"America was not built on fear. America was built on courage,
on imagination and unbeatable determination to do the job at hand."
President Harry Truman.
Unless you are living
under a rock, things in the United States are becoming more and more hopeless
by the day. We are witnessing the decline of one of history’s great and most
powerful empires; our strength is fading, our economy crumbling, our status in
the world has greatly diminished.
Talk to the average
citizen and most will tell you things aren't right in this country. Most will
tell you the government is the problem; it must either do more or do less. Most
citizens will have big opinions about what is going on but little to no idea
how to fix it. They will act like the issues facing our nation are beyond
understanding and only the best and brightest minds could actually come up with
an answer to correct the problem. We put our trust in politicians who promise
us action and answers yet fail us time and time again. Any hope of meaningful
change is destroyed by partisan bickering and stalemate. We are now in a
vicious circle of political games, where the only real goals seem to be
controlling the people and maintaining power; and the tool used, FEAR.
I used to think the government
used fear to control, which they do, but now I think fear is controlling the
government.
Over the last few
months I have repeatedly read news and thought to myself, there is no way that
politician can be that stupid. I am not going to name any specific politicians
because I have literally thought this about leaders of both parties. I can
hardly watch a discussion about the national debt without screaming at the TV.
Highly educated people sit and argue with foolish and meaningless facts about
fixing the economy and the debt, when the real answer is very simple. You
cannot spend more than you take in. This is not rocket science, its simple
math.
Now I know many of my
friends that dislike Obama will disagree with this statement, but he is not a
dumb man. With a degree from Harvard he would at least have a minimum
understanding of basic math which is all that is really required to balance a
budget. Some would say I am over simplifying this and there are far more
complicated issues to be raised then just the dollars and cents math, I would
have to respectfully disagree. It really is just simple math.
What do you do when
you have bills to pay and you want to get out of debt or at least have
manageable debt? Well, if you are going to be successful you reduce your
spending, usually by cutting out extras. You get your budget as lean as you can
by focusing on the necessities only and placing any disposable income on your
debt. This works for individuals and it would work for the government. So the
logical question is why is the government not doing it?
I am not a conspiracy
theorist but here is what I believe is really going on in our country today.
According to several
respectable news sources, anywhere from 35-45% of the US Population receives
some form of direct government assistance. The assistance can come in
everything from retirement benefits, unemployment benefits, Medicare, Medicaid
and welfare benefits like Food Stamps and HUD.
For the sake of this argument let’s use 35% of the US
population, which is 110 million people. That is an astronomical number of
people dependent on the government. We can debate the question of who deserves
help and those that are playing the system. We could discuss the massive
amounts of waste that could be found in all the bureaucracy but that would take
away from the point I am trying to make. So again for the sake of this argument
lest just say that 90% of the people on assistance actually need the help or
have earned the benefits through paying into Social Security. This would mean
that there are 11 million people who are abusing and taking advantage of the
system. I can tell you there are far more than that abusing the system but my
point can still be made with these numbers.
Now let’s imagine
what will happen when the government is no longer able to give these 11 million
people the entitlement that they need. I
use the word WHEN because let’s be honest it is really only just a matter of
time. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but we will see a catastrophic
financial collapse in this nation in the next 10 years. It will probably be in
the next 4 four years but the point remains it is coming, and everyone knows
it. Even scarier is that your elected officials know it. They are stuck between
two decisions; enrage the masses now by cutting the entitlements that are
destroying the wealth of this nation or allow this current path to run its
course into collapse. In any event this nation will see the greatest unrest
since the Civil War. Imagine the social unrest of the Hurricane Katrina, the
Race Riots in New Jersey, Detroit and Los Angeles and play that out in probably
every city, county and state in the US.
Is it any wonder why
the government is trying so hard to destroy the 2nd Amendment? Can
you imagine the intensity of the civil unrest if there are weapons all over? I
know that it may sound like I support gun control but that couldn’t be farther
from the truth. I will not give up my right to protect myself and my family
when this all happens. The military and National Guard will not be able to
control this event and there is a real possibility, depending on who is in office,
that we could see United Nations soldiers on our soil. Is it any wonder that Congressman
Ron Paul stated the, “national debt was the biggest national security issue our
country is facing?”
It is not hard to
figure out why the Department of Homeland Security has purchased 1.2 Billion
bullets this year? I think not. Could it be that our government knows what is
about to happen and they are looking to control it? I find it ironic that when
average citizens stock pile ammo and cling to their guns the government calls
them paranoid, yet the government is doing the very same thing. Fear has taken
over the government and every decision that comes from Washington is based on
fear.
We are inundated with
information that makes us fearful about financial collapse, terrorist attacks,
a struggling job market, failures in education and a ballooning national debt.
Every issue and every topic is fear, fear and more fear. When was the last time you heard something on
the news that made you proud to be an American? We are fearful people being led
by fearful leaders.
You cannot lead with
fear. In fact leading with fear generally turns into ruling not leading. The
government of the United States was not set up for a ruler. If we are to
maintain the freedoms we hold dear in this country we must have leaders that
are not afraid. Men and women that are not afraid to make the hard choices, the
choices that require sacrifice. This country can no longer afford to elect
managers we need effective and steadfast leadership. We need leaders who will
not shrink back from the difficult issues in this country and more importantly
will not take away our freedoms because they are unwilling to make the hard
choices. Benjamin Franklin stated, “They who can give up essential liberty to
obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” We are a
nation that looks for easy and quick answers but there are no easy answers this
time. We need to make the painful choices, the hard choices and even the
seemingly impossible choices.
Fear is a choice it
doesn’t have to be a way of life. Too many in this country, myself included,
have allowed the present state of this country to cause us fear and doubt but
that is not what the United States was built on. We were built with courage by
men and women that chose to do the impossible and make the tough choices. I
trust it will be so again.
Thanks for Reading
Steve
