Does America Deserve a Bullying Government?

America was the first and most obvious example of Capitalism the world ever saw.  It became an industrial giant with innovations and productivity far beyond anything previous history recorded.  Many Americans made fortunes and many many Americans lived a prosperous middle-class life all without a bloated controlling government.  Of course, government infringed all along the way and took credit for successes it never contributed to. 

The government taxed and spent for political pandering amassing an unimaginable national debt.  The American people, on the whole, sensed something was wrong and that America was going the wrong way, but they were still able to remain employed and seek profits. So they only grumbled and tried to ignore the bullies who were running the country like the Mafia runs a neighborhood.  Americans were forced to pay for the protection the government promised it would provide.  Politicians passed taxes, spent other people’s money, sent thousands off to war to die in what they deemed to be “justified" wars and eventually turned a highly skilled manufacturing economy into a service economy beholden to emerging nations for the goods we used to produce. 

The recent BP travesty shows how arrogant and un-self-critical the American Government has become. They jump on the backs of oil companies, the banks, the car companies and the mortgage companies (except for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), shouting that they want accountability. If accountability is what they want in others why don’t they want it for themselves? They have arrogantly refused to even pass a budget knowing it would enrage many Americans at the amounts of wasted spending they want to perpetuate.  They make ridiculous claims that we need more government spending to “stimulate” business and jobs. This money targeted at government services, wars, and entitlements all have political appeal to those who think the government knows what it is doing.

The attitude of “Let the government take care of it” has us watching an incompetent bundle of dinosaurs ineptly shutting down exploration as more energy is needed, setting aside tundras for grazing caribou  and taxing everything that has any value.  Does America deserve this kind of government?  Is America too dumb to not see the correlation between the failures in and around Europe to simply pattern its destiny in the same direction?  Where problems of technology and progress were attacked and solved in the past with an attitude of “can do”, today it emerges as a resignation that nothing can be done.  This is un-American and futile.

I have written many essays pointing out what it necessary to straighten out this ongoing abyss but the response has been nil.  Why?  Is it so unbelievable that something must change fundamentally if a system of operation is defunct?  Would you rewire your house if the wiring was obsolete and inefficient or would you just shrug and hope you could get by?  This is the attitude of Americans today.  At least those who are wasting their time trying to make a broken political system deliver what it cannot.  A government on a rampage of tax and spend and will not restrain itself is a government out of control and must be restrained.  Just as you take away the car keys from an errant teenager, so too a government acting in a self-destructive manner must be corralled.  How?

First, there must be a widespread recognition that what is being done is self-destructive.  We can no longer silently sit on the sidelines encouraging government to function as it always has and expecting different results.  This means understanding what the current policies will lead to and how they will destroy the nation.  There is historical precedent for the happenings in Europe and the rest of the world with socialistic experiments that have either collapsed or turned into totalitarian dictatorships with losses of individual freedom, poverty, currency debasement and rampaging corruption. 

With that as a backdrop, why would Americans want to repeat these disasters?  It is hard to imagine Americans wanting such a future for themselves and their decedents. Yet all ideas offered to counteract this trend are ignored or pooh-poohed with nothing else but wishful thinking offered as an alternative.  Politicians promise big changes but only talk of a return to policies that got us where we are today. You cannot stop incremental infringement of individual rights by returning to conditions that will evolve into the same as the present.

Most individual Americans resent being bullying as individuals but are evidently willing to sanction a bullying government.  Faced with the force and pervasiveness of our bloated government is it any wonder there is so much fear and intimidation?  Remember the government is made up of individuals who should be concerned with individual rights.  That they are willing to endanger these rights shows how sacrificial their motives and actions are.  This needs to be challenged and rejected.

The central tenets and flaws of our current system of government are the confiscation of wealth and spending other people’s money. These two aspects of fault can be repealed with the recognition that a government allowed to tax is a government allowed to steal. 

We create governments to prevent stealing, not to sanction it.  Our Founding Fathers did many things right but they made a major blunder when they created a government that could steal ( tax) from its constituents.  This practice of taxing has proven to be just what it was identified to be several years ago when it was noticed that the power to tax is the power to destroy.  This being the case why is it sanctioned?  Simply because it has never been seriously questioned.  The government advocates of confiscation argue that no one would pay for government if contributions were voluntary. This is like the argument for public education claiming there would be no education of children if education was privatized.  The existence of private schools in spite of the burdens and regulations of public schools show this to be an outright lie.  The bankruptcy of all nations that rely on taxation to fund their governments shows by way of a world economy on the verge of collapse the central common mistake that goes unchallenged.

Does America deserve a bullying government?  She does if she is willing to let their mode of operation go unchallenged. If she wants to be bullied and stolen from then she will contribute to the ignorance and sacrifice she is undergoing.  There will be no recovery of the economy under this barrage of “stimulus” spending that only grows and encourages the very virus we are infected with. 

There will be no infusion of capital into a nation where capital is discouraged and confiscated. Without an infusion of capital there will be no jobs except the kind that pay  the minimum for rudimentary skills.  We are giving away our future prosperity to a shabby dream of socialism that died with WWII.  Those hoping for a revival of the socialist dream without openly recognizing it are letting their stagnant emotions override the facts in front of them. They speak of tomorrow as better than today as we deteriorate into greater and greater poverty.  They have no vision except the deluded dream they accepted years ago that was promised and died with the Soviet Union.  The Russians found they did not like a bullying government but they could only imagine one that was less terrifying than ones they had experienced. 

Americans have a different history and recollection although they are rapidly seeing even that being destroyed.  Want a country where the politicians beg instead of steal?  Fight for a repeal of taxation as a means of running a government.  Make the politicians ask for funds to protect us ( which is their only function) and outlaw taxation ( confiscation) as a viable method exclusive to government and crooks.  Or simply dismiss this as unthinkable and experience what today is unthinkable in terms of chaos and misery in the days of tomorrow.