“The price of greatness is responsibility”Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965)
Why do we buy now and worry about paying later? Why do we let politicians tell us one thing and sit idly by as they do another, without retribution other than a little grumbling? They don’t mind grumbling because words can’t hurt them. Why do we want to believe charlatans who promote one thing and do another? If we were to listen to our inner voice we would know the truth, but we don’t because we want to believe them… and I submit that it is the innate laziness in our human spirit which allows wishes to destroy us. They tell us they are doing it for us and we want to believe them.
I don’t believe there is a need to psychoanalyze this. It’s called avarice. Man has an insatiably greedy and self-centered view of his relationship with the universe, even his creator. Who can question this? We can see it in mans disregard for the environment, the national debt, the value we put on our life vs. the value of another’s, etc.. Most frightening is the observation that Americans have embraced the trappings of materialism, thereby; they are becoming even more envious, greedy and covetous as the decades go by. Anyone who wants to argue this point is suspect of being under a hallucinogenic dose of new age social sedative… or is a lawyer.
Poor Math Skills
“Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe”
Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642)
Maybe reasons can be found in the reality that many Americans have poor math skills… I’m not kidding! When you look at all of the aforementioned statements they can be reduced to a simple equation.
(Liberty = Responsibility)
“You cannot apply mathematics as long as words still becloud reality”
Herman Weyl
The unabridged version is, ‘You can have liberty, but you’ll have to take-up the responsibility that goes with it’. The operand sign tells the person working the problem that one side of the equation has to be equal to the other. Unfortunately, most people exist without contemplating the consequences of their existence or worrying about algebraic rectitude.
This is of great consequence because your objectivity is at stake. It is a matter of how susceptible you are to the narcissistic patter of the aspiring apostles of the rich and powerful [The Power Elite]. There are a million ways for us to get misled in this world and there is only one way to keep from it. And that is to trust your own instincts. Trust your soul, your conscience and the inner voice which tells you right from wrong. You know right from wrong, but the easy grifters have so swayed your inner voice many of us are now adrift and unbalanced.
There is some blame to be laid elsewhere as your instincts are suspect to corruption from the pollution of others. Regrettably, a great many people are prone to accept the rationalistic spiel of others without a healthy degree of self-determined introspection, the result of which is they are “sucked in”. This is about to change if you want it to, but not without your full acceptance of your Citizen Responsibility. In other words, you’re going to have to get up and do it for yourself. No more politicians, no more talking heads, no more special interests, no more lawyers. They got you into to this mess; you must go ‘cold turkey’ to get yourself out.
If you don’t think you are at fault, think again. A poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News found that in April of 2003 72% of Americans supported the Iraq War. In May of 2003 a Gallup poll made on behalf of CNN and the newspaper USA Today concluded that 79% of Americans thought the Iraq War was justified, with or without conclusive evidence of illegal weapons of mass destruction.
The human penchant or unwillingness to take responsibility is astounding to me. If I were to take a poll today, it is unlikely I could get more than 30% to admit they were in that 79%. This lack of “institutional memory” is a big part of the problem. In the end, it is the dodging of responsibility which you will have to own up to if you want the problem fixed. The Congress on October 11, 2002 voted for the Iraq war by a margin of 296-133 in the House and 77 to 23 in the Senate as they had the same intelligence in front of them as the Administration.
What’s the Solution?
“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful
and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral”
Paul Freire
Clearly, nothing can be accomplished when one believes he/she is powerless. And, who can blame an individual [a citizen] for not trying when they perceive their power to be illusory. Isn’t that the way most people feel about government today?
By example, the vox populi of The People is to have term limits for politicians. In fact, in January 1996, the Tarrance Group reported that a pole of registered voters showed 77% of The People support limits. Yet the Congress won’t make them law, against the wishes of the voters in their electoral districts. Nonetheless it’s up to the Congress to get the ball rolling and the question remains…Why won’t they? Unless you maintain that you are under the system’s prescribed social sedative, you should be able to clearly and without hesitation explain this incongruity.
If, on the other hand, it requires conscious deliberation, then I submit to you the possibility that you have been domesticated by the process. The answer lies in the fact that under term limits ‘special interests groups’ will not have time to cultivate candidates and they do not want to lose their valuable investments in incumbent legislators. And understandably, it cannot be easy to vote yourself out of office as a lifetime political career almost certainly is as rewarding as winning the lottery.
Many people have an almost blind faith that government will protect their rights and those who would suggest otherwise are given little credence. The rich and powerful control you and our country. The object is to level the playing field between the rich and the poor, the politician and the citizen, and just as important the main stream media and you by pointing out how you have been duped into believing that giving up liberties for the sake of peace and tranquility is in your best interest.
How do you demand and get them back… almost instantly? What the powerful and wealthy in America don’t want you to know and don’t even care if I say it, as long as you don’t believe it, but should you begin to believe it… they will try to discredit me and everything I say. This is my attempt at your wake up call.
Polls on the subject of health care range from 54% against it to 86% against it, notwithstanding Nancy Pelosi said that people against it were carrying swastikas, but refuses to back that up. The American people do not want government controlled health care as they are concerned that the government will then control them.
Recognize that if you find this pamphlet disconcerting, then your soul is not lost. If everyone in America were to read this, our legislators would collapse into a black hole in just one day and the thought of a celestial vacuum that would suck up all the legislators is pretty attractive.
About the Author
“I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”
Will Rogers
This is not about me. It’s about you. It’s about your ability and your willingness to do it for yourself, to use your common sense and to stand up for what you believe in. If I jump off a cliff, you should not. And so it goes, that who I am or what I am should not matter, unless of course judging the façade of others rather than trusting your own common sense is your way of navigating this world. In which case, I submit to you … you’ve been disappointed many times and will be many times more. On the oft chance that you recognize that failing and want to gain control for yourself, I suggest you read on. Nevertheless [for the record] I am a responsible, committed, loyal, energetic, enthusiastic and compassionate person. Did I forget charming?
We Are the Nobility
“Democracy is the theory that the common people
know what they want, and deserve to get it… good and hard.”
H. L. Menchen 1880-1956, A little Book in C major (1916)
Politicians are not the root of the problem; they are only pawns of the system. It’s our responsibility to manage them and we should not let that thought go. It’s not our job to destroy and berate our politicians.
They are our pawns, but somehow we have allowed them to turn that situation upside down. It’s our responsibility to nurture and control them… something we are failing at miserably. But, I for one do not believe it’s too late since we are a government, which gets its strength from the governed. Recognizing that you have allowed them to abuse your power, you must now wean them from that misuse.
Less Confided Power
“The less government we have, the better – the fewer laws, and the less confided power.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There it is. Emerson hit the nail on the head… “…less confided power”. He didn’t say, “no confided power” or “no government”. The law itself must be ubiquitous to be effective. The law must be reined in when it takes on a life of its own in our society, as it is now doing. It is, in a sense, becoming its own almighty, and setting in judgment of itself.
Greed
“One of the weaknesses of our age is our apparent inability
to distinguish our need from our greed”
Author Unknown
It’s about our all too submissive acquiescence to those whom we trust with our most valuable possessions, the political establishment, a repressive legal system, countless special interest groups and the so called American Main Stream Media (aka: The Free Press). The me-me-me refrain of special interests and those whose services were, in times past, employed for the sake of impartiality and fairness now ‘Hold The People Hostage’. The motive is common greed, and anyone who has been wrongfully manipulated by the demands of another knows its menace.
Freedom and Dependency are Unable to Coexist
“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom,
can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
John Adams (1735 – 1826)
The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations, it has been said, is only 200-300 years. These nations have all progressed through the following evolutionary sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From great courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to selfishness;
From selfishness to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back again into bondage.
Author unknown
Dependence and equality is not compatible with freedom and balance is all too perishable. And so the question is… Where is America in the above list?
That you might choose responsibility (freedom) over dependency is the politician’s, Academia, the legal system’s and the main stream media’s greatest threat. The essence of government spirit is to keep us united under a common bond, whatever [fear] that may be. And let’s face it, we are so easy to unite [scare]. Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s Chief of Staff, said on November 19th, 2008, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before”. He was echoing the quote of a political totalitarian, Niccolo Machiavelli, who said in the 15th Century, “Never waste the opportunities offered by a good crisis”.
Then in 1847, the London Communist League, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, developed their theory of communism by using Hegel’s theory of the dialectic. The theory in its simplest form is a system of manipulating the masses into compliant acceptance of a prearranged solution.
It has three parts:
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1) Manufacture a problem of enormous magnitude.
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2) Whip up hysteria by every possible means.
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3) When people demand a solution, give them one… one which will cost considerable money, threatening their lifestyle and through the solution give more power to the controlling elite.
Sound familiar? Whether you believe it or not you are being duped as governing by crisis is the mainstay of every totalitarian regime. This is the basis for the socialist Saul Alinsky and the Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the “Cloward-Piven Strategy”. This strategy, which I will elaborate on in “How America Ends 11/11/09”, details how forcing American society into crisis by over-expanding the government bureaucracy with a flood of social welfare and fiscally irresponsible social programs causes its economic collapse.
In the beginning of the end, the populous tends to believe that they can hire mercenaries for their duties. That is what is happening to America right now. We actually believe that Congress is looking out for us. Every great civilization from time immemorial has eventually violated this truth and in return their government was lost to the ages. Who can deny that the Republican politicians are no better than the Democrat politicians and that you are being duped for the sake of their hold on power?
Americans face a host of serious issues and Barack Obama has offered that “Dream”. The recent stock market debacle, Lehman Brothers, the Fannie and Freddie crash, AIG and the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout, a $787 billion dollar stimulus package [unread], a half trillion dollar omnibus bill, a 3.5 Trillion dollar budget and several $100 billion dollar afterthoughts has rightfully enraged Middle America. All of these are wealth redistribution and contributors to the deficit, which we will have to pay.
The U.S. financial system and the world financial markets are so stressed right now that it threatens the very social fabric of our nation, one that our fathers and their forefathers have already fought and died for. Will we keep our American entrepreneurial spirit, which we have bragged about and paraded before the world for over 220 years, or will we give way to a new form of socialism because we have hit a rough spot?
This is no reason to go off the deep end, throwing away our ideological sense of America in order to remove ourselves. Barack Obama and his Chicago [“I won”] gang as well as the liberal media have already gone out to celebrate… just a minute… not so fast… history abounds with examples of people wanting out of a bad situation and then being taken to worse. Read the history of the Bolshevik Revolution or the story of the rise and fall of Hitler if you want a good history lesson.
Most people will reject these words, but I can’t help myself from writing them. This is the ‘herd instinct’ in human nature. It is in our psychic that under threats we cannot perceive [or manage] we want to join the socialist masses. Socialism is the very essence of government, of security, of the ‘covenant of the fence’, of protectionism, however we need to know where we are running… before we run over a cliff.
Most people stranded on an island-of-hell don’t ask many questions when someone throws them a lifeline of hope. Maybe they should ask, but most people don’t.
Who Have We Hired To Do Our Business?
“Oh, I don’t blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I’d be irresponsible, too”
Lichty and Wagner
On an indignant note, doesn’t it make your stomach turn when our representatives are unwilling to vote for the bailout unless bribed by pork for their constituents? How could we have the biggest bailout in the history of our nation, almost a trillion dollars, an event billed by the politicians as the most important vote of their careers and they attach by some estimates 600 billion dollars of pork to it. What [the hell] is wrong with this picture? More important! What does this say if we let them get away with it?
These are some examples, $192 million for rum producers, tax breaks for railroad track maintenance, $10 million for film production expensing rules, etc., etc., etc. I’m thunderstruck by the ethics of this and any further words I put to it will not calm me down. Most important to keep in mind that it is my job to manage them… not berate them.
On October 1st, 2008, Senator Tom Coburn, Oklahoma, spoke about the bailout on the floor of the Senate.
“We have a patient with cancer and they have secondary pneumonia because of the cancer and we’re going to treat the pneumonia. But we’re not going to fix the cancer. We’re gonna ignore the cancer. Let me tell you what the cancer is. The cancer is Congresses, for years upon years, have totally ignored the Constitution of the United States and taken us to areas where we have no business being. There is no way you can justify, in the U.S. Constitution, that the country ought to be the source of mortgages for homeowners in this country, and yet Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac control 70% of the mortgages in this country.”
“If anybody in America is mad about this situation, there’s only one place they need to direct their anger, and it’s right in the Congress of the United States. What we’re going to do is we’re going to continue to treat the symptoms rather than directly go after the cause that has created the greatest financial risk and peril this country has ever seen. We’re not going after the cause. The cause is; get back within the bounds of the Constitution… that very specifically says where we have business working and where we don’t. We decided that we would ignore the wisdom of our founders and create systems that are outside the enumerated powers that were given to us because we know better… we know better. We don’t know better, it is obvious.”
“This body continues to spend more, authorize more, and create bigger and more intrusive government, limiting the power of the great American experiment to… in fact… supply an increased standard of living. We’re in tough times, but they’re going to get tougher until the American people hold this body accountable to live within the rules set out in a very wise, a very providential way that served this country well. We ignore this book, this Constitution at our peril… we are reaping exactly what we have sown.”
10/1/08 Senator Tom Coburn, Oklahoma
Respectfully, Senator Coburn you have hit the nail on the head however I disagree with you on one very important point. The Congress of the United States [its members] are not the root cause. They have been allowed, through our apathy as Americans, to disrespect our Constitution and take us where we ought not to go. In the process they have stole us blind, but we have no one to blame for it but ourselves. Those who cannot see this deserve what they get.
The Cost of Democracy
“When government takes responsibility for people,
then people no longer take responsibility for themselves.”
George Pataki
George Pataki, former Governor of the state of New York, gave us all of the wisdom we need to understand and solve the problem. Someone should find a way to etch that on every car bumper in America.
The quintessential element of democracy is that The People have to accept the cost of it, the essence of which is their willingness to carry out their Citizen Responsibility. That means Americans actually have to do something, not just wait for the corruption of special interests to mortgage their future.