permission from the citizens to take their money (by taxing them one and all), governments steal it -- in the West by currency inflation, or by borrowing the money from future taxpayers. The tyranny of such obligations appears soft and manageable at first, but make no mistake: years of deceitful promises and spending of borrowed money add up to a theft of staggering proportions.
Examine the size of the Western world's obligations (amassed by mortgaging the future, while promising prudence in the future, of course). The scope of our surrender to state tyranny then becomes clearly visible, for those citizens who choose not to look the other way. We have obligated ourselves to pay our governments a bonded indebtedness multiples of the total output of our combined economies. In the US bonded debt is 93% of GDP and rising at 11% per year. In Japan it is 225%% of GDP and also rising quickly. Greece is 150% of GDP, Italy 120%, Portugal 83%, Ireland 100%, France 90%, Belgium 100%, UK 75%, Germany 74%%. And these figures do not include non-bonded promises made by our governments to spend even more on "kind" and "compassionate" programs like pensions and medical care. Adding those tabs brings the states' need for citizens' money to many multiples of the West's combined nation incomes (even when counting government spending as part of national income).
Some argue that gargantuan Western indebtedness is not the result of theft, that the consequences for taxpayers were fully debated; that citizens knew what their leaders were doing. I believe our leaders have counted on the opposite. They have described their schemes in the least honest terms and with the loftiest of motives, speaking to a childish and self-indulgent electorate that cares not a whit for freedom. To their great shame, many citizens of the West have chosen to look the other way, often in open elections, believing the states' "kindness" and "compassion" justify generational theft, or theft of any citizen's property other than our own. Much like accepting the loot of a robber who shows up at our door bearing gifts, many citizens have voted "yea" knowing full well that the robber must go steal more in order to keep delivering the goods. Whether by deceit of the state, or by complicity of its citizens accepting a promise to fleece someone else, the surrender to tyranny has arrived.
The debts of the West will not be paid because they are so large they cannot be paid. Coercion to extract the funds -- and resistance to the coercive acts of the states -- will now ensue. Civil wars and wars between sovereign nations have historically erupted over smaller sums. Throughout the West today we witness citizens in protest over measures designed to pay debts the state has incurred, or against any roll back of the states' lavish promises that add to the burden.
Our surrender to tyranny in this century was not imposed upon us by weapons and armed conflict, nor is it the result of valor and determination of a committed enemy. It was made possible by one simple human weakness: the desire to have someone else pay for what we want. No more terrible weapon will be cited when the West's convulsions and death throes arrive. And no more shameful legacy left to our future generations, whose freedom was once bought with heroes' blood on foreign shores.
