Thread: Not a bible question,but this is where I post everything!
Admin
Not a bible question,but this is where I post everything!
Posted : 15 May, 2010 02:13 PM
By Demosthenes
For the past hundred years, America has been slowly moving away from the principles of its founding. The ideals of liberty, individual achievement, limited government, and the equality of opportunity have been slowly supplanted by calls for security, class warfare, excessive regulation, and the equality of outcome. The passage of stimulus acts, bailouts, government takeovers of two U.S. automakers, and the health care overhaul prove that our movement away from 1776 has accelerated.
Passage of the health care bill has sparked a revival of small-government thinking, causing many to predict significant Republican gains in Congress this fall. But despite some short-term success, this small-government revival is doomed to fail. The depressing truth is that the only way to regain the full measure of those freedoms proclaimed in our Founding Documents is for our current federal government to completely collapse under the weight of its own excesses.
Often, one carefully articulated analogy can succinctly convey a very complex idea. In our case, that analogy is addiction. Over the past hundred years, we have slowly allowed a monstrous system of dependence to develop until nearly every citizen relies upon government money, and thus is an addict. This has come about because the hard logic of the Founders has been replaced by the seductive ease of emotional arguments. All too often, the debate is over not if government should do something, but what it should do. This almost imperceptible shift in our national philosophy is a manifestation of our addiction.
While the citizen-addict is hooked on government largesse, the politician-addict is hooked on something far more sinister: power. Their drug is available in Washington, D.C. Just as a dealer will go to any length to continue selling his wares, politicians will stop at nothing to retain their power. These two groups of addicts are locked in mutual co-dependence, where the politician-addict seeking re-election buys off the citizen-addict with more spending. Then the citizen-addict, seeking yet another free lunch from Washington, reelects the politician-addict. The result is endless, ever-expanding government programs and our current fiscal nightmare.
The persistence of these programs has nothing to do with their success. They continue because we are more concerned that our actions are deemed compassionate than whether our programs are actually successful. If we truly wanted to help people save for retirement, we would not establish a program with a meager 1.23% rate of return while simultaneously supporting a monetary policy of systematic inflation. Yet these and other ineffective or even counterproductive programs continue. Such willful blindness to economic reality cannot be sustained indefinitely. The Congressional Budget Office has recently stated that our national debt will constitute 90% of our gross domestic product -- that is 20.3 trillion dollars -- in just ten years. What is even more shocking is that these debt numbers do not include the unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security, which currently rest at 107 trillion dollars. Sadly, this trend cannot be stopped.
If Republicans take control of the House and Senate, and if they repeal the health care bill, then they will not be able (or likely even try) to reform Medicare or Social Security. These programs alone will bankrupt our nation. Yet they are untouchable because a large number of Americans have come to depend upon these benefits. They have become unknowingly hooked. Senior citizens have organized their financial futures around the twin promises of Social Security and Medicare and will naturally resist any change to either. George W. Bush knew this when he attempted his overhaul of Social Security. That is why his plan to privatize retirement savings was voluntary and would have excluded those over 55. Nevertheless, it was easy for the politician-addicts to scare the citizen-addicts, and his plan was defeated.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety." This quote by Ben Franklin is often used by civil libertarians in opposition to government security programs such as the Patriot Act. But this sentiment is equally applicable to those who would give up economic liberty to obtain economic safety. The economic attitude of the nation has shifted. We are no longer a nation of self-sufficient, rugged individualists; we are now a nation of addicts, hooked on a politician's promises of economic safety.
This is why America is lost. Too many Americans are hooked for us to return to a sound economic footing via the normal political processes. Our efforts to moderate the most radical agendas -- welfare reform, for example -- serve only to delay the inevitable. In fact, many of those reforms are quietly undermined as the slow march towards collapse continues. We cannot alter our current trajectory; expansive government, greater entitlements, and ever-increasing taxes are our fate. Attempts by responsible citizens at reform will be only partially successful, not changing the fundamentals of our dilemma.
The addict analogy carries through to recovery. For most addicts, recovery can begin only once they have descended so far in their addiction that they lose everything, a process often called "hitting bottom." Sometimes there is no recovery, and hitting bottom means death. But for others, hitting bottom is a tremendous learning experience, and they emerge as better people. America is addicted. The decline has begun, and now our nation must hit bottom.
Detoxing America will cause social, political, and economic strife of a sort unimaginable, and yet it is a process we must endure. Hitting bottom is our only hope for a national rehabilitation. It is our only chance for a true reacquaintance with those principles that made this the greatest nation on earth: liberty, individual achievement, limited government, and the equality of opportunity.
Demosthenes is a lawyer whose current employment prohibits taking a public position on political issues. E-mail correspondence may be sent here.
Not a bible question,but this is where I post everything!
Posted : 16 May, 2010 01:44 PM
James replies:
This is a really depressing article, and although I agree the author COULD be right, I don't like things like this being published at this time.
The Reason? I think that almost all limitations people have are artificial limitations they put on themselves.
Knowing and accepting what the Bible says about man's total depravity, I believe that PLENTY of people who shall we say have messed up their own lives, are QUITE happy to have their minds taken off this fact, and instead subconsciously hope that America gets as messed up as their own life is, so they won't feel so bad about their own performance in life.
I also believe that articles like this can cause a person to give up the fight BEFORE the fight is over.
That is dishonorable, and COULD be the sole reason the left finally destroys the American standard of living for generations.
Socialism must be fought to the death, and if you are not dead, and you can fight, then you should fight every way you can.
Also, lets consider the possibility that the author is wrong!
America is not just the hope of Americans! There are ten bad dictators whose ONLY reason they are not currently attacking their neighbors is BECAUSE they believe America will attack and defeat them if they try it!
America is NOT just the hope of Americans because, and your not supposed to know this, but, America allows in more Immigrants than ALL OTHER NATIONS COMBINED!!!
There are people who give everything they have in life JUST to come here and become a citizen! And if you knew what kind of life they were leaving, you could not blame them!!
And I know the author is just expressing what he believes to be true.
conservatives have among them, some who believe that America has reached a tipping point. That the leftists have divided us with the tax code, indoctrinated us by gutting American history in the public schools, and made us softer and softer with social programs, until we don't have enough people of adult age, who are ACTUAL mature adults!
They say the tipping point has been reached.
I have anecdotal evidence around me everyday on this.
I work for a lot of rich folks who are clueless about what America was designed to be and vote democrat every chance they get, because they are "nice and caring" people.
I live in a group of five duplexes in the center of my town, and out of those five duplexes, I am the only one who works for a living!
All the rest are welfare-ites, and behave like they are auditioning for the Jerry Springer show! And our taxes go to support them in their lazyness, and immoral lifestyles.
But.........
History has shown that many times a fist fighting and vocal MINORITY can change history! I think that the left in America has proved this over and over.
In my little town we have a BBQ shed in the Kroger Parking lot.
It is called "Big Sticky's" They sell awesome BBQ there, and there is a sign out front about the upcoming Tea Party in my town.
The owner of this place is going to be a speaker at the Tea Party, and when you go inside his place he has all kinds of quotes by the founding fathers, and conservative writers, written on the wall, and on the picnic tables inside there.
We, of course talked, and he told me that he believes that if the left keeps winning, or the right does not roll back the socialist programs, that some states will secede! He told me he thought Alaska will be first. He said if that happens, he will "pack up the big sticky wagon, and move to Alaska."
There ARE people who understand freedom and Liberty. There ARE people who wish to roll back the socialist programs, and throw out all the socialists in Government. There ARE people who could be elected and NOT turn into socialists once they get the job as representative, or Senator, or president.
When I read my Bible, I don't see anywhere where I am supposed to give up.
I don't see anywhere where I am supposed to back down, and not fight evil.
I really don't want to face God as is, because of my lousy performance as His child, and for me, giving up and "let it burn" is NOT something I want to face God with, or go through life with.
Let's say we just give up. We move to the country, start learning how to grow enough food, and learn how to can vegetables properly, and buy enough guns to defend our families in times of civil unrest, and we just forget about trying to convince and educate others about how leftists are destroying America. We might get to busy to vote, because we are just in survival mode. We just cocoon ourselves and isolate our selves and wait for the coming collapse of the dollar.
Do you realize how many people would die in the inner cities?
They have no clue how to do anything other than depend on everyone else to provide for them.
The Left WILL destroy the American economy, and as we are going over the CLIFF, they will STILL be saying, "If we only had more government programs, and raised taxes just a bit more...."
For me, as a Christian, the ONLY honorable and obedient way to deal with the left is to try and defeat them by convincing and educating my neighbors, and friends, and at the same time, start preparing bit by bit, for extremely hard economic times.
I think that is the wisest course, and what God would want me to do.
