The Spirit of 1776 in 2011

Topher Morrison
PurpleSerf.com

"Spirit of '76" by Archibald Willard

Image Source: The Post Mail

"Spirit of 2011" by Milt Priggee

Happy 4th of July America!  We have so much to celebrate here in the land of the free and home of the brave don't we?  Then why does this 4th seem to ring a little hollow?  Sure, family and friends are abundant, fireworks large and small are anxiously awaiting a match, BBQs are being meticulously cleaned and loaded with charcoal, the red white and blue adorn every fixture, and libations await to conduct the entire affair. 

America is 235 years old today, but what will the next 200 years bring?  The next 100?  If the last 10 years can provide us with a reasonable trajectory one could arguably predict a rough road ahead.  From a metastasizing national security apparatus and 4 foreign wars to an economy on life support and massive debt we find ourselves in a uniquely precarious situation.  This Independence Day may also ring especially hollow for over a quarter of Americans who can't quite put their finger on who we declared independence from, let alone for what reasons. 

This may seem shocking to you, but it is true!  What is equally true is that most Americans have forgotten that our independence was not just from Great Britain, but from its oppressive government.  We fought a war, you know killing people with armies, in order to free ourselves from its tyrannical systems.  Let me be clear, King George III and his government were by no means herding our forbearers into concentration camps or enslaving colonists for work in hard labor, lack of representation and one too many taxes was all it took for us to start ending the lives of British soldiers.  This is representative of how greatly our forefathers cherished our inalienable rights and liberties and how little they would tolerate others trampling over them.  

In the last 10 years we have seen exponential growth in government under both parties, Republicans and Democrats.  Our systems of governance have verifiably broken down under the "silent artillery of time", through the purposeful dismantling of constitutional safeguards, and the ensconcing of aberrant and unelected agencies (i.e. the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Reserve, two inherently mischievous and unconstitutional bodies) amidst our free society.  This multitude of vulnerable governmental entities is incalculable enabling powerful interests to easily penetrate the halls of democracy and usurp regulatory posts via the hordes of private influence mercenaries known as lobbyists.   

At every turn we pay through taxes to be searched, stopped, fondled, monitored, and categorized by these supposed departments of freedom.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its loyal dog the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is the domestic equivalent of our foreign legions.  While our troops are away fighting unending warfare in numerous countries, known and unknown, the Pentagon has grown, here at home, a grossly self serving and powerful private intelligence and R&D community who's ultimate obsession is with the literal manufacture of not only weapons and war technology, but also the bogeymen to fight them with.  

Meanwhile, our economy struggles.  It is laden with regulation, taxes, over 20% unemployment, and operated under the new paradigm of crony capitalism our government has been put in the position of picking the winners and losers instead of the objective and invisible hand of the free market.  Bad firms with their worse ideas and antiquated business models are kept afloat by the largesse of government intervention creating a tempestuous business environment where instead of investing money in growing brands and hiring new workers companies cautiously hoard cash and ship jobs overseas. 

What will it take for today's Americans to rise up and say enough is enough?  According to our Founders they knew the tendency of most nations throughout history is to roll over and submit to tyranny and governmental overreach, but as far as our founders were concerned Americans are duty bound to abolish and reestablish a new and more free government!

"...Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." - Declaration of Independence

Aside from our charge as individuals to be vigilant in our mission of freedom, the Declaration of Independence is nonpareil in one important aspect, it was the first document ever referred to as a declaration of independence.  It is this singular document, this public example (not our armies), which over the last 235 years has recreated the world in our image, that is to say, has turned the world from a static amalgam of empires into a dynamic juxtapositional collage of independent nation states.  While nations have attempted to grow their power and influence by invading and/or attempting to control other countries through various vehicles causing much war and tumult this world of independents is still thankfully the status quo.  It however may not always be so.   

The growing role of the United Nations threatens to throw America and the rest of the world back into the dark ages with regard to decentralized independent control of our nations and their peoples.  Regardless of the intoxicating prospects of perpetual peace envisaged by the UN's proponents it nonetheless is a superstructure with the incredible potential for apocalyptic failure. 

Real peace is achieved through the free market of governments, the right of free humanity to emigrate to wherever they may find the most happiness.  The question this 4th of July is: is America still that destination and if we are not, how do we restore our Republic?

Thou Shall Not Steal, Thou Shall Not Covet

Repair_Man_Jack
Red State
6/3/11


"You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour." - Exodus 20:17

Gallup may have identified yet another fault line that divides the American People into two ideological camps. They recently polled as to whether the rich should be heavily taxed to provide more social benefits for the poor.

"Republicans and Democrats have sharply different reactions to the government’s taking such an active role in equalizing economic outcomes. Seven in 10 Democrats believe the government should levy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth, while an equal proportion of Republicans believe it should not. The slight majority of independents oppose this policy."

Although no one would ever call me rich unless they meant it as a sardonic pejorative, my chosen title of this post accurately describes where I come down on this issue. Count me in with the 70% of Republicans and the 49% for reasons both positive and normative.

My positive reasoning is this. The US economy has to stop looking like it does according to what is hyped as “The Scariest Jobs Chart Ever.” The money, resources, and other assets have to be put in the hands of people who are competent. We need people who know their jobs, if we want to create more jobs. Whether you buy into Keynesian Theory for correcting a recession or not, those competent people are not currently running the US Government.

Spreading the wealth, pace Candidate Obama, often puts this money into incapable hands and leads only to lower-order, non-productive consumption. This fails to stimulate the economy beyond a brief burst. People unprepared to handle money properly, often times merely lose it. They then have the same problems they had in the first place. Take the sad example of lottery winner Jack Whittaker.

"Take the case of Jack Whittaker, the lone winner of $314 million. He picked the cash option and took home $114 million after taxes…. Today Whittaker is broke and his claim to fame is the run-ins with the law while having millions of dollars. How someone can go from having over $100 million to being broke is something most of us will never understand but it happens all too often."

If giving people large sums of money insulated them from consequence, Jack Whittaker would probably tootle around town in a brand new Ferrari. Certainly, a few of the retailers, strip clubs and divorce attorneys patronized by Mr. Whittaker got a nice economic sugar high. However, no meaningful, lasting improvement resulted from placing $114 million dollars of hot cash in inexperienced hands. A very similar case can be made about many of the recipients of President Barack Obama’s stimulus funds.

"The Government Accountability Office, in a report being released Tuesday, said at least 3,700 government contractors and nonprofit organizations that received more than $24 billion from the stimulus effort owed $757 million in back taxes as of Sept. 30, 2009, the end of the budget year." - Yahoo News

The examples of the broke lottery winners and the stimulus crooks are excellent counter-examples to the old Keynesian Theoretical argument that you can resuscitate a moribund economy by paying people to bury a collection of objects and then paying more people to dig them back up again. Meaningless government handouts, designed merely to goose the velocity of money, do nothing more than urinate a large collection of funds down the drain.

Then we get to the more moral arguments. How do we justify having the government steal the property of another person on our behalf? And make no mistake about it. When we order the government to go “make the rich pay their fair share,” this is precisely the moral behavior we truly engage in. My position on this is simple. Thou shall not covet. Thou shall not steal.

Let me make this perfectly plain, perfectly simple and perfectly offensive. If you believe the government should tax the rich to make them “pay their fair share,” you are greedy and you are a thief. It is just that simple. Just saying “Barack Obama taxed the rich, not me!” does not absolve that evil. It is a dishonest answer if you voted for the man or morally approve of his “spread the wealth” positions on taxation or regulation.

Any person who voted for Barack Obama for the express purpose of having him utilize the US tax and regulatory apparatus to take money away from the rich and give it to them personally, is the moral equivalent of a bank robber. Neither I, nor any other person alive, is entitled to two red cents out of another person’s stash just because we don’t have as much.

Class envy and class warfare lead not only to bad economic investment, but also a society of blood-sucking amoral cannibals. The current desire to “tax the rich” is born of both petty hatred and cynical hucksterism. For America to fix many of our problems, we need to go back to our historical moral roots. Thou shall not steal. Thou shall not covet.