In our fine state of Maryland, the governor, like many others around the country, is anxiously awaiting the first checks to arrive from the Federal Government. Like most states, Maryland is experiencing a budget shortfall due to the contracting economy leading to less revenue just as expenses are going up. For those states that do not have a “rainy day fund”, this poses a severe problem. Unlike the Federal Government, the states cannot just print money when they run out, they are supposed to balance their budgets. Politicians, however, are the same everywhere. If there is a dollar in tax revenue, it must be spent on something because that spending will create goodwill`among the electorate, which is good for reelection. So states all over the union, beginning with the billions and billions California is in the hole, are in dire straits.

     As we know, there are two choices for government when ends don’t meet. They can raise taxes or cut services. They prefer not to do either. The Federal Government, on the other hand, has two other options. It can print money or borrow it. It has been doing a lot of both lately. That is getting us in enough trouble as it is and the repercussions of our profligate spending will be with us for decades to come. If, however, the state budgets are supplemented by the Federal Government, that is a whole new can of worms. The states can go on new spending sprees just like the Federal Government because their budgets will no longer have to reflect fiscal reality. Congressmen will love it because they can point out how much federal money they brought home to supplement their state budgets. The Federal Government will love it because it will give them control over the states, because no money comes from the government without strings attached. The budget for the federal Government will mushroom even more but they will just continue to print and borrow. Everyone will be happy.

     That is until the whole house of cards comes crashing down. If history has taught us anything it is that one cannot deny common sense forever and irresponsible behavior will have consequences, usually in direct proportion to how long and how vehemently such behavior has been engaged in. We have been building up debt and obligation at a steadily increasing rate and with all this stimulus, our level of irresponsibility has gone through the roof.   One cannot print and borrow money indefinitely. Printing will eventually lead to hyperinflation and the devaluing of the currency. Excessive borrowing leads to bad credit and eventually the pool of lenders dries up. When that happens, it all comes crashing down. If we thought the banking and mortgage collapse was bad, just think what will happen when the Federal Government collapses. So many people are intimately dependent on it and such dependency will have disastrous consequences and may literally lead to the death of thousands of Americans. By bringing the states into this insanity, we are just hastening the collapse and ensuring that state and local government fail as well. We have got to say no to this level of spending. You can’t get something for nothing and sooner or later the gravy train will come to an end.

    A few days ago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attempted to justify putting abortion funding in the Stimulus Package. For Nancy, killing babies would relieve the strain on our educational and health care systems. Fewer people, fewer expenses, or perhaps better benefits for those who actually survive birth and infancy. She specifically referred to using billions of our dollars overseas to support these policies because since socialism, corrupt dictatorships and our money and technology has not relieved world poverty, we’ll simply reduce the number of people in poverty by reducing the number of people. Absolutely brilliant.

      The question may be raised, why are we responsible for the poverty of....name poor country run by corrupt and brutal dictator? Because in Nancy’s world, we, as the “rich” of the world, need to “give back”. What we were ever given in the first place by all these other countries, I don’t know. But President Obama and his Democrat cohorts want to make us responsible for the rest of the world, their health care and now, their reproductive lives.   They don’t seem to understand that in the vast majority of cases, our aid simply helps to prop up these brutal dictators and warlords. Another question. If we are in such difficult straits right now, why are we not focusing on our own house? How can we afford to start sending billions more dollars overseas for abortions? Is this really a priority?

     I have a suggestion for Mrs. Pelosi, however. If she really wants this money she needs a new angle.   In my humble opinion, she should sell it as part of the war on terror. She should direct the monies specifically at Muslim countries in the Middle east. After all, if we can reduce poverty by reducing the number of poor people, could we not reduce terrorism by reducing the number of Muslims?

     During our family’s recent vacation to sunny Florida, my wife and I had the opportunity to enjoy the magic of Disney’s Epcot park without our children. We enjoyed the rides and shows and the variety of cultural experiences to be found there. There was one show, however, that irritated me not a little. It was a movie billed as the “Circle of Life-an Environmental Tale” and was hosted by those lovable characters from the Lion King, Simba, Pumba and Timor. Al Gore himself might have nominated it for his Oscar.

     The film begins with our three heroes enjoying their little piece of paradise on the African plain. Pumba and Timor, however, have dammed up the stream to create a lake. When Simba asks why, Timor unrolls the plan for the “Akuna-Matada Super Resort” the two friends were going to create around their new lake. They were going to make boatloads of money. Simba shakes his head and tells them a story about another species that wanted to follow the same path of money grubbing progress.

     The tale begins with pictures of man in his hunter-gatherer state where he was one with nature and only took what he needed from the earth. Then they settled down and built cities and soon multiplied like locusts and spread across the plant like a plague, destroying the earth as they went. Of course there were the obligatory pictures of smokestacks, burning oil wells, traffic jams, sewage and oils spills with shiny, black birds. Timor and Pumba are horrified and swear they will never be like that. They knock down the dam, which was causing an environmental catastrophe downstream, and vow to help the poor stupid humans clean up their act.

     Does anyone other than me see the problem here? We were watching this environmental lecture in one of several resorts run by Disney. Resorts that created the scar in central Florida that is Orlando. Timor and Pumba dammed a stream, Disney dammed up the Everglades. How much water and energy does Disney and the the surrounding resorts use in their pursuits? And the bit about the oil companies-if it wasn’t for the oil companies making gas to put in all the cars that clog up Interstate 4 and bring tourists to fill up parking lots, Disney wouldn’t be able to charge each of those cars twelve dollars to park and seventy five for the privileged of being lectured.   We constantly hear about the environmental impact of “Big Oil” but what about “Big Amusement Park and Resort”? Central Florida would be nothing without Disney and the environmental impact of all those parks, resorts and the surrounding communities is arguably larger than the Exxon Valdez spill. Has not their success resulted in just as much environmental damage as the poor farmers in Brazil who are cutting down the rain forest?

     I’m not opposed to entertainment. I love a good show and a fast roller coaster as much as the next guy. And yes. we need to be good stewards of the environment and man’s greed and waste has done a lot of damage and we should do better. But listening to Disney lecture me about environmental responsibility is like listing to a prostitute lecture about safe sex.

Inauguration Speech

    My fellow Americans. It is truly a great privilege to have been chosen to fill this hallowed office and I am humbled by the faith you have placed in me to lead our wonderful country for the next four years. We are living is an amazing time where technology is advancing at a phenomenal rate and knowledge is expanding exponentially. Advances in medical science have made our lives not only longer but more fulfilling. I take great pride, as you do, that America has been in the forefront of so many of these advances and has done so much to share our bounty with the rest of the world.   It is our freedom and the resulting creativity and entrepreneurship that have given us these great blessings. God has not only blessed us with a bountiful land but imparted wisdom to the men who founded this great nation, men who recognized that freedom is the natural state of man and when government recognizes its limitations and protects the rights that are endowed to us by God, a happy and prosperous people will be the result.

     It would seem that that happiness and prosperity has been under assault during what can only be describe as a trying time.   The stock market has tumbled, putting many of our retirement savings in jeopardy. Housing prices are down, unemployment is up and the recession is getting deeper. Over the past year your federal government has tried a variety of things to get us out of this economic slump. Stimulus packages, bailouts, rescue packages, and nothing has worked up until this time. I propose to you that there is a good reason why nothing has worked. The government itself has been a major contributing factor to our economic woes. It is government manipulation of the free market systems that contributed to the housing crash and government ineptitude that led to last year’s skyrocketing energy prices. As the great Ronald Reagan once said, government is the problem, not the solution.

     Government cannot spend our way out of these difficult times by borrowing horrendous amounts of money from our children and grandchildren. We should not be burdening future generations with our mistakes.   It is time that we removed the problem and unleashed the power and ingenuity of the American people for it is you, not we who are in government, that is the true and lasting solution. We have strayed far from the founding principles of this nation and its Constitution for it has been the principles of liberty and limited government that made us a great and unique nation we are.   A return to those principles will ensure that America’s best days are still to come.

     To implement these ideals I will work with the congress on the following proposals. First, we will suspend all current bailout payments. We need to stop this horrible bleeding from the treasury that will only lead to a crushing burden on our children. Businesses will succeed or fail on their own, not because of any favoritism or lack thereof shown by the federal government. We will not leave businesses out in the cold, however. For businesses to have a fighting chance, we must remove the tax and regulatory burden from them so they will have a free hand to pursue the most profitable course. I am therefore proposing an elimination of the corporate income tax and an elimination of the following federal departments as a start, OSHA and the EPA, and a suspension of all regulations pertaining to them. Such oversight will be returned to the state and local governments where it belongs. I propose eliminating all subsidies of any kind for any business, including agriculture. Government should not be in the business of showing favoritism or propping up failing or obsolete enterprises.

     It is time that we turned our back on the idea that a one size fits all approach implemented by your federal government and returned power and control over your life to you and your local and state representatives. I propose abolishing the Department of Education that has shown itself to be completely inept at improving education.   Based on last year’s energy crisis, the Department of Energy has shown itself equally incompetent and should be eliminated. The government should get out of the energy business and let the companies that provide it do so free and unencumbered in the marketplace.   The federal government should get out of the mortgage and insurance business, the transportation business and the delivery business. These are just a few examples of government getting involved in areas in which it does not belong and creating bureaucracies and programs that just waste money and create problems and dependencies. Those programs and and their budgets should be eliminated as quickly as possible so they are no longer a burden on the American people or our economy.

     Thomas Jefferson once said that Government should not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. Philosophically and practically, the federal income tax is just wrong as a way to support the functions of government. Your wages should be your own, they do not belong to the government first. I would ask the congress to consider a repeal of the sixteenth amendment and the adoption of a consumption tax that will not exceed fifteen percent.

     It is a domestic policy that supports freedom and capitalism with low taxes and minimal regulation, adhering the principle of equality under the law that will draw us out of this ditch and set us high on the hill once again.

      Our interaction with the rest of the world needs to undergo some profound changes as well. We can no longer afford, fiscally or militarily, to be the world’s policeman. It is time we brought our troops homes from places where they are no longer needed. Europe is certainly able to take care of itself and it is time they started paying for their own defense. Do we need troops in Japan or even Korea a half century or more after the fact? We need to support our democratic allies but we do not have to replace their defense budget with our own.

     To our enemies, a warning. We will defend ourselves, our allies and our interests with all the means at our disposal.   It is our responsibility, however, to ensure our freedom of action when necessary. Two situations hinder our ability to act freely in our self interest when necessary. The first is our debt. The fact that adversaries like China hold so much of our debt ties our hands in economic negotiations and our ability to take a stronger stance on behalf of human rights and other important issues. Debt is a burden on our economy and a national security issue and it is time not only to eliminate the deficit but begin to pay that debt down to a level where it does not hang over our head. The second is our dependence on foreign oil, particularly oil from the middle east. There is no question that the greatest threat to our security comes from radical Islam and terrorists are supported in a large part by countries that sell us a lot of oil. It is very hard to tell a county like Iran or even Saudi Arabia to crack down of terrorists when they know they literally have us over a barrel. It is time we opened up our great reserves of energy, oil, coal, alternatives, and nuclear and weaned ourselves off of middle eastern oil at least. Neither Macmuhd Amidinijad or Hugo Chavez should dictate our foreign policy because of our dependence on their resources.

     My administration will be marked by the following. Domestically, we will dramatically reduce the size and influence of the federal government allowing the free market to operate at it most efficient, unencumbered by burdensome taxes and regulations. Our foreign policy will be characterized by our support for governments around the globe who respect and support the natural rights of man, a comprehensive war on terrorism, and a strong stance against those who adopt an adversarial relationship with us, economically or militarily. For over fifty years we have walked the road to socialism and it has not worked. We have given up freedom and huge sums of money by slowly relegating the Constitution and the founding principles of our nation to irrelevancy and we have nothing of value to show for it. I will not fulfill the role of a properly elected despot who may do as he pleases with the government and its power. I have taken the oath of office and have sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States. That Constitution placed severe limits on the power of the federal Government and I see it as my duty to uphold those laws and principles. That means returning freedom and responsibility to you, the American people and by placing liberty and duty upon you I have complete faith that we will quickly emerge from these difficult times and become the shining city on a hill that the founders and all the great men who have led this country envisioned. God Bless America.

Holidays are a time of family friends and....high rates of suicide. At some point during the holiday season, someone comes out with the statistic that suicides are up around this time of year because many people feel an acute sense of loneliness or detachment holidays. They see others celebrating with their loved ones and feel left out. The fact that while we may be more aware of it at the moment, our culture has produced an interesting paradox. With cell phones and Internet we have the ability to communicate with each other like never before yet never before have we, as individuals, been so isolated and detached from one another. Families no longer stay close and even the ones that live in the same house barely see one another. We find it difficult to see friends or even our significant other more than a few times a month because everyone is so busy. We may text or even call but a few moments on the phone are no substitute for a few hours in the living room.

In my previous entry I discussed our vanishing privacy. The paradox of our culture is that although very little we do is outside the public domain, we are more isolated than ever. We are rarely alone yet so many people feel an acute loneliness. We have a lot of acquaintances yet few, if any, friends. I referenced George Orwell’s 1984 in my last entry and will do so here because it is relevant for Winston felt this paradox as well. In London he was rarely alone nor did the party desire for people to be alone. After all, everyone is part of the collective. Yet he had no friends and the system made is nearly impossible to have any for there was no one he could trust. In fact, the party discouraged intimate relationships because it viewed them as competition. We have a similar situation today. We once relied on family, community and charity for needs that were beyond our ability to meet as individuals. When a society consists of assertive and capable individuals who meet their own needs and voluntary associations to meet any others, there is little need for the state. The objective of the state, then, is to replace self reliance with reliance on the state and voluntary associations with party and government bureaucracy. The state needs to make the individual helpless and dependant and replace the voluntary associations of community and family with itself. It is the state that provides sustenance, not the individual. It is the state that provides direction and meaning, not religion and it’s attendant associations. It is the state that provides education and guidance for the next generation, not the family. All our meaningful interactions are with the state and not with each other. The dislocation people felt during the industrial revolution provided the perfect opportunity for the state to step in and it was precisely in the mid to late nineteenth century when collectivism and totalitarianism first became valued ideals.

Today, paradoxically, the technological and communication revolution have made total isolation possible. Certainly a cell phone with unlimited minutes is a teen-ager’s dream but by making us accessible 24/7 and thinking we need to be so has helped eliminate our privacy and isolated us from one another. If ninety percent of communication is non verbal, by relying on cell phones we have eliminated true, intimate contact. Take it a step further to e-mail and we have eliminated real contact entirely. We no longer communicate through the intimacy that results from proximity but through digital reproductions of ourselves. The world comes to us through a satellite feed and too often we interact with it as though it’s reality. Is it any wonder that we can sit in our sterile, artificial environments and interact with a world that only comes at us through the manipulated filter of digital reproduction every waking moment and yet feel empty and alone? Deep within every human heart is the desire for meaning and intimacy. If we allow ourselves to be isolated and emasculated by our own technology the state will find it very easy to step in and provide those things for us.

What is missing is this. Within each of us is a spark of the Divine and there are two major components of that spark-creativity and relationship. In order for us to feel fulfilled we need to create and accomplish and we need to cultivate intimate relationships. Most of us work in jobs that are not creative in the least and then we come home and immerse ourselves in the artificial realty sent to us by Hollywood. We all want to do meaningful things yet our culture begs us to work hard to have things and then substitutes television so we can live vicariously through the staged adventures reproduced on our expensive plasma screens. We have little time to go and see our friends and families so we send digital reproductions of ourselves and those that sell us the means to send these reproductions try to convince us that they are worthy substitutes for face to face intimacy. We need more houses with guest rooms and people willing to make the time to use them. We need fewer things and more living. We need to downsize our lifestyle to raise our standard of living. As the new year approaches, perhaps this is a resolution we can make. It may not be great for the economy but in the long run it will be wonderful for us.

     Privacy is an issue on many minds these days. We worry about the security of our most important information because identity theft is so prevalent, Joe the Plumber had his life laid bare before all because he asked a question of a presidential candidate, Sarah Palin had her e-mail hacked into. We are concerned about warrantless wiretaps and the powers of the Patriot Act. Perhaps in the back of our mind runs the movie “Enemy of the State” where the NSA easily pries into the life, and then tries to destroy, Will Smith’s character.   The fact is, Big Brother is watching and there is almost nothing we do that is not known, or could be known, about our lives. Every transaction we make is or can be public knowledge. If you buy gas with a credit card, BB can find out where you travel. When you rent or buy a house, BB knows where. BB knows how much you make and if he chooses, can find out what you spend it on. And it is our spending that tells anyone who’s looking who we are from the foods we like to the books we read to the movies we watch to where we go on vacation. Such information is already available to marketing companies so BB can easily access it. Even your dropping in at the local quick mart to buy a candy bar with cash is recorded on video.   Outside of drug deals and yard sale purchases, private transactions are gone and with it, our liberty. Today, knowledge is power and the more people that have knowledge of our business and lives, the less power we have as individuals.

     How did we get here? We can answer with two names-Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.   The income tax instituted under Wilson enabled the government to know everything it wanted about how we earned a living and established the idea that our money belonged to the government first and we were only allowed to keep the leftovers. FDR gave us Social Security and the Social Security Number without which you can get nothing in this society. That number and a credit score are the passports to the standard of living associated with the middle and upper class in this country and it is just such people of initiative and individualism that are a potential threat to the powers that be.

     Before you assume that I am writing from a bunker while hiding from the black helicopters, bear with me a moment. In 1984 George Orwell correctly pointed out that collectivism is the only secure basis from which to establish and maintain an oligarchy. Since long before 1984, it has been the desire of the liberal Democrat party to establish such an oligarchy and their willingness to pervert the democratic process, pack the unelected courts and bureaucracies with their own and their willingness to do anything to seize and maintain power demonstrate that desire.   Collectivism is the opposite of capitalism and the foundation of capitalism is individualism and the privacy that goes with it. Now you may be thinking that Democrats and liberals are the champions of privacy. They support a women’s right to choose and gay rights and they complain about the Patriot Act. Sure, one can be “serviced” in the Oval Office, run a gay prostitution ring out of one’s home or have innumerable affairs and if you are a Democrat, that is “private”. Play footsies in a public bathroom or send some suggestive e-mails, however, and that is “public”. If you are part of the opposition, the Democrats and their willing accomplices in the media have no problem making what most of us consider private, public. Forget the army of lawyers and investigators that descended like vultures on Wassila looking for anything on Sarah Palin. Forget Rathergate, the FBI files found in the Clinton White House, RFK’s wiretaps, Wilson’s jailing of dissidents. Look at what the Ohio democrat officials did to a private citizen who just happened to be playing football with his son when a democrat presidential candidate happened by. If that does not demonstrate the Democrat party’s total disregard for our privacy, I don’t know what does. It is obvious that to a liberal democrat, the “right to privacy” only exists as long as an individual poses no threat. If such relativism doesn’t make us a “Banana Republic”, how are such things defined?     

    How have we fallen so far down this slope? How could we let this happen? Several reasons but they come down to two; convenience and a forfeiture of personal responsibility. Privacy requires responsibility. If we are responsible for our own physical and financial well being and accept the risks and rewards of such responsibility then why do we need the government? Look at Wall Street. Once upon a time investing in stocks and other financial intsruments was the purview of experts and sorcerers who knew the risks and accepted the consequences, good and bad. Most people saved their money, put it into their small business or land or even gold and silver. Banks weren’t even entirely trustworthy. Since 1929, however, we have accepted the idea that the government should eliminate risk to our savings. It began with the FDIC and Social Security and has ended with a Wall Street bailout. The government has eliminated the downside of foolish or risky investing and by doing so has created crises and then stepped into to “save us”, only requiring more regulation, or now, nationalization, and with it our responsibility to know and understand our investments and risks, and our privacy. The end result of this may be the elimination of personal retirement accounts as all the 401K and IRA monies are rolled into Social security. All because we have willingly given up our freedom and responsibility over our finances and with it, our right to the privacy of our transactions.

     One more example. We have given up responsibility for our personal safety. I was recently listening to a debate over what to do to protect students in school from individuals that come in with guns to kill people. (There is a section on school violence in “Memoirs of Former American”) Living in Maryland, I hear the local news from Baltimore, a city with a high murder rate that has experienced a killing spree this fall. Of course there was recently the terrorist attack in India that makes us wonder if such things may soon happen here. When the threat of violence increases, we have two choices. We can take steps to protect ourselves or place that burden on government. If we place it on government, we need to move to towards a police state because with its current resources, government has shown itself to be woefully inadequate at protecting us from muggers, rapists, Mexican gangs and middle eastern terrorists. Except for the last one, law enforcement is often unable, or even worse in the cases of illegal immigrants, unwilling, to prosecute the perpetrators and put them behind bars. Do we really want to make Nancy Pelosi, Barak Obama and all the failed mayors of crime ridden cities responsible for our safety by giving them more money and power? I don’t think so. We need to be allowed to legally protect ourselves. That includes liberal concealed carry laws and self defense laws that don’t prosecute people who do defend themselves against thugs.   Don’t you wonder why you never hear about rampant crime in places like the Mid-west or Alaska? Places where people are, or can be, armed whereas in place like Washington DC, Baltimore or Philadelphia, places with very restrictive gun laws run by liberal Democrat mayors, are shooting galleries? Most criminals are lazy cowards and if they think someone’s armed they will go to greener pastures. In a society where everyone may be armed everyone is polite because no one wants to escalate stupid disagreements. The point is, by giving up responsibility for our personal safety we give the government the right to take a lot more money and freedom and privacy from us in an attempt to make us safe that is doomed to fail because in the end, who is going to keep us safe from them?

     The Founders of this country were smart men. They gave the government very limited power and gave the liberty and responsibility to the people. As long as the people were moral and self-reliant, the system would work. As our moral fiber and rugged individualism become things of the past, government grows and with it, the problems with big, totalitarian governments. It is only by taking responsibility for our own success and failure that we will be able to live free and recover our privacy and in so doing, take power back from government.   

     In case you hadn’t heard, we are in a recession. Job losses continue to mount, the credit crunch is still with us, the government continues to debate how best to throw our money at the problem to make it all go away. During this holiday season they are also encouraging us to behave like them as Fred Thomson so eloquently stated, tongue in cheek. We all know that in our consumer driven economy, the Christmas season makes or breaks a large number of retailers. If sales are good in December, they are in the black. If people are not buying, the red ink spills and with it the lifeblood of our economy.

     A full seventy percent of our economy is based on you and I buying things, most of which we don’t need, things which will most likely be clogging our landfills in a few months. It’s an economy that is based on a house of cards, however. As Mr. Obama, whose understanding of economics normally encompasses socialist fallacies, correctly pointed out, if you and I stop spending a vicious cycle of job losses and decreased spending followed by job losses and decreased spending will result. In a consumer driven economy, if we stop buying as much, business stop producing as much, people get laid off and those people spend less and the cycle repeats until it reaches some stable point. This is nothing new, it’s called the business cycle. Business expands and contracts based on the market forces of supply and demand.

     There are several things that make this time around different, however. One is the nature of our consumption. The expectation of the consumer today is to have the newest and the best of everything. It used to be that having a new car or new furniture or a new television or even a new phone was something that happened once in a while and therefore demand for the new stuff was stable because people had to save for it. Let’s say thirty percent of purchases were new things and most of them were produced here by small businesses. In a downturn those purchases are cut in half to fifteen percent. That hurts but it is not catastrophic.

     Things are different now. Let’s say eighty percent of purchases are new items, it may be more. Easy credit offered by everyone makes these purchases available (and more expensive) to everyone and even though the television you bought two years ago works just fine you are dissatisfied with it because we are conditioned to have the best possible. More credit, more purchases, more credit, more purchases and at some point the credit runs out. People are stretched beyond their ability to repay and begin to default. Credit tightens and purchases slow. Now if we cut new purchases by fifty percent we drop from eighty to forty percent and people that bought new are not going to buy used now because the stuff they have is currently better than used, it’s just not the newest and latest. Easy credit for the purchase of new consumer goods is what brought on the great depression and we are in the same circumstances.

     Had things been able to follow the natural business cycle in 1930, the depression wouldn’t have evolved into the Great Depression. What made that time and this, different, is government involvement. Business doesn’t like uncertainty and FDR and the current congress and administration are introducing a lot of uncertainty. Take the window company in Illinois where the employees sat in to receive wages owed. The company blames Bank of America for refusing to extend their credit to meet payroll. Now as a layman I understand that businesses need credit for some things; expansion, covering the expenses of large, unexpected orders, but weekly payroll? Isn’t that a little like us buying our groceries on our credit card and then blaming the bank for our hunger when we max out the card? If Bank of America looks at this business and doesn’t believe it will get its money bank, it is within its rights not to lend it, or it used to be. Now the government steps in and forces Bank of America to lend because Bank of America was forced to take government bailout money. So look at it this way. The government has taken our money and forced Bank of America to take it and lend it to a business that is not going to be able to pay it back. Does that make any sense to anyone?

     Easy credit and our insatiable desire for new things created the crash of 1929 and 2008. Haphazard government intervention mad the crash of 1929 into the Great Depression. Unfortunately, I don’t think we have learned our lesson. In fact, our consumer driven economy and our attitude toward it and our government will make it much worse. If we truly measure our value by our ability to purchase things then the length we will go to to ensure that ability (and our worth) remains unhindered are frightening. As FDR showed us, the government is more than willing to step in and attempt to ensure our ability and the attempt to do so has demonstrated government’s complete lack of competence in the economic arena. Today, we are even more likely to look to government to solve the problem, to ease whatever suffering we think we have and the current crop of politicians from both parties are more than happy to step in and do what they can. All it costs is our freedom. Is the newest and best really worth it? If you think it is, read a book on the Soviet Union.

Patrick Samuels

www.patricksamuels.com

Author of “Memoirs of a Former American”

    Let us propose a game between the currently winless Detroit Lions and the undefeated Tennessee Titans. It is a foregone conclusion that liberals would want the Lions to win the game. Their self-esteem must be in the toilet, after all. They must be feeling really bad and we need to turn those frowns upside down! And who do those Titans think they are? Do they think they’re better than every other team? They probably cheated to win all those games. It isn’t right that they made all those other teams feel so bad. Everyone should be able to be a winner.

     When the coin is supposed to be tossed, the Titans are informed the coin is not going to be tossed. The Lions will be receiving the ball first in both halves and the Titans will have to play into the wind the entire game, there will be no switching of end zones. When the Titans kick off, they do so from the twenty to give the Lions an opportunity for a better return. The Lions are allowed to play twelve men and have five downs to make a first instead of four. On a pass play to the sideline, the Detroit receiver only got one foot down in bounds but the rule is changed on the spot to make it qualify as a catch.  Even so, hapless Detroit goes four and out and has to punt.

     The Titans get the ball and Kerry Collins’ first pass play goes for forty yards. The Titans find out, however, that whatever yards are gained after ten, they only receive half of them.   A forty yard play now becomes twenty-five.   Receivers are being held on every play and the officials do not call it. Even with the deck stacked against them, the Titans move the ball the length of the field and score a touchdown. During Detroit’s next series, the Titans intercept the ball. Three plays later they score another touchdown but they are informed that it doesn’t count. The rule is that there can never be more than a one touchdown lead in the game.

     By halftime the score is seven to nothing even though Tennessee has been in the end zone four times. They are frustrated and demoralized.   The Lions are taking advantage of the officials attitude and cheating without consequence, every time the Titans meet with success it doesn’t count, they seem to be working for nothing. In the other locker room, the Lions are pumped up. Even though they have only sixty total yards in the first half they are exited because they are only down one touchdown against the mighty Titans.

     In the second half, the Titans’ offense is flat. No one wants to play hard anymore since nothing they do counts for anything. Their first three possessions are three and out. By the time Detroit gets the ball for the third time, the Tennessee defense is beginning to tire.   The Lions finally score touchdown. The officials then inform the teams that since Detroit has such a hard time getting to the end zone, their extra point is going to be worth two points instead of one. Tennessee now finds themselves one point down with four minutes remaining in the fourth. Collins tries to fire up his offense and they begin to move the ball again.   With thirty seconds remaining they have moved the ball into the red zone. As the clock ticks down, they line up for the game winning field goal. The clock shows eight seconds left just before the snap. Detroit calls a timeout but the officials do not stop the clock. They let it run down and declare the game over. Result; Detroit 8-Tennessee 7.

     The point of our little exercise is this. The object of rules in a game is to create a level playing field where people can compete and gain success commensurate with their talent, hard work and a little luck. If rules are only applied to one side, are changed in the middle of a game, skewed to assist one group at the expense of another or to punish success, no one is going to want to play the game.

     Thomas Jefferson rightly observed, “a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.” The purpose of government under the constitution was to provide a secure arena and basic rules for our endeavors and that was all. It was not to assist one group at the expense of another or to punish those who were too successful.   If we really want to get us out of our economic malaise we will return to that which made America great. We will reduce government control over the economy and our lives to Jefferson’s basics, stop subsidizing or punishing groups or industries with taxes and regulation and unleash the entrepreneurial spirit of man. 

Patrick Samuels

www.patricsamuels.com

Author of "Memoirs of a Former American"

Sugar Mountain, North Carolina June 27, 2031

     He knew they’d come, sooner or later, he knew they'd come. The dogs were barking loudly now, and he knew the day had finally arrived. As Carl Lee sat at his metal kitchen table in his small home in the mountains, he caressed the semi-automatic rifle before him. He had often wondered what would be going through his mind when he finally had to decide, when the choice before him was accepting a life of cowardice and bondage or if he would go out fighting for all he’d been taught to believe in. Would he, in the end, bow to the powers he had held in contempt most of his life or would he die a free man with integrity and honor, alone on the side of a mountain. If someone had told him thirty years ago he would be making this choice, he would have laughed. This was America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. This was the one place in the world where you were free to speak your mind, worship your God and defend your right to do it. A lot had changed in thirty years.

     Thirty years ago the vision of America’s founders was on life support. Twenty years ago it died. A man’s money was no longer his own, even his body wasn’t his. They told you what to eat, when to go to the doctor, how to pee in an environmentally friendly way. Then his favorite talk radio shows went off the air and the gays were celebrating marriage in the local courthouse. His own preacher was sitting in jail for hate speech because he had dared to condemn homosexuality from the pulpit. People were angry and frustrated. People like him who had no idea how a government elected by the people could do these things. How could they vote away the right to speak freely? How could they vote to kill babies and legitimize deviancy? No one Carl knew wanted any of it. Even when he saw the polls, most Americans didn’t want any of it yet the politicians in Washington just kept pushing ahead, doing whatever they wanted, the people be damned. 

     At first he figured, as did many others, it was just crazy liberal Democrats doing their thing. There would be a backlash and things would be put right. He should have known better. Washington has a momentum all its own and once something gets started, there’s no stopping it. Democrats, Republicans, it didn’t matter. Government got bigger and more intrusive every year and all the political promises to the contrary, it continued to this day. This, of course, became obvious to a lot of people. The few that had the means left. But most, like Carl, believed this was their country and they shouldn’t be forced out or forced to accept all this garbage. For a short time he held out hope in the secessionist movement. He went to a few meetings and rallies but the numbers were never there. Most people had become so dependant on Washington that they couldn’t imagine themselves willingly disengaging themselves from the government teat. They were slaves and could no longer even comprehend the meaning of freedom.

     So Carl and others withdrew. He bought this little place in the mountains. He disentangled himself from government control as much as he could, the official notices detailing his non-compliance piled on the mantle a testament to that fact. He still voted, hoping against hope the people he supported would turn things around, restore the liberty that once reigned supreme.   His final disappointment came with the gun ban three years ago. He held up his Glock 9mm. It, and all other handguns, were illegal. Single shot hunting rifles were the only legal firearms and those only after an expensive permit was acquired. How the second amendment could be so flagrantly disregarded was beyond him but he shouldn’t have been surprised since the first had been ignored as well. Last year the supreme Court ruled the ban constitutional and everyone was given ninety day to turn in their guns. That was when Carl decided to take his stand. They had tried to muzzle him, they had taken more of his property every year, they tried to make him accept their health care and other services and he had resisted. Now they wanted to take his right to protect himself. If he allowed them to do it he knew he would be completely at their mercy. He would be forced to rely on government for everything and he would have no power over the choices they made for him. That was unacceptable in America regardless of what Washington said.

    The notices came first, then a visit from the sheriff who was a friend of his. He warned Carl that if he refused to turn them over it would be out of his hands.   Carl understood. He tried to live as he always did but somehow he had the feeling he was living borrowed time, like a cancer patient who had been given three months to live and was still alive ninety-one days later. He heard scattered reports of other resisters being shot or carted off to prison. The news rarely mentioned the incidents and when they did it was always the good government protecting the people from some nut. He was not a nut but no one would ever know that. He believed himself a patriot standing up for his rights against a tyrannical power.

    He started at a shot in the yard, followed by another. The dogs no longer barked. Carl gathered the two weapons and walked into the living room. He sat down in the recliner, facing the door. He put the Glock on the table beside him and cradled the rifle in his hands, pointing it at the door. He began reciting the twenty-third psalm. There was a knock at the door and the federal agents announced their arrival. Carl paused for a moment and then shouted, “You can have my guns when you pry them out of my cold dead hands. God bless America!”

If you enjoyed the story.....

1. Forward it to all your friends and

2. You would also enjoy Memoirs of a Former American, a look at the next sixty years of American history.

Patrick Samuels

www.patricksamuels.com    

     It occurred to me the other day, as I have looked, as I often do, at the lack of correlation between the size and scope of the Federal Government and the limits imposed on it by the Constitution, that there is an interesting practical and philosophical parallel between the value of the dollar in our society and that of the Constitution. 

     We have, in this country, what is called “fiat” money. What that means is that the dollar is not attached to or backed by anything of real value. Once upon a time, this country operated on money known as “specie” or coins that had real value, mainly gold and silver. After the Civil War the federal government decided to standardize the great variety of paper money issued by banks or states with the dollar which represented a certain amount of gold. If one had a dollar one could trade that dollar in for an equal amount of gold. This is known as being on the gold standard. Using money that had real value worked for this country until Franklin Roosevelt decided to change the entire face and scope of the federal government and this massive grab for power included taking gold out of circulation. Theoretically, the currency was still backed by gold but gold could no longer be used in transactions because it was illegal to own. During the Nixon administration even this fiction was eliminated. The dollar is now worth.....what we think it’s worth. No longer anchored by anything “real” the worth of the dollar fluctuates based on a variety of factors and has, over the long run, declined in value...considerably.

     For one hundred years the constitution was the anchor of our republic. The warnings of the founders about a powerful central government were heeded. President Jefferson said “In matters of Power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” Like the dollar being chained to gold, our federal government was restrained by the Constitution and by the values, assumptions and fears of the founders.   It was the moral values of our Judeo-Christian heritage, the assumption that public service was to be just that, and the fear of a powerful central government that maintained the course of our country and bound men of ambition from “mischief”.

     Power, however, is a great temptation for those with even the best of intentions and the attempts to break the chains that restrained our government increased in intensity over time. In the past hundred years Christianity has been attacked and removed from the public square, public service is rare and statesmanship is nearly unheard of as officials have been reduced to pandering to special interests to keep their privilege, and the fear of a strong and expansive central government has turned into an embrace.   Every time the federal government expanded its power, every time it took on a new role, we, as a people, made the conscious decision to remove the chains and unleash the beast. Whereas the monster was once firmly secured to the rock that was the Constitution, we have now taken that role on ourselves. We now have a picture of a fire breathing dragon, flying above our heads as we, like the Lilliputians of Gulliver’s Travels, are holding onto the ropes thinking we still have control. 

     The problem is we have now taken a progressive view of the constitution, we treat it as a “living” document.   It, like the dollar, now has whatever value we feel it does. In reality, by treating the Constitution as a living document, we kill it. By assigning whatever meaning to it we choose, we give it no meaning at all. By seeking the “penumbras” we make its clear meaning and intent irrelevant. Our government now takes on roles that even the majority of us wish it wouldn’t but once the beast is unleashed, its growth and direction eventually resist our power to control. It is now lobbyists and special interests that feed the beast, determining its shape, size and direction. We have been reduced to a helpless maiden, shrieking as the monster plunders and restrains us, hoping that occasionally our cries are heard, and the monster pauses, at least for a moment.

      The good news is that in a democratic republic, we get the government we desire if we have the courage and the fortitude to slay the monster. Individually, there is little we can do. Collectively, “We the people” still have the ultimate power. We can say no to big government, no to excessive regulation, no to high taxes but we also have to have the resolve to say no to the largess we receive, we have to take back responsibility for our own lives, we must be brave enough to live as free people once again. We have the power to grab the beast and chain it again to the rock of the Constitution but only if we put off the garments of the helpless maiden and put on the armor of the bold knight. It is in our power to restore to this country the system of limited government that ensured our liberty as individuals and our greatness as a country. The only question that remains, are there enough courageous people left in the “land of the free and the home of the brave” to join the quest?

Snapshot of the Future Naples, Florida. January 29, 2019

     “Carl, are you alright?” Beverly Jacowsky looked at her husband across the table. They had been eating dinner when Carl had leaned back in the wicker chair, his face suddenly etched with pain. He looked down and began massaging his left arm. “Carl, what's wrong!”

     “I....my arm....I...I can’t breathe....” He was suddenly gasping for air. Beverly screamed as he fell off the chair, his face flushed and covered with perspiration.

     “Carl!” She yelled, running to his side. She grabbed the Emergency Response Device, or “ERD” as it was called, that was around her neck and pushed the button. She hoped it would work. Her mind raced back to a similar situation a few years ago that ended in tragedy.   The ERD system was one of the newer benefits of Universal Health Care, a monitoring system for everyone with a health problem that could turn into an emergency. Tens of millions of people took advantage of it, and not just older people. Welfare recipients, guest workers, undocumented immigrants, anyone who wanted one, even for the most spurious of reasons, was given the device. The idea was that if one was unable to call for help, a simple press of a button on a small device hung around the neck would bring help. It even sent out a GPS signal so emergency services would know just where the victim was. Within the first two years the system was overwhelmed and the projected costs had tripled. Poor mothers used it for children with colds, illegals used it for fender benders, psychiatric patients used it to warn the operators about the end of the world. When her friend Claire had used it after a fall in the shower, there was no response for twenty seven hours, the lines were so backed up. The paramedics found her dead from a blood clot that had resulted from the fall. Immediate treatment would have saved her life.

     Beverly’s phone rang and she answered it quickly. “Hello!” She didn’t realize she was still yelling.

    “What is the nature of your emergency?” asked the deadpan voice on the other end. The woman had a thick Spanish accent.

    “My husband, he just collapsed, I think he’s having a heart attack!”

    “What are his symptoms?” The voice on the other end was not just calm, thought Bev, but...bored?

    “He’s having trouble breathing, he said his left arm was numb, he’s sweating terribly. Please send someone!” she pleaded.

    “Can I have his Health Insurance Identification Number please, so I can verify your information?”

    “I don’t know! My husband needs help now!”

    “The Emergency Response Device is registered to Carl Jacowsky residing at 134 Ocean Way, Naples, Florida. Is this correct?”

    “Yes!”

    “Are you presently located at that address?”

    “Yes, please send someone!”

    “I am contacting emergency services now. The first available team will be sent to your location. Thank you for using the American Health Initiative Emergency Response Network. Have a nice day.” The phone went dead.

     Beverly couldn’t believe it. ‘Have a nice day?!’ Her husband was fighting for his life on the kitchen floor and she says ‘Have a nice day’ and hangs up?! She had heard stories from a few other people about the employees that manned the response center.   When the system had been set up a new federal workers union had been formed, the ERPU or the Emergency Response Personnel Union. But she thought they were simply isolated incidents. Surely if there was a widespread problem with the operators they would have heard about it on the news.

     Carl groaned. “Stay with me honey, help is on its way.” She patted his hand as tears ran down her cheeks. She knew the nearest fire station was only two blocks away so if the call went out quickly the paramedics should arrive in a few minutes. She continued talking soothingly to her love of forty seven years as he lay gasping for air on the floor. She sighed in relief when she heard the sirens. Within minutes she had let the paramedics in and they were assessing her husband, asking a myriad of questions and preparing to move him to the ambulance. She followed them out the door and watched as they loaded him in. As she moved to the back door of the ambulance, on of the medics stopped her.

    “I’m sorry ma'am, no one else is allowed in the emergency vehicle, government regulations. You can meet us at the emergency room, if you like,” he added as he closed the door and rushed to the driver’s side.

    Beverly was dumbfounded for a moment and then rushed back into the house for her keys as the ambulance sped away. She arrived at the hospital fifteen minutes later and rushed to the emergency room. It was packed. A cacophony of voices met her, some English, some Spanish. She rushed to the desk and pushed to the front of the line, enduring the remarks of those she displaced. The woman at the desk didn’t seem to care.

    “My husband, Carl Jacowsky, could you tell me where he is? He was brought in by ambulance a few minutes ago.”

   “Could you spell that please?” The woman sounded bored and annoyed. Beverly spelled it out as the woman typed. “I’m sorry, we have no record of an admittance under that name. You might want to check out front, we are really backed up today. Next!” Beverly was rudely pushed aside by a large Spanish woman. She hurried out the door to where a row of ambulances were parked, engines running. There must have been more than ten. She quickly walked down the line until she recognized the driver that prohibited her from riding along. She quickly went to the back door and banged on it. A muffled curse came from the inside and then the door opened up. Carl was still on the gurney, hooked up to various machines.

    “Why is my husband still here?!”

    “Ma’am, you shouldn’t be here. We are waiting for an opening, please go wait in the emergency room.”

    “I’m not leaving my husband!”

    “Ma’am, the rules are..”

    “To hell with the rules! Why is my husband still here!”

    “Brad, call security,” stated the medic, turning to his companion. Suddenly, one of the machines began beeping insistently. “Code!” yelled the medic. The next five minutes were a blur to Beverly. Needles, paddles, shouting, more electronic beeping. Then all was calm, only one machine buzzing a long even tone until the medic switched it off.

    “Time to call it. 6:18.”

    Beverly fell to here knees behind the ambulance. The red glow of the emergency room sign competed with the orange glow of the sunset. Carl was dead.

     This election is an historic one, there is no doubt about that. But aside from the issues of race and gender, it is the principles and ideals at stake that have the potential to rapidly and fundamentally change the character of this nation. For the first time in our history we may elect an avowed socialist. Although vehemently denied by Senator Obama and his supporters, there is no question that he, and the Democrat leadership, have this goal in mind. They have envied the enlightened “success” of European socialism and admired the likes of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chaves and, in the past, Joseph Stalin. Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt they have become experts in class warfare, inciting the poor against the rich, the “middle class” being loosely defined so as to garner their support as necessary. Senator Obama admitted in an unguarded moment with “Joe the Plumber” that he embraces the concept of redistribution of wealth; “To each according to his need, from each according to his ability” as Karl Marx said. He and the Democrats believe, and have for a long time, that the Federal Government is the proper avenue for the solution to every problem be it health care, education, charity, mileage standards, free speech and anything else one can think of. They have pledged to grow government, raise taxes on the successful to do it and borrow the rest. They are supporters of the fairness doctrine, gun control, infanticide, and gay marriage. If Senator Obama is elected and Harry Reid gets his senate super-majority there is no question that along with Nancy Pelosi, they will implement this agenda with a speed not seen since the New Deal and pack the Supreme Court with judges who will advance their ideals long after they are gone.

     If Senator Obama is elected, it will only be by the slimmest of majorities, just as all presidential elections have been in recent years. If he is fortunate, he will get fifty three or fifty four percent of the vote and the press will declare it a landslide and say “The American people have spoken, we want socialism!”   But for the nearly half of us who will not vote for socialism, what are we to do?   For those of us who do not want to see our wealth taken from us and given to others, who want to keep our choices in heath care, who want to have options for our children’s education and want to have venues where we can speak out against these and many other government intrusions, what are we to do? 

    This very scenario was, in fact, the greatest fear of the founders of this country; the tyranny of the majority, the rule of the mob. Unfettered democracy was seen as just a great a danger as that of the tyranny of an all powerful king. As Socrates found, a democracy can vote to have you drik your own poison. That is why the founders choose a constitutional republic with very specific and limited powers divided between three branches of government. As long as the role of government was limited by the elected leader’s respect for the Constitution and the people’s moral character to hold them accountable, there was no way America would accept the socialist, communist or fascist experiments of Europe. After George Washington who set the example for leadership by stepping down at the height of power, there was little danger of dictatorship either.

     All that changed during the tenure of Franklin Roosevelt. FDR was a president for life who exercised dictatorial powers through a myriad of government agencies he created, with the assistance of a friendly congress. The constitution was no longer the clear and unquestioned law of the land but had become a document that was malleable, in some ways was out of date, and could be reinterpreted to support just about any desire of Roosevelt and his friends. It was at that time many of the American people abandoned the principles of a constitutional republic and embraced the socialist principle that and individual’s welfare and happiness was the responsibility of the central government’s and not their own. By encouraging class warfare, distributing money from the treasury to their supporters, and taking nearly absolute control of the education system the liberal Democrat party has systematically incorporated more and more socialism into our society.   In fact, they have been so successful that even Republicans now attempt to buy support with social programs. There are few politicians from either party who speak out for the vision of the founders and even fewer who openly advocate dismantling the system. After all, who is going to get elected by promising to take away government benefits?

     So what are those who don’t want to go down this road to do? For those who believe in the founding principles of this nation-very limited government, individual freedom and responsibility-what do we do if we see little hope in a return to those principles? What is a minority, even a large one, to do when its freedom and principles are no longer protected by the constitution and an all powerful government will force it to accept the confiscation of its property and limitations on its liberty?

     Option number one. We hope that President Obama and his accomplices in the congress so overplay their hand that enough of the American people wake up and realize that this is not where the nation should be going and, as some conservatives hope, the people elect another Reagan. That may well happen but we need more than the Reagan and Gingrich revolutions for as we can see by where we are, they were mere speed bumps on the road to socialism.   If the elections of 2010 and 2012 are negative reactions to the policies of Obama, Pelosi and Reid, the reformers need to actually dismantle the beast, not merely try to tame it. If it is merely sedated or restrained, it need only await another Obama to awaken it in another ten or twenty years. It is my opinion, with the amount of irresponsibility in Washington, financially and otherwise, we may not have that long before our great nation collapses. If that happens the world will lose a great stabilizing influence and it may become what it was in the ninetieth century, a world of poor nations ruled by dictators (kings) competing for supremacy by force of arms. Only this time the nations will be Russia, China and the US and the weapons will be much more terrible.

    Certainly we want to avoid such a fate but our politicians in Washington seem to be running headlong into the abyss. While some see it and there is probably a majority of people who believe that Washington is a large part of the problem, how many will vote for a candidate that vows to eliminate their little piece of the government pie? Is there any real hope that we will be able to reverse the voracious appetite of government and put it on a crash diet? That brings us to option number two, actually a favorite of the left when they don’t get what they want, leaving.   Now this is fine for the left who have more socialist places like Europe to go to but where does one go when one is seeking a modern state where liberty, opportunity and the rule of law are standard? Once upon a time, one came to America, but if America is no longer that place... There are no longer unsettled frontiers in which to begin anew as there were for our forefathers. For the more wealthy among us, the options are more diverse, as they always are for the wealthy, but for the vast majority of us, conservatives and libertarians among the great middle class, leaving the country does not seem a viable option without a great degree of sacrifice.   And why should we leave? We are supposed to be living under a contract called the Constitution and if the present government is operating contrary to that document, then it is illegal and we have the right to resist. 

     Which brings us to option number three. If leaving is not a viable option and the national leadership is unresponsive at best, and destructive at worst, revolution is often the final resort for the oppressed. Such actions can run the gamut from the relatively bloodless fall of the Soviet Union to the bloodbaths of countless coups throughout history.   In America, the Soviet Union is probably the best model but without a catalyst, a crisis in which the national government demonstrates its utter incompetence and is unable to solve, the mass of people will continue to tolerate the most egregious attacks on their liberty. With such an entrenched power, the Communist party in the Soviet Union and the liberal/socialist ideals endemic to both parties in the United States, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to foment a real revolution without that crisis yet no one looks forward to the collapse of the country that will result from it.

     Finally, option number four. This is an option that has a long and checkered past within our history-secession. Getting the colonies to cooperate in the beginning, the threat of southern secession under President Jackson and its realization during President Lincoln’s time are all viable historical examples. Even today there are movements or parties in various states that support secession. To those who see no hope of changing the government from within, are attached to the land of their birth and do not want to wait for a horrible crisis to overtake us all, this may be the most reasonable option. I have no doubt that this is a more difficult option to mentally realize today, as opposed to during the civil war, for state loyalty no longer preempts that of the country as a whole. But there are many people in red states who see the tyranny of the blue states in the Northeast and West as insurmountable and, as things progress and liberty becomes bound more tightly, they may see this as the only viable option to return at least some part of the nation to the constitution and avoid the calamity that befalls the rest of the nation as a result of straying so far afield of our founding principles.

    Whether Senator Obama is elected or not, the march of this country toward socialism will continue, he will merely accelerate the pace to a sprint. What will the great minority of us, those who love liberty and believe in the founders vision, do about it? We will simply protest loudly as we are swallowed up by the relentless march of liberalism? Will we hope that the American people suddenly choose to vote against their immediate self interest and politicians will develop enough backbone to dismantle entrenched bureaucracies and limit their own power? Will some of us escape and seek out some new place where freedom still reigns? Will our coming collapse lead to a new and glorious revolution that returns us to our roots or lead to even darker days? Or will some have the courage to leave the union in an effort to maintain the founder’s original vision and avoid the worst of this great country’s misfortunes? Only time will tell.

Patrick Samuels

www.patricsamuels.com