American patriots must face the truth of the assault on “the American way.” The threats and active destruction of our world-leading culture and governmental theory, are premised on the warped analyses of Communist theory. We seem to enjoy arguing “Republicanism” and “Democracy” inasmuch as these ill-defined, rather amorphous distinctions are poly-philosophic in the worst, most dangerous ways. American political argumentation is largely hollow: platitudes are spouted by not just “both” sides, but by all the “sides” folded into our two parties, yet the translation of philosophy into public policy is nearly indistinguishable from a frontal assault. Other forces have more to do with policy than our overly platitudinous blatherings ever have or will.
Money has a lot to do with how we govern, as does corruption. The two are often, but not always, contiguous. For “fellow travelers” and other acolytes, philosophical corruption is its own reward. One may be easily drawn in to a corrupt philosophy by not recognizing that its premise is a lie… like communism, trans-genderism, oligarchy and “equity.” Or, alternatively, one may not care if the premise is real or not, only that joining with it is a source of social capital that is comforting. It is well to analyze the end-game of any philosophy. Many have an intent toward a goal that is utterly destructive, of individuals, of freedom or of whole societies and cultures. And here, sadly, is where we seem to be in 2023. Divide and conquer.
It serves an attacking force to have a number of fifth-columns who are willing to attack simultaneously, even for deeply held reasons of their own, whose targets and purposes have been laid out for them for completely other reasons than their own. These are they who the most cynical tyrants call “useful idiots.” For shame. They are not idiots… indeed, nearly all are strongly motivated by virtuous beliefs in the need for action on a host of issues, and motivated enough to take action to right a wrong, redress injustice, prevent global warming or stop the scourge of pandemic.
Unfortunately, most of these deeply-held beliefs are premised on falsehoods – falsehoods that serve the overriding purposes of those who spread them – falsehoods that contain a tiny kernel of truth. These can include the truth of slavery and slave ownership by white Americans 150 years ago and longer. From that truth springs the false premise of retroactive hatred: somehow doing the hating in the 21st century that was not accomplished in the 18th and 19th centuries, will make life better for … well, someone. It cannot, of course, but it’s sold on another false premise: injustice. Yes, there is injustice in the world, and it’s part of just about every culture, group, nation and tribe. But it is dead wrong – sometimes deadly wrong – to foment new injustice to somehow “balance” the old injustice of slavery. What isn’t clear to those who fall for “two wrongs will make something right,” is that the whole business of such fomenting has nothing to do with justice OR injustice: it has to do with dividing a nation against itself, segregating races and sexes and families, in order to weaken that nation, making it easier to eventually defeat it. God forbid.
True believers who are caught up in that (or some other) movement will, most of them, deny that their aim is to destroy America… they want to make it a better, fairer country. Their way of doing so is to steal money from those who earn it (unequal and punitive taxation) in order to pay some form of reparation to certain, select others whose main justification for receiving it is the depth of their anger at long-deceased slave owners. There is no “justice” involved, whatsoever. Yet warriors for justice believe that justice will increase if they support the false premise.
Those whose primary purpose is neither justice nor fairness (rarely synonymous), but destruction, are also strongly supportive of sexual deviance, especially that promulgated by the newly conjured race: trans-gender and its multiple subsets. Nothing has proven more effective for sundering the national identity that makes a nation strong.
We have a culture… supported by thousands of years of philosophical and economic evolution including, most emphatically, Judaism, Christianity and the heritage of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. What became “American” is a result of some of the greatest human advances in science, engineering and philosophy. It is nothing to be ashamed of, nor is all the history that led humankind here. There is no point, or stage, or precursor society or culture that may be adjudged perfect. There is no population, each a mixture of many others, by virtue of war or proximity, that was either pure or perfect in its own right, however it may have been judged by its successors. Each, in another sense, was perfect. Based upon its more or less rigid philosophies and shared beliefs, every stage of human existence and advancement was “perfectly” human. It was what it could be; each ended as it did in ways we can smugly judge to be “good” or “bad,” from our supercilious and lofty positions of hyper-technology and hyper-sexuality. Our own greatest limitation may be severely limited humility.
We are the wrong people to be judging ourselves unless it is to improve our honesty, philosophy, charity, economy and humility so that we might, as a culture edge closer to our more perfect ideals. It does not seem that this could possibly succeed without shared beliefs, shared morals, shared trust in honesty and truth, and shared respect for our individual worths. We know the forces that hurt and hobble our culture, and that interfere with the strengthening of family structure and with the raising and maturation of children. We know these things. Yet the number of our co-culturists who champion the weakening of these aspects of cultural success, is growing with only limited opposition. Even our legal and penal systems fail to slow the increase of weakening efforts. Those with eyes to see can observe what amounts to a suicide of our society and culture.
Will we collapse for lack of understanding of what our defense must consist of? Have we talked ourselves into accepting evil as a partner in our culture? Because it’s fair? Or, just?
Has our system of justice earned a legal rightto protect evil in contravention of ten thousands years of advancement? We cannot seem to even agree on what is good or bad for ourselves and our “American” culture. Must we accept that what is tearing away at our culture is a valid part of it? Is freedom no more than a right to kill ourselves and our homeland?
Will those who follow us be guided by our best traditions and ideals… or will they spit on the grave of liberty?
Secretary-General António Guterres (left) speaks with Volkan Bozkir, (Russia) President of the UN General Assembly.
The position of the United States of America, once the beacon of hope, justice and honesty, relative to the rest of the world’s nations, has changed. It’s not a change most Americans have hoped for or, cruelly, even anticipated – certainly not one that our erstwhile “leaders” have anticipated. In a nutshell: our enemies have identified themselves. None of the bribes or blandishments by which we have executed “foreign policy” are sufficient any longer. The outright gifts to those who will be just as happy to watch our demise as grand influencers, have proven to be a waste… unappreciated largesse from our grandchildren’s grandchildren that bought, evidently, only tolerance.
Now that the Bidens have destroyed faith in our money, in our courts and in our foreign services, Americans have what might be perceived as an opportunity to stop lying to ourselves the way we’ve been lying to other nations. Honesty is not a commodity that is banked in any quantity by our federal administrative state or by the elected trolls it maintains for our imagined benefit. We vote and vote, hoping and praying that the latest lines spewed in campaigns are, at last, the true ones, but nothing changes very much. The only change agent in the past 9 administrations has been hounded and vilified, attacked and threatened by the administrative state’s agents, since before he won election in 2016.
The internal and external destruction of the United States of America, has been engineered by the Communist Party of China – CCP. The majesty and Christianity, tolerance and charity of America has been given away, diluted and stolen by even our trusted friends, neighbors and “public servants” as we’ve barely watched, so consumed are we by technology and hyper-sexuality and self-hate. “They” have divided us against ourselves – the only way America and Americanism could have ever been defeated. We’re still standing by the Grace of God, but our own determined effort will put an end to that. Still, while we yet stand, we have an opportunity to make some radical decisions.
A quick and painless one, an obvious one, is to get rid of the United Nations and renounce every connection or treaty that we’ve ever honored with that den of thieves. Kick them out of New York, out of our State Department and out of any influence in our curricula (aside from history) or our medical establishment. We are Americans – we own this country and we can clean out this fetid closet of worms if we wake up in time. Let China build a new set of club-houses for the International Liars’ Club to meet in.
Next, recognize who our enemies actually are and stop treating them like imminent friends whose undying friendship may be cemented by only a few billion more debt-dollars from our grandchildren’s grandchildren. If they wish to trade with us or even enter our country, they will have to be at least courteous towards our national sovereignty and honor. Let those who are proven friends to our nation, have advantage over other nations in terms of trade, commerce and intercourse. Let us make mutual defense agreements with those who will commit as much to those treaties as our nation does – who will risk their citizens’ lives in our defense as we have and will in theirs.
Our international agreements should be mutually beneficial while not draining our treasury. We’ll need some honest financial managers to replace the band of liars who operate the mis-named Federal Reserve, FDIC, Treasury Department and the IRS. They operate as controllers of or enemies of American citizens. Naturally, our federal budgets must be in surplus all-the-friggin’-time. Inflation of the money supply has only limited value to AMERICAN CITIZENS, and then only in times of war or national disaster. These do not include local hunger or personal failures or homelessness or drug addiction or unhappiness. We’re talking only the business of the federal government, personal matters notwithstanding.
It is not the business of the federal government to house people, feed or clothe them, educate them or wipe their bottoms. At least half of the federal departments and sub-agencies can be eliminated along with half of the work-force… to start.
It IS the business of the federal government to defend and control our borders, ports of entry and the presence of non-citizens. Illegally residing non-citizens should be humanely rounded up and deported to their home countries, from where they can apply for visas. Our country has allowed its past half-century of federal administrations to over-promise and over-spend to the amount of some $32 Trillion of current debt, and over $100 Trillion of future socialist obligations. This is the same as pointing out that we have exceeded our productive surplus* over the past 60 years in order to transform other countries, provide comforts to non-productive citizens/residents of our own country, act like we are the most wealthy nation in the world, and to add numerous socialist programs for political reasons (vote-buying). We cannot afford to live the way we have been. We must stop borrowing and pay our loans off. We must teach/force our citizenry to take responsibility for themselves and take that same off the back of the federal government. The future can be one of freedom or of socialism/Communism; it can’t be both.
We need more tax-PAYERS, not more tax-TAKERS. Currently, and since the outbreak of COVID-19 in particular, the long, slow creation of federal dependents has been operating at hyper-velocity – the dream of the Communists among us. Sadly, we have been electing Communists to positions of influence and power in our states and in the federal government. Part of how this could be is our hasty acceptance of people from widely diverse cultures, making them citizens and allowing them to create pockets of cultural distinction rather than assimilating them into our unique American culture. We can identify the Communists among us by observing their disdain for that American culture. We allow many of these weird people into our education establishment and then marvel at how differently our children treat American values. In too many cases, our children have never learned what those values are.
Recently, 700 professors on the staff of the University of North Carolina signed a letter opposing a new requirement to include instruction in America’s founding documents and Constitution. They feel that “academic freedom” is threatened by teaching American history. A great university is represented by faculty who, evidently, fear the inculcation of AMERICAN values. Perhaps their best efforts are perceived as the separation of their students from American values, should the primary and secondary schools not done an adequate job. Maybe this explains why teachers see parents as the enemies of “education:” they might be teaching their own children the American values that teachers are committed to destroying. America Awake!
*Productive surplus is what is available to be taxed out of payrolls and profits.
There is a certain fascinating aspect and predictability to the ways leftists, Democrats and Communists create solutions to difficult social problems that they often have also created. To resolve the growing, activist-multiplied problem the various shades of leftists inevitably proffer a “solution” that strengthens the government and the leftists, themselves… and on and on it goes. Freedom gets traded for a new level of “safety.” Only the rarest of elections changes this course.
We see this playing out in the sudden pandemic of trans-sexuality that has infected our schools, our governments, our colleges, even our medical establishments – including pediatrics, a form of medicine most of us have always trusted – and even some churches. It’s a worse pandemic than COVID was intended to be, bad as it was. It’s worse because there is no injection that will immunize the hearts and minds of the susceptible, nor is any pharmaceutical company working on one. No President has cleared the decks for a “Warp Speed” development of a cure for this new disease; various groups cannot agree on its origin: animals or a laboratory. It is grotesquely infectious, however, affecting many organs, starting with the brain.
Just like COVID, trans-genderism has attracted new streams of commerce, catering to the needs of the infected as well as the threatened. Some of these are drugs, so helpful to transitioners as they leave reality, and surgical procedures, even in pediatric departments at formerly trusted hospitals, but, not to be out-done, beer, sneakers and other products are making sure that “trannies” know where to buy whatever makes life worth living, including rapid delivery from Amazon Prime vans. We are no slouches when it comes to scraping a buck off of the mentally ill.
The psychiatry and psychology industries are getting the short straw, though. Lots of jurisdictions had long-ago made it illegal to treat sexual matters, no matter how confused, psychologically. Affirmation and the aforementioned drugs and surgeries, not to overlook deception of parents and grandparents, are the only accepted maltreatments. If parents and grandparents react badly to teachers and school policies that lie and mislead them about the children they raise and love AND ARE RELATED TO BY BIRTH, the leftists will send police and the FBI and others to harass and arrest them.
The widespread reactions to opposition to the trans-gender pandemic, are the basis of the new problem that cries out for a governmental solution… from the same leftist gaggle that created the original problem/pandemic. Pretty soon, state by state, legislation will be offered to “protect” the LGBTQ+ “community” from “Christian fascists” who wish to take away the “civil rights” of the deviant. Grotesquely, that “community” has attached itself to real civil rights problems that are based on inherent distinctions of race and birth – unchangeable things. Always seeking support, militant “civil rights” activists are happy to add sexual deviance to their reasons to protest and, now, to tear down. In their anti-historical foolishness, true civil rights activists are abetting the complete tear-down of society and culture that global communists have always wanted: the “solution.”
Most “trans” and other abnormal sexual claims are based on – wait for it – self-declarations. They are not based on empirical evidence of gay-ness or of needs to convert one’s body to one that has the appearance of the opposite sex. It’s all mental-emotional. This in no way belittles the intensity or “reality” of emotional worries, fears and other feelings that cause the sufferer to believe his or her body is the “wrong” one. The suffering person is suffering. How though, could enforceable laws be based on the utter lack of empirical evidence: nothing to show anyone, nothing a jury could review, nothing with the possibility of forensic discovery. How much worse it is when a trusted adult asks the questions 5, 8, 11-year-old children don’t have the wisdom to answer.
Tik-Tok and other kid-centric social media enhance the peer pressure to adopt the latest, most affirmative trend / fad, and it is largely out of sight of parents and other non-affirmative adults. After all, your teacher, for Heaven’s sake… well, not Heaven’s sake, certainly, but someplace’s sake, told you not to tell your parents that you really aren’t a girl and that your name is now Brad instead of Bonnie. Go ahead and send that video to your favorite classmate of how cool you look, dressed like a boy. What rot.
Evil trends have conspired to destroy humanity, especially in the United States. Separating children from their actual selves denies them the ability and opportunity to fulfill the responsibilities of their gender. The education of boys ought to be different in key ways from the education of girls. Each gender has its own preparation for adulthood. Boys and girls are equal under the law, but not equivalent in roles and in life. It’s not mysterious, but it is a crime socially, culturally and (should be) actually.
There is no reason to trust anyone who thinks the explosion in “trans-genderism” is good or valid. There’s no reason to trust medical institutions or personnel who accept minors for surgery for the purpose of “changing” gender. No reason to trust anyone who will feed puberty blockers or opposite- sex hormones to minors. No reason to trust anyone who will ruin the maturation and fertility of a minor human child. God save us.
For some weird reasons: forms of moral communism, basically, sexuality has become a major element of elementary education and the business of thousands of men and women formerly respected as educators. One wonders why there has been a virtual explosion of sexual deviance and why America tolerates it, let alone cements it in place with illogical legal protections. The so-called LGBTQ+ “community” has shifted from seeking safety and tolerance to rabid dominance of culture and communications, and a legally enforced “right” to convert children to deviance in schools and elsewhere. This abrupt, new trend is a sign of sickness in a culture.
Normalization of homosexuality was the beginning to a societal tolerance of deviant sexuality, but by itself, neither virulent nor threatening to our core morality. Gay marriage, however, provided the breech in legality such that virulent deviance could force itself upon schools, society and families. Proto-Communists in the schools and teachers’ unions, perceived gender confusion as an excellent tool for dividing society and weakening families: a key process to create totalitarian control of society. How diabolically clever to choose as an “enemy” the widespread grasp of truth. What is the most damaging effect of this subversion?
To answer that we need to establish some moral – and spiritual – ground rules. It seems Prudent to reflect on life, itself. It is fundamentally spiritual, in the majoritarian worldwide view. There are too many “miraculous” events, large and small, that define, save and divert the lives of too many people to attribute everything to “luck.” Even cultures that place great emphasis on “luck” are dependent on something “spiritual” – forms of super-natural forces.
At the same time as “spiritual” beliefs or assumptions are at work, society, itself, must function for the maximum number of people. That means food, safety, comfort, property and advancement. All require stability and widespread agreement on rights and wrongs: ethics, courtesies and laws. People had to cooperate in trusted and trusting ways. The integrity and primacy of family units are essential, as are the education and acculturation of children. Those who would disrupt – to the point of replacing the structure and strengths of – a successful society, recognize that disrupting families is the first and most effective step. To some significant degree, those are people who are anti-spiritual, and in the case of America, anti-Christian in virulent ways.
Human sexuality, in nearly all family units, represents the creation of children, who are the descendants of that family line. Grandparents are as keenly interested in that process as parents are. Whatever interferes with conception, childbirth and acculturation of children, is striking at the essence of social success and of hope… for the future, one of those “spiritual” aspects of life. To the disrupters, sexuality, in the soup of hypersexualization of “Western” civilization, became a weapon against American culture.
“Gay” marriage was a move spurred by compassion. Once it had legal status, aggressive sex-weaponizers had a basis for demanding equal status in school settings: homosexuality now had to be taught along with heterosexuality, and not just about marriage. Heterosexuality is – and always has been – normalcy: mothers and fathers produce children; boys and girls are different in “normal,” predictable ways; growing up takes place in predictable, “normal” patterns with predictable responsibilities, that ought to respond to parental and societal expectations. The boundaries of ethics and law are equally recognized and predictable. Progress occurs as does advancement, in that individuals become more skilled, more valuable in the economies of families and communities… and nations, and more spiritual. Those formulas of cultural success are resilient, but only to a point. Feminism, a re-ordering of relationships between men and women, perhaps inadvertently, provided political power to legalize increasingly non-normal sexual practices. Gay marriage had opened the door a crack while a giant wedge of divisive realignment was poised, in the form of radical feminism, to jam it open to every form of deviant irresponsibility. Our culture has, so far, failed to recognize the danger lurking within the virulent move to get children to renounce their true selves – basically denying responsibilities inherent in their genders and roles in a healthy society. “Affirming” mental incongruities as more true than reality, has a very, very low rate of success. The web of lies we call “laws,” should be unraveled.
ELECTIONS
The majesty of United States’ citizenship is taught – if taught at all – through detraction and condemnation. Rare are the public, unionized schools where a deep understanding is gained by students, of the responsibilities imparted by our Constitution, Declaration and multiple other founding and originating documents and philosophies. Freedom is not a gift from our forefathers, except as a door to the future that we, American citizens are obligated to pass through as leaders for this world. We have the keys to progress, advancement and personal perfection in our hands; we have failed to implant it in the hearts of our children. For most of us, the closest we come to that responsibility is in our role as voters – authorized choosers of America’s leadership, authorized lenders of power to those we choose to hold it. That fundamental authority and power has been so corrupted as to be taken from us BY THE VERY PEOPLE we lend our nation’s representative powers to!
Some functions of democracy should not be computerized. The stealing of elections has become virtually part of the background humor of the United States, and it’s a part of history, most especially in large cities. The holding of public office in cities can, if manipulated successfully, provide great wealth and power over others. Those positions will be defended and fought-for. The rot of urban election theft has morphed, thanks to the mysterious wonders of computerized vote recording and tallying, into the theft of statewide and federal elections.
Voter lists are computerized and the printouts of those lists are available to official campaigns. So, too, are lists of deceased or moved-away voters, and those who are ineligible for other reasons. Fortunately for those who are willing to defraud the voting process, most of the ineligible voters are still listed among the names on the “voter” list. A moderately sly campaign functionary can arrange for persons to go to the polls and vote in the name of ineligible, but still listed, voters. It works, but is time consuming and risky. How fabulous to have a “pandemic” strike the nation during a federal election year! Resulting fears and medical ignorance (and mendacity) overrode legal and Constitutional strictures, enabling even more sly attorneys to win court cases allowing for “mail-in” ballots to “protect” voters from the scourge of COVID-19.
These mostly illegal changes under cover of a “national medical emergency,” were quickly stretched to allow ballot drop-boxes, official and unofficial, and then vote-harvesting from infirm voters, ostensibly. Sympathetic election officials allowed ever wider interpretations of “safety” and “every vote should count,” which included every ballot – licit and illicit. A handful of determined election fraudsters in mail-in states could, because of fellow-democrat fellow-travelers, sway tens and hundreds of thousands of invalid, but counted, “votes.” Even signature-match verification was disregarded in the interest of safety during a national medical emergency. Computers helped, of course, providing unmonitored curing of “erroneous” ballots with new electronic records. Damn the whole process.
Voting is the only sacrament in democracy. We have allowed one party, basically, to corrupt voting and vote-counting to its benefit. In 2020 these factors may have accounted for more than 8 million illicit votes. It changed history and the resulting President is changing history more every day… not in good ways, at all.
How can this Jin be pushed back into its cave? How can every election be trusted again? What are the steps? It requires a certain amount of automation, but no actual computerization and no internet connections to aggregation points or to state elections offices or to anywhere else.
First, hand-marked ballots, only. Fill in the ovals or squares and let a machine scan them and count them. A total is reported for each office. Count the handful of write-ins, and pack up the ballots with a bar-coded wrapper. A certified police officer transports that bundle to the single aggregation point near the state capitol. There, that bundle is unwrapped and fed through a certified machine identical to the one in East Podunk that generated the draft, on-site total. The stack is run through the second machine and the totals compared. If they are exactly alike, the total is reported as final.
If the totals don’t agree the ballots are inspected by hand while monitored by poll watchers. The stack is scanned again in a free-standing, non-networked machine. At some point there will be two identical totals and that number is reported. The total time to complete these steps might be 2 or 3 days, but the totals will be trustworthy. Everything else that has been interjected into this process is bogus and serves only the convenience of government – and the purposes of the leftist party. Absentee ballots should be only that, with significant reasons to avoid personally casting one’s ballot.
There should be no “early” voting, except, perhaps, for 2 or 3 days. That will facilitate convenience without encouraging voting in ignorance of much of what might be exposed by the campaigns. If the Post Office is to be involved in any significant way it should be to deliver registered ballots that must be signed-for by the requestor. Then, ON A SPECIFIC DAY prior to Election Day, and involving no mail delivery on that day – perhaps a Saturday – Postal route personnel can pick up the ballots at the addresses to which they were delivered. No wholesale mailings to untrustworthy “voting lists” and no ballot harvesting.
If we fail to secure our elections we fail to deserve the blessings of liberty.
BUDGETS
The term, “Budget” is not used in the Constitution. Budgeting for government spending, however, is vitally important – it’s the only way to set a standard for the key functions of the Congress: raising revenue and appropriating it for legitimate government expenditures. There are thousands of words in the U. S. Code relating to the President’s obligations to provide dozens of kinds and titles of data about programs and expenditures included in the President’s submitted budget. Sadly, about three-quarters of “the budget” is considered permanent or “entitlements” or both at once, and therefore unchangeable by the people’s representatives, despite having been created by those same worthies on behalf of those same people. Technically, EVERY element in the budget may be modified or removed. However, virtually every aspect of federal expenditure has its own advocacy group, mostly political. With Congress’ primary purposes being re-election and not the “people’s business,” no part of the budget that could have a negative impact politically, will be touched, except to increase it.
With a $32 Trillion federal debt, a large fraction of the sub-chapters of the budget must be “touched,” cut or eliminated. They cannot all grow in every budget cycle, including payrolls, welfare entitlements pensions and other hot-button items. There is no reason to expect that the Congress as constituted and elected, is going to ever balance expenditures and revenues, let alone cut any one of them. The collapse of the U. S. economically is being led and accelerated by government debt and deficit spending. All processes of taxation and revenue accumulation have failed to enhance America’s economic strength of freedom, nor has it done very much to increase the prosperity of a majority of Americans. We feel like we’re becoming more wealthy, higher real estate prices and so forth, perhaps larger retirement funds, but our money is worth less every year and a lot of what we think we’ve gained is “balanced” by those trillions in debt. Most of us will not be ready when the decline becomes a rout.
Our wonderful – magical – Federal Reserve Bank was given vital power by Congress in 1913: to coin money and set the value thereof. Along with that sloughing off of Constitutional power, Congress also provided “the Fed” the magical power to loan money to the federal government, even when it doesn’t have money to actually lend. So, it lends air and charges interest on it. The federal government owes so much that it must borrow money to pay the interest on previous loans. That amounts to three-quarters of a trillion dollars this year. Only the most irresponsible presidential administration would run a greater-than-Trillion-dollar deficit in its budget in the face of this unprecedented indebtedness.
The history of the past 60 years has made the budget process of the U. S. federal government, an increasingly fraudulent exercise. The fraud is perpetrated upon the American people, in the main, but also on every holder of dollars in the world, as the value of each dollar slips downward, year by year… sometimes week-by-week.
Prudence would dictate a different course for our ship of state, but we won’t see that happen under Democrat control of the White House.
How we deal with national problems need not, in all cases, be nationally. A large fraction of our national weakness has resulted from the least-efficient mechanism in the country – and the most expensive – the federal Government in its thousands of permutations, assuming responsibility for local and intensely personal problems and discomforts. These would include things like food, education, employment, housing, and sexuality… not to mention the nature of household appliances and pronouns. We are becoming weaker as a people and weaker individually, as we wait for unrelated bureaucrats and disingenuous politicians to make us comfortable. Only in the past 30 years, or so, have we begun to recognize that every bit of comfort has come at a loss of freedom. Let’s move forward.
IMMIGRATION
Every nation must deal with immigration. It’s an outgrowth of the “greener-grass” syndrome. People in many countries live in economic and political systems that are pretty crappy. Often there isn’t enough food or the government is mean to people. Many of those countries are led by dictators or communists of various shades of red, leaving the residents not very happy. Eventually some of those people do what it takes to move to some other country where the political and economic “grass” is greener… or prettier… or less crowded. All countries, including those that people leave, have laws – or fences – to control entry, which means not crossing their border until or unless the new country actually thinks it might be good to let the foreigner across that border. Every country does this: controls and guards its border, mainly because one never knows when a foreigner might try to steal from the new country or from its people or, worse, try to do harm to the new country or to its people.
So, every country on Earth controls its borders, umm… except for one: Ours, the U. S. of A. Interestingly, ours is one of the freest and the most blessed with food and blessed with the idiocy of perpetual welfare. How would a relatively modern, successful country like ours, ever select a leader who would not defend its borders? It is a conundrum. Our current leader, chosen according to legend by 80 Million of his fellow citizens, has actively subverted the laws – and the fences – of his country resulting in the unbridled entry of more than 5 Million strangers from 100 other countries (or more), a million of whom sidestepped the polite greetings of the so-called “Border patrol” staff so that they could enter in secret, perhaps with less than honorable intentions toward their new country. What an odd “leader” our country is entrusted to.
Let us hope every voter with the opportunity is able to choose a far, far different leader so that our country’s border will again be protected and guarded. It’s a simple thing.
DRUGS
Drugs can heal or injure or kill. These 3 options are true for both licit and illicit drugs. In concert with the problems of immigration, tons of illicit drugs cross the unguarded border we just discussed, and they definitely injure and kill the legal residents of this country. Our erstwhile government, hired to protect us, the citizens, has failed to solve the problem of mind-altering and often deadly drugs for, well, virtually forever. But, under current leadership and the inactions of our bureaucratic “deep state,” the swath of death such drugs have wrought has reached new depths of death and failure. One wonders why this particular national problem has proven insoluble. Our national government reflexively tries to force the solution to deadly, destructive drugs back upon individuals and localities, while grasping onto personal problems that earn votes and the continuation in power to make them national ones. Someone is not being honest with the citizenry.
Over the span of 9 years or more, America sacrificed about 55,000 of its young men and women fighting Communists in Viet-Nam. We have agonized over the waste of those young people for the 50-plus years since we pulled out. Lots of lies and untruths were told to the American people during that botched conflict, yet we persevered until there was nothing left to fight for, and we left.
Drugs kill between 60,000 and 100,000 young people EVERY DAMNED YEAR nowadays – mostly due to fentanyl that comes through Mexico, our “friends” to the south. The victims don’t need the Defense Department to ship them overseas to be killed; overdosing can be accomplished close to home… sometimes in the home.
Fentanyl is fairly easy to make from its constituent chemicals, benzylfentanyl and 4-anilinopiperidine and our other “friends,” Communist China sells large quantities of those chemicals to Mexican cartels. Toluene, an easy chemical to obtain, they don’t need to import. “Fentanyl” is 100 times as potent as morphine in its ability to react with pleasure receptors in the brain, so a user must be very, very careful as to dosage. Its other effect is suppression of breathing, and a user certainly wouldn’t want to end up like George Floyd, late of Minneapolis. A deadly dose, even for a man as big as the late Mr. Floyd, is about the volume of one shake of salt on some food – very, very careful. Unfortunately, most users of drugs, particularly drugs of questionable origin, are somewhat stupid. Tens of thousands smarten up every year, right before they stop breathing.
A president, especially one elected due to his immense popularity with some 80 Million of his fellow citizens, would go out of his way, at least a little bit, to guarantee that they or their offspring would be safe from the ravages of illicit drugs like fentanyl. It’s the least he could do for the millions of people who loved him so much, once. It turns out that that President is more enamored of the one-point-something Billion friends he has in China, dwarfing the paltry crowd who “voted” him in. So, he has done less than nothing to stop the flow of illegal drugs or illegal aliens across our once-guarded border. Indeed, his actions have facilitated both of those illegal border-crossings, and here we are. Parents and lovers who are mourning the loss of loved-ones to fentanyl and other “southern” drugs, are advised to never forget who their President cares about least.
Drugs could be stopped, but not one plea-bargained case at a time. (See: https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/05/15/drugs-and-governance/)
It would be refreshing to hear a campaign speech that included the protection of the American people as a key promise. It would elicit many Prudent votes, particularly if the death penalty were revived for drug distributors.
MEDICINE & FREEDOM
Recently, as in 3 years ago, a “new” coronavirus swept across the planet. A lot of people died as a result, but not always from that virus, COVID-19. We’ve talked about this, but the virus is not the biggest damage-causer. The presence of COVID yielded a massive loss of rights and freedoms – un-Constitutionally – and changed the relationships among individuals, health-care providers and institutions, and changed the relationship between the federal government and individuals. We who are plagued with short memories, owe it to ourselves and to our descendants, to keep alive the abuses Americans have been subjected to and why the new relationships must be reversed in law. Lately we have heard the CDC and the NIAID branch of it, try to walk back the directives they issued during the “pandemic” that cost many their jobs, licenses and even lives. Governors, school systems, public agencies, even branches of the military created executive authorities and powers to direct the actions of individuals because they were “following CDC guidance” or “following the science” as imaginatively defined by people like Dr. Anthony Fauci who claimed to “represent” science. People like to think that “doctors,” including Phd’s, are “scientists,” but many are followers of others. For medical doctors, with the brutal intrusion of federal governance into health care, many are employees, now, and they can be fired by the institutions that they turned to for stability and protection, if they don’t kow and tow.
Police and fire departments forced trained members to accept the experimental injections or lose their jobs; military branches forced members to accept the shots or lose their position, despite the investment in training and skills. Teachers were forced to accept the experimental chemical injections on the same basis. People were forced to get the injections or forego normal exercise of their rights of movement, assembly or commerce. Almost none of what was imposed on us, free, sovereign, Americans, was Constitutional. Those who were questioned on these actions used various claims of ignorance by citing the “CDC” advisories as their authority to restrict freedoms. Ostensibly, thanks to active fear-mongering by government entities, that same CDC and NIAID (Fauci) and ignorant media (to the point of marshalling hatred against those who disagreed with the fear… mixing it all up with “racism,” lack of “equity” and even “white supremacy” as reasons that people questioned “the science”) COVID was such a threat that states of emergency were justified and people could be arrested or economically destroyed for opening their businesses.
To be Prudent, most of “science” touted during the dark medical age of 2020 through 2022, was bogus. Real science was often put forth and literally suppressed by government and media working together to protect a single narrative, and those actions killed tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Americans who would have survived COVID relatively easily had less harmful treatments been allowed early in their infections. In some cases, those alternative treatments worked in very late stages of infection, but it took a contentious legal battle to obtain them. Hundreds of thousands.
Science is not a place or even a consensus, it is a process. Stopping investigation, data analysis and experimentation by claiming “settled science” or similar baloney, is as anti-science as can be. That’s what the “great” Anthony Fauci represented throughout. The entire National Institutes of Health – NIH – should be disassembled and reconstituted in a way that will improve health and longevity, not the bottom lines of pharmaceutical companies.
The only legitimate role of government in our democratic Republic is to be a partner in the health, safety, advancement and prosperity of its citizens. Consider what it is, in fact today, and recognize why Prudence indicates that these should be revolutionary times.
DOLLARS
The world is awash in dollars including the trillions we create through productive enterprise in our own economy, those we create through productive enterprise in other countries, the “air-dollars” the FED creates for us at re-election times, and the dollars created by foreign banks and enterprises. Lots and lots of dollars. The “air-dollars” have been tolerated by Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations (OPEC being largely a creation of Henry Kissinger and the American oil industry) and nearly every other nation in the world since Nixon closed the “Gold Window” of the Treasury in 1973. Simultaneously we guaranteed to protect Saudi Arabia and its oil markets and they agreed to market oil only in dollar denominations. People who wanted oil, and many other traded products, were happy to accept dollars in payment and just as often would sell their goods in terms of dollar values rather than their own currencies. The need to maintain “exchange rates” with all other currencies and the dollar, gave rise to incredibly lucrative currency speculations that have been not only a financial lever but a political one, as George Soros and others can testify. So many dollars. Every one is a bill – a bill against American productivity, and each must eventually be paid with something valued by the holder.
Many in power today seem to view the ocean of dollars as something that will be tolerated forever, and, further, that our incomprehensible debt – over 32 Trillion, now – can be “mentalized” as opposed to monetized. That is, we will eventually be able to talk our debtors out of worrying about it or even wanting it paid back. Without grasping what their attitude means, many people just roll their eyes when asked about how we will ever deal with our national debt? Since it can’t be dealt with now, the best thing is to not let it worry us too awfully much, and let someone worry about it in the future. Apparently, since we have made ours the largest single element of worldwide debt, all other nations should realize that if our debts are called the world will be worse off without an independent United States… so there: deal with it. That’s some convenient mentalizing, but it’s not likely to work.
Until 10 or 15 years ago, the majority of nations accepted the dominance of the dollar as a trade-off for stability and extensive military aid from the U.S. to the more than 150 nations in which Americans were posted to protect or stabilize smaller countries facing politically crappy enemies. Militarily, the U.S. had established a global empire that benefitted itself in both trade and influence, yet also cost it more than its own productivity could afford, hence the enormous debt being tolerated. But tolerance isn’t love. There was and is nothing about our past relationships that will inhibit smaller countries from accepting “help” from Communist China, our sworn enemy. Part of China’s all-dimensional war against the U.S. is the unseating of the dollar as the global currency of trade. If we lose the “petro-dollar” advantage other nations will quickly decide to not accept payments of international trade obligations in dollars. One hopes that some one of the geniuses who brought us to this point of astronomical debt, is working on how the U.S. of A. is going to survive as an independent entity without the petro-dollar economy to sustain it. Voters should ask politicians this question.
Fellow Prudentialists will appreciate the growing, unique responsibilities of U.S. citizenship, ignored or un-taught only at our peril. Let’s move further.
America is mired in at least 39 or 390 serious problems, but we’ve dealt with only 4 of those we’ve Prudently identified. Time is short. We must continue.
NUCLEAR POWER
Those who have submitted, mentally and emotionally, to the “green” cult, are uniformly opposed to so-called fossil fuels on the premise that carbon-dioxide is going to ruin Earth’s climate and cause the demise of civilization and of life, itself. That CO2 is the prime “green” component of the solar-driven oxygen cycle upon which all life depends, seems not to affect their thinking. Those same are virulently opposed to nuclear energy, the cleanest, least damaging source of electrical energy currently available. Something doesn’t make sense.
Green leftists always reference “Chernobyl” as the end of the argument against nuclear; if that fails, “Three-Mile Island” is expected to shut-up any pro-nuclear stragglers. Both of those supposed examples of what’s wrong with nuclear power plants, are non-sequiturs. Chernobyl, in particular, is an example, but it’s an example of how NOT to build a nuclear pile and of how NOT to run and maintain it. Rather than condemn the natural process of nuclear fission, opponents should correct their opposition to the technological stupidity the Soviet Union rewarded. Chernobyl would have been a big nothing had it been designed and built like, well, Three-Mile Island, actually.
Chernobyl was, technically, not in a containment structure as nearly all nuclear plants outside of the USSR were. That is to say, the weaknesses of the design and overall misunderstanding of the processes at various states of operation of their graphite pile reactors, make the Chernobyl-design power plants risky for mistakes and accidents under the best of circumstances. A long list of nuclear accidents at those plants was finally made public after the investigation into “Chernobyl” was completed. Some engineering traditions should not be permitted to operate or build nuclear plants.
Still, nuclear power plants have so many inherent advantages that it is foolishness to avoid making use of the continuously-improving technology that goes into their design and construction. The largest deterrent to nuclear power is fear, often fed by reference to bad technology, like that employed in Chernobyl-design plants and methods. New series III and IV plants are smaller, modular and 5 to 10 times safer than Three-Mile Island era plants, including passive safety systems. They’re also much less expensive to build and license. And, they are clean in both product and operating lifetimes up to 60 years and in eventual decommissioning costs and impacts. There is no “all-electric” future without massive, weatherproof generating capacity like what nuclear can provide.
TRANSPORTATION
Ours is a highly specialized and competitive global economy. Both commodities and finished products must move from points of origin to points of consumption; this is not going to change no matter how many “community gardens” are created, and it won’t change despite all efforts to go “carbon neutral,” either. Some tasks must be performed. Daily there are millions of them. Reducing the efficiency of completing those millions of tasks places huge burdens on society, the economy and on freedom. Forcing wholesale changes on how transport is performed… without a more efficient way to do it, is risky at best and foolish by definition.
We are in the midst of a green revolution, and we have been for over 100 years. From time to time wisdom has been applied through government regulation that has sped up the process of becoming more efficient and therefore cleaner in our consumption of energy to get materials and people moved from place to place. Increased mileage standards is one example, and automobiles are far cleaner and more efficient than ever, today. On the other hand, there are far more cars on the road than ever – in virtually every country – causing ever more gasoline, diesel and lubricating oil to be consumed while propelling substantially more “transport” per gallon or quart, and overall. For green evangelists there has been no progress at all – things are oh, so terribly worse because people insist on private, self-directed transport, and reject, for the most part, “public” transportation: too many cars, too many people driving cars.
Bad government, bending to the political pressure of “green” acolytes, responds by forcing people to pay for and to switch to public conveyance, and then fails to render it clean, comfortable or safe. Worse, public transit doesn’t go to every place where people need to go, and it never will. Government then considers how to force people to go to where public transit does go, imagining “model” communities that may never exist. There are clean, electric alternatives, but so much money and political force has been committed to “public transit” that alternatives are now less likely to be considered than if government went back to being wise, again. [See: https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/07/20/a-home-on-the-beach/; or https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/07/10/automotive-economics-and-freedom/.]
Battery magic seems to many, especially to “green” proselytes, to be cleaner than those awful carbon-based fuels; we should all shuck our internal combustion engines and switch to battery-powered vehicles. Bad government is listening to them and is virtually forcing car manufacturers to make more magic cars and fewer reliable ones. The ads are impressive. Batteries, themselves, are dirty products to make, both physically and politically. A person changing from gasoline or diesel to battery power has to drive upwards of 60,000 miles before the ecological cleanliness of an “electric” car starts to improve upon that of an internal combustion model. The only advantage of lithium-ion battery-powered cars is that the filth of mining and tailings, processing and effluents, unsafe mining (including child labor) and ecological disruption and pollution… well, it all happens in other places, out of sight of “green” Americans and others. Right in our neighborhoods things are pollution free! Forcing indigenous people off of their ancestral lands in South America is meaningless to us: they’re not OUR indigenous people about whom we care very deeply… very, very deeply. Improvements to Communist China’s manufacturing base and our long-term dependence on it for parts and replacement batteries, should keep China from ever damaging relations with the United States… so that’s good, too.
No matter how much cleaner internal combustion engines become, it is – and will never be – clean enough; only perfection is barely adequate in the business of planet-saving. So, in partnership with an entirely anti-American regime, the “green” (actually Red) movement has twisted our economy to the point of throwing away phenomenal manufacturing and servicing skills and technology, as well as discarding remarkably and increasingly efficient electric generation in favor of windmills and Chinese solar panels. Soon, there will be millions of used cars rusting away as planet-saviors force the end of internal-combustion cars and trucks and the adoption of battery-powered replacements, while limiting the number of “licenses” to sell gasoline… or refine it… or transport it, making continued use of gas or diesel power a little more awkward and unreliable than even severely limited-range electrics are and will continue to be.
Ultimately, (see “only perfection” in the preceding paragraph) owning and driving personal vehicles will become so troublesome that only grossly expensive “public” transportation will be able to provide a modicum of mobility. Personal freedom and sovereignty that Americans have invented the technological means to enjoy, will be lost forever. After that there will be millions of battery vehicles that no one wants or can sell, and will find difficult to recycle. Everything will be approaching perfection.
IMMIGRATION
For many nearly forgotten reasons the United States of America has for over 230 years been the most attractive nation and place for people from every nation to emigrate to. Americans, themselves, no longer understand (or are taught) why this could possibly be. Today education appears to include – is compelled to include – every tawdry mistake anyone in our history ever made. Worse, to complete a communistic circle, the effect of those mistakes is to absorb and render null and void, every great idea and action of those same people. The net effect of this twisted lens of American history is to grow up blaming your country for every problem in the world, rendering the existence and founding of it indefensible. As a result, fewer and fewer people do defend it… at least from inside the country… even as more and more people flee their home countries and sneak into, well, HERE.
Actual sovereign nations, however, have laws to govern and, basically, restrict entry to their jurisdictions. Nations are defined by their borders. The United States is defined by both borders and ideas of freedom and individuality – not by groups or identities, but by individuals, individual responsibility and equality under the law for – every – individual. For the past 65 years or so, we have turned our backs on our unique and majestic ideas, and dispersed the gold of citizenship as millions of people who don’t want to become Americans flooded to the insides of our borders.
Barack Obama was the first president who actively modified immigration practices if not policies, to try to change the demographics of the United States. Democrats had been dreaming of pushing white America into the minority category since Teddy Kennedy, an avowed socialist (and idiot). They couldn’t get it rolling any faster during the Clinton administration, but things started moving under Obama. He was probably the first president who seriously does not like the United States or its Constitution. Trump, obviously, was an unexpected speed bump in the race to change races. Biden, on the other hand, knows only two speeds in that race: “flat-out” and “stupid.” Some FIVE MILLION illegal aliens from over 100 countries have walked in to the U.S. since the 2020 votes were “certified.” About a million of those never even checked in with the Border Patrol, preferring to sneak in with various subterfuges planned, including serious drug-dealing and, for some hundreds or thousands, terrorist crimes.
Biden is hard to pigeon-hole. A patriotic observer is hard-pressed to declare him merely sloppy or foolish, when the very next day he might be presented with greater evidence of Biden’s treason toward his own nation. Breaking, or failing purposefully to enforce U. S. laws, which enables the entry of enemies to our nation, is exactly what President Biden has been doing since taking office… and it’s treasonous. That treason has come in many flavors, primarily these two: entry of those seeking to execute criminal activities including terrorist acts, and entry of those transporting deadly narcotics with intent to distribute. That fentanyl kills 10’s of thousands of Americans – mostly young men, but certainly not exclusively – one would think might wake up Americans to the crime of making its importation easier!
The importation of people is also a crime. Mexican cartels, who control drugs across Mexico and across the U. S., have found a new billion-dollar industry in the trafficking of people into the U. S., especially, by a factor of 10, since the Biden administration took office. For all of the cooperative police work – DEA work – between Mexico and the past 5 administrations, the flow of drugs, now including abundant fentanyl, has not slowed. Where there once were 5 or 6 cartels there may be 15 operating in every Mexican state and every U. S. state, as well. They’ve become more violent in Mexico, causing record levels of homicides, destroyed families and widespread official corruption. At the same time, with the cooperation of Chinese chemical suppliers, they are partners in at least 100,000 deaths in the U. S. from fentanyl overdoses.
President Biden commits treason against his own country in other ways, often by providing “aid and comfort” to our enemies. It’s subtle, but definite… well, subtle except for scuttling Afghanistan. According to sworn congressional testimony, Biden demanded immediate withdrawal despite the advice of military advisors, including the abandonment of Baghram Airbase and more than $7 BILLION in weapons, ammunition, aircraft, including some high-tech personal and tactical hardware. The Taliban, of course, has never been an ally of ours or friendly toward America or Americans in any way. They’re enemies, Joe, you dope. And we armed them to the teeth, abandoned real allies to danger and death at the hands of the Taliban. We could have retained Baghram and much of our equipment, and we logically should have regardless of costs. So, militarily, why did we do things the way we did? What on Earth was the headlong, damned stupid rush?
It seems Prudent to realize that we abandoned all of our work because China wanted us to. China didn’t want us to maintain a base so close to their border. China is happy to see us shoot ourselves in the foot – it saves them the trouble. They have invested many millions into the Biden family; our retreat was a return on investment by a factor of a thousand percent. When we look at all the players and pressures involved in 20 years of U.S. actions in Afghanistan, only the U.S. acted like an idiot, against its own interests. Treason, thy name is Biden.
When China is invited to “help” the United States eliminate drug abuse, and elections are “temporarily” suspended to get a handle on “crime,” it will be too late to rid ourselves of the gaggle of assholes from the Obama and Biden regimes.
So many words and only 3 more issues discussed. Prudence says stop here, wait for the next.
“Beijing, China – December 27, 2011. Young soldiers marching in the Forbidden City.”
Forty years ago a local newspaper asked its readers about the coming millennium and what each thought would be the great progress, or major changes, that might be made in the next century. Prudence wrote back – long before she realized how Prudent she was – that the next 100 years would be based on China and everyone’s reaction to or accommodation of, China. In the mid-‘80’s the United States was feeling pretty good about itself: strong, prosperous, winning against the Soviet Union and mostly at peace. People were proud of being American.
Starting with the Carter administration, followed by a period of clear thinking in the Reagan administration, and then under full steam in the Clinton administration, the United States has followed policies that have enriched and built-up Communist China. Carter changed our policy regarding Taiwan’s independence. Clinton accepted millions of “campaign” funds from Chinese sources and weakened restrictions on technology transfers. It was a transfer from the “Loral Space” corporation that enabled China to accurately launch and control missiles. Supercomputer technology was allowed to transfer in the late ‘90’s, after overriding Defense Department objections and rules. A lot of money moved toward the Clintons during the two presidential campaigns; dozens of Chinese operators accepted plea deals or fled the country to avoid prosecution. Almost singlehandedly, Bill Clinton – with unknown levels of action by Hillary Clinton in the background – relinquished U. S. superiority in missile and space technologies, perhaps 20 years or more of advantage over the Chinese. Everybody has a price… well, not everyone, but definitely that couple does. It is beyond the scope of Prudence’ recollections to plumb the extent of influence selling through the Clinton Global Initiative: Hillary’s bribery laundering mechanism.
For more than a century the “West” treated China as a football, kicked around and taken advantage-of by multiple European countries and by the U. S. Communism, starting with the Soviets and spreading aggressively, finally began to focus American attention on the most populous country. Japan went to war in China long before it attacked Pearl Harbor. Their presence and brutality solidified the division of China into Nationalists and Communists China suffered as many as 20 million deaths and multiple millions of other casualties. The uneasy alliance of the Nationalists and the Communists against Japan held until Japan was forced by the U. S. to retreat. The corrupt Nationalists, saddled with terrible, deadly decisions they had made during the war with Japan, wound up with their only “friends” being the U. S., who protected them as they fled to Formosa Island, later called Taiwan, a de-facto independent nation, but only because the U. S. maintains its “defense” of Taiwan.
China has matured under communism, but, thankfully, large fractions of the population still understand when they’re being tyrannized, as recent demonstrations have shown. Unlike Americans, Chinese citizens are acutely aware of their government’s lies and how dangerous acquiescence to Communist dictates actually is. Americans seem to be divided over whether one recognizes government lies or accepts them as true. The latter are largely Biden voters and, earlier, Obama voters. They also become very angry when events like the 2020 elections are questioned, probably out of fear that the questioners may be right. Fortunately, every “good work” President Biden has done has reinforced their belief that he really did earn the highest presidential vote total in history. China is actively and fairly successfully taking advantage of this American gullibility: enough trade and McDonald’s restaurants can convert anyone into an honest ally.
America has a bad habit of absorbing the first blow… even telling its adversaries where to land it and then, how to obtain American financing for their expenses. It’s not clear that we will rise up and demand victory over our enemies in the absence of a Pearl-Harbor-like attack. Such it is with so-called climate change and the Paris Accords that are a guilt-laden means of extracting reparations from us while we hurt ourselves economically to save the planet. We are not alone in the west in cutting our energy use, raising its costs and reducing our productivity and prosperity, all to reduce CO2 emissions.
But, did you know, China, in the Paris “accords,” agreed only to top out its estimated peak CO2 emissions by 2030? Did you know China will still be building coal-fired generating plants until then… or that it will bring on line more coal-fired plants in 2023 than the U.S. has altogether? All the Western industrialized nations COMBINED don’t emit as much CO2 as China does, now – by about HALF – yet we are flagellating ourselves with ideological restrictions on energy use, restrictions that won’t change the temperature of the Earth by one whit, 80 or 100 years from now. What in God’s name are we agreeing to? And, why? Is it just to make it easier for China and its Communist tyranny to de-construct the U. S. while they become the dominant economy and military power?
We, Americans, the conscientious ones, at least, tend to look for good in everyone. It is a weakness that could, one day, leave us under tyranny. China has brought to bear numerous weapons of “war” that are daily undercutting America’s strength, alliances, economics, education – right down to kindergarten and throughout higher education – Chinese millions and billions of dollars are buying our philosophies. Surely we don’t expect education establishments that bend to woke demands from young, unaccomplished students, with speech codes and lists of allowable pronouns, to stand up for America against China, do we? We must wonder why the Biden administration cancelled enforcement of reporting requirements for universities to reveal how much in foreign grants and investments they accept. We know that the University of Pennsylvania, for example, created the “Penn-Biden” center – sort of a think-tank – with tens of millions of Chinese dollars. Following his vice-presidency, Joe Biden was paid nearly $1 Million for a single speech / seminar in at least one year. That’s a nice gig… makes one wonder how they chose Joe Biden to pay that high fee to for little work. Perhaps they were paying for the opportunity to review classified documents that Biden stored there.
Without American technology, China would be a much smaller economy and far less militarily developed. Yet our own tax policies made it profitable to move manufacturing to China and then ship the products back to the U. S. Unfortunately, China doesn’t allow manufacturers to operate unless they share their technology with the Chinese. This form of unfair trade practice soon produced planes and weapons that look a lot like the latest developments inside the U. S. We are not smart about our relationship with China. Sadly, many, many people in permanent government are satisfied to get paid off by China no matter what the cost is to our security. Chinese spies make certain to get close to a number of House and Senate members to keep legislation dormant that might put a stop to Chinese intrigues.
Whew!
When one reads or hears enough bad news about the international stupidity the White House, Intelligence agencies and our State, Defense, Commerce, Homeland Security and even Transportation departments put forth for policy in the name of the American people, it’s enough to depress even the sunniest of optimists. Then we look at our solid-looking cities, highways, airports and shopping centers and we try to imagine that no one could ever defeat us or ever force us into subjugation. After all, this is such a nice country and such nice people, nobody would even try to take us over… we’re the United States of America for Heaven’s sake! Still…..
Still, China is a serious, uncompromising threat to the nature and value of the United States. What can the individual American do? First, learn the truth of The Biden administration’s relations and relationships with China and its dozens of tentacles that are reaching directly into our government, business and financial institutions, for indeed they are. Then prepare yourself and as many as you can influence, to vote against those who ignore or accept or even encourage greater business connection to China. If you get to speak to an elected official, locally, state-level or federal, ask what he or she is doing about disassociating our nation and economy from China and from the Communist Party of China. Ask about the crucial products that we depend upon that are sourced only from China. What is she or he going to do to change that? We still have enough power and freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Our historic weakness toward China is a genuine grievance.
Then, publicize what you have learned about that official’s position and encourage all you can to VOTE for America First policies. What? There’s some better policy than America First? Are you nuts?
Wise humans generally have tried to select their leaders from among those who think logically relative to the traditions and cultural mores of the society. Those who would be leaders, but who tend to propose completely opposite ideas and beliefs at proximate times, are generally rejected for positions of leadership, and denied power over the “people” who have sought leaders who will protect their families and partner in achieving greater safety, comfort and wealth. Along the way, their leaders are expected to protect and strengthen the children so that society will grow, be strong and continue.
In earlier times, especially when education was not widespread – mainly reserved to self-selected religious leaders and somewhat self-selected royal families – populations accepted their statuses as serfs and peasants for whom reverence of their “leaders” was how safety for themselves and their families was increased, including food security. Things changed as education became “public.” Wisdom and philosophies from the “ancient” past spread among millions of thoughtful humans, some of whom refined and expanded on the “pure” ideas of the Greeks, Hebrews, Romans, Persians and many others, interpreting human interactions amidst the “new” realities of economics, civic participation and independence.
Great minds eventually proscribed the foundational ideas of the United States, and they are quite simple!
Underlying the simplicity of the Constitution are principles of preventing or avoiding the proven tendencies of the worst of human nature to gain power and wealth at the expense of others: tyranny of one form or another. Let’s consider the simple ideas and the assumptions on which they are dependent. Our founders designed “self-government” against the backdrop of tyrannies they had seen and fought, both religious and monarchical, as well as militaristic. They could not include tools designed to thwart the new tyrannies defined and refined by Marxism in the middle of the 19th century. That is our job, today.
The first simple idea, upon which our survival depended then and does, now: religious freedom. Education in the late 18th century was based largely upon religious philosophies and structures of good and evil as spread by and through churches and prelates of all kinds, mostly Christian, and by locally hired teachers. The vast majority of Americans shared basic beliefs in right and wrong as they ratified the Constitution; they never imagined that within a few generations the vast majority of Americans – AND THEIR CHURCHES – would no longer agree upon the principles of right and wrong and self-discipline. The functioning of Constitutional republicanism depends upon “the people” being a moral, self-disciplined body politic. To participate in and manage a republic, requires that its members – citizens – be educated in its principles and practices. Sadly, this is no longer the case.
The second simple idea is representation. A people who have learned to choose their representatives such that those so chosen will guard the people from the worst excesses of executive rulers, will, if properly educated, keep a civic eye on those representatives, in our case, on members of the House of Representatives. Our Founders believed, based on a social compact within which nearly everyone shared common rights and wrongs, that representing people in the many states, would remain a mission of honor and fealty to their constituents. They never imagined that election to Congress would become such a lucrative opportunity for personal gain, that re-election, and the many corruptions that facilitate re-election, would replace the proper role of service and honor. “The People’s House” is no longer a place of honor but for a few. Americans must educate themselves about the original purpose and model for representation, and MAKE THE CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES required to restore representation to the primary purpose – and effect – of election to “The House.”
The third simple idea is states’ rights. That is, that the Federal government is limited to those functions that states cannot do for themselves, and that the powers not granted to the Federal Government, or prohibited to it, are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people. Senators are supposed to represent the interests of the States; they are not supposed to be longer-serving, at-large representatives of the people. They are supposed to be selected by the state legislatures to represent the STATES, guarding their rights and powers in a federal, not NATIONAL system of governance. Because of the failures of some state legislatures during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, leaving Senate seats unfilled, Congress proposed the 17th Amendment and it was ratified with little delay. Since then, 6-year-term Senators have been elected similarly to 2-year-term Representatives. Thus were the constituencies of Senators changed from their state governments to the general populations of states, which changed the responsibilities of Senators. Being elected “at large” means that Senate candidates have, ever since, been able to lie at varying levels of effectiveness, twisting truth and news, particularly for incumbents, to gain popular vote victories.
If the Senator in question had to answer to members of his or her state’s legislature, men and women who, to some greater degree, know what is going on and what they instructed their Senator to do, then the re-election/appointment landscape would be far, far different than the amorphous, dishonest campaigning that works with popular-vote elections. Prior to the 17th Amendment, states’ senators had to answer for what they did in Washington. It would be very good to repeal the 17th and make Senators responsible to SOMEBODY. The chance of senators being re-elected for 24, 30 or 36 years, would be much reduced: a good thing.
The fourth simple idea is equal application of the laws. The fundament of individual sovereignty and freedom is equal STATUS under the laws. Our Bill of Rights, without which the Constitution would have never been ratified, or even considered for ratification by some states, codifies the assumptions that underlay the debates that developed the Constitution. Madison and others believed that having won independence from a powerful monarchy, under which laws and persecutions were applied differently to citizens deemed by the monarch to be favored or unfavored, had cemented the concepts of equal application of law into the American people. In fact, the ability of governments of any type: elected or hereditary, to become tyrannical, was bound to color the debates. The likelihood that executive authority will garner power not specifically granted to it, is historically likely. Government can NEVER be trusted to control itself on behalf of even the highest principles. The rules limiting the power of government and protecting the unalienable rights of every person, had to be part of the proposed Constitution. Ratification was effected by legislative agreement of three-fourths of the states; the formation of a FEDERAL government was a function of the STATES and not even of popular vote.
Let’s repeat that concept: the Federal Government is a creation of the states. The power and rights of, now, 50 STATES, are SUPERIOR to the powers of the Federal Government. How foreign this truth sounds. It means that criminal laws as well as civil laws, are primarily the business of states, and that federal laws should be few in number and limited in scope to matters of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and other amendments, and matters of military justice and treason. It also means that federal police powers and the so-called “F.B.I.” should be severely limited in terms of interactions with individual citizens. Things have changed, to say the least.
The fifth simple idea is the ELECTORAL COLLEGE, which provides a mechanism of election of the Chief Executive Officer / Commander-in-Chief, free of undue influence from Congress or from direct democracy. Our Founders understood the inherent dangers of pure democracy and that democracy, alone, would quickly yield tyranny of shifting majorities. This is why so many mechanisms dividing power between states and the federal system, between states and pure democracy, and between citizens and their representatives, are built into the Constitution. Lately, many on the Left have complained about the Electoral College, always touting the “popular vote” as having favored a losing Presidential ticket. Needless to say, the popular vote is meaningless in presidential politics. The Electoral college makes sure that presidents are elected by the States, not by popular vote. The U. S. holds 50 state elections for 50 slates of electors who are committed to a presidential ticket. While electors are related to representative numbers: 2 senators per state plus the number of representatives per state, presidential tickets must win the majority of presidential electors, state by state. Both large and small states are important to the final total. Presidents are elected by the states, not through direct democracy.
Those who want to get rid of the Electoral College are those who want government to be empowered through pure democracy, and they are not to be trusted with real power.
Another simple idea, relative to the Executive authority, is that Congress must declare war, not the President. Under monarchies, the monarch can dictate foreign policy and declare war when he or she doesn’t get what he or she desires. Again, to limit the concentration of power in the executive branch, our founders anticipated that Congress’ interests would be closer to the people and rarely in complete agreement with the Chief Executive. What was never anticipated was that both the House and Senate would be so willing to avoid responsibility for much of anything, and so willing to relinquish powers to the executive bureaucracies of unelected rule-makers, as is attractive to communists. Like all contracts and covenants, they are only as good as the quality and integrity of the parties to them.
Our founders, likewise, never anticipated that Congress would devise a means of creating perpetually growing public debt (in the form of the extra-constitutional “Federal Reserve” Check out: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2020/09/27/knife-edge-election/). In 1789 people – and governments – had to pay their debts before more loans would be offered; today we raise the “debt ceiling” so that we might borrow enough to pay only the interest on previous debts, let alone pay down the principals. This results in our “representatives” failing utterly to represent the interests of the people each is paid handsomely to represent… adding annually to the peoples’ debt burden and being re-elected despite having done so.
The SUPREME COURT is a simple idea, although modern beliefs complicate it beyond reason. The Constitution provides federal judges, including Supreme Court Justices, with lifetime appointments. The purpose is to insulate justices from political whims and winds of change, and, presumably, allow them to hold firmly to the meaning of the Constitution’s words as ever newer, unanticipated legal problems emerge. Politics has caused never anticipated complications to the balancing work of the Supreme Court. Elected men and women have added to the responsibilities of the Federal government beyond anything the Founders could have imagined. The lines between Constitutional powers and protections of individual rights, have become broader and diffuse as politicians have found political power in the invention of new “rights,” many based on falsehoods. The Left’s penchant for changing the definitions of words has made “equal protection under the law” nearly impossible; foolish politicians have passed laws to accommodate false definitions and whimsical “realities.” The supreme court is tested to find narrow truths amidst broadened political fantasies.
Yet, the concept of a final arbiter of our Constitutional protections is both wise and essential. That the U. S. was founded in the presence of printing and publications, forms of mail service and book-binding, kept our founders mindful of the spread of new ideas and opinions. Launching the new nation on a “ship” of ideals required that some mechanism of preserving and reinforcing those ideas and ideals was essential. The Supreme Court, almost inadvertently, became that mechanism, thanks to the innovative application of its limited powers by Chief Justice John Marshall.
Finally, the NINTH and TENTH amendments are a combined, simple idea. Hardly any of our student youth are taught about the Constitution, and few of them, or even of their parents, have knowledge or opinions about the last two amendments of the Bill of Rights.
Amendment 9 admonishes the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT that the rights named and listed in the Constitution – rights of individuals – cannot be construed to “deny or disparage” others (rights) retained by the people. This is worth contemplating every day and upon every election: The rights that are inherent in every citizen (unalienable rights), ARE NOT LIMITED to only those “enumerated” in the text of the Constitution, NOR can the constitution be employed to limit any of them! These few words are quite possibly the most important and far-reaching in our Constitutional system. EVERY piece of legislation and every surreptitious new regulation that spews forth from the tens of thousands of unelected bureaucrats, should be evaluated BY OUR (ostensible) REPRESENTATIVES as to its neutrality toward or protection of our inherent rights as individual citizens. What a different “official” status we are each entitled to, than what we are now saddled with.
The 10th Amendment, in effect, reserves to the STATES, much as the 9th reserves to the people, all powers not specifically delegated to the federal government by the Constitution. It then goes beyond the power of states and reserves the rest to the people, again. This remarkable Constitution is unique in world history, and exceptional. The rights secured to the citizens of the United States are exceptional among all the nations. How is it that we have elected so many to Congress and even to the White House, who do not agree with what the Constitution says and promises to us as citizens?
Dear readers and fellow citizens, the simplest, most Prudent idea of all is to learn, teach, discuss, and study the Constitution and the thinking that supported its ultimate design. Our students are deprived of the ONLY knowledge that will keep us and them, free. If you have the ability to communicate to whomever is educating your children, insist that they, and all other teachers, produce high-school graduates who understand our rights and powers as U. S. citizens.
As the Christ Mass approaches we tend to – are obligated to – place our most prized results of our year of labor and multiplication upon the altar, proving our willingness to sacrifice for God and thanks to God. It’s metaphysical… in a non-computerized sort of way. God, of course, doesn’t need our sacrifices, he needs the act of sacrificing. He needs that expression of love, and so do we.
There’s a lot of charity flowing at this time of year, as you surely notice. Charity is an act of selfless, as in “non-selfish” love; acts of love with no physical benefit in return. Of course those and their organizations whose appeals we may answer as Christmas nears, do their best to thank all who gave of our supply of time or treasure, but acts of charity don’t require such recognition. Thanking is certainly good manners, sometimes done to ensure future charity and, truth be known, most humans resent the lack of thanks, but it’s not a true factor in the equation of love or of its charitable expression.
We humans are beings defined, or measured, by economics. We consistently judge the values of giving and receiving, thanks for a gift… or for charity. It’s not always a healthy calculation, nor is it part of the love equation. Or, of the charity equation. Love, or charity, is an aetheric substance. What we do here on Earth is a rather crude reflection of the pure, spiritual development that happens to and for our higher selves, our non-physical selves. Except, we can’t manifest things to and for other humans without being in the physical plane, as it were. If we are, someday, accepted into the plane where our soul is supposed to be, love is an automatic manifestation, not a choice. Here, amidst a thousand distractions and evil opportunities, love and charity are a decision – sometimes a difficult one. If you find it easy to express love for others and to sacrifice for others, count your blessings.
One of the tests we must pass is how to not slip through the diaphanous membrane between love and hate. Hatred is often expressed towards ourselves, where it is most damaging. It may be as simple as a mistake, even just dropping something, spilling something… stupid stuff. Immediately we chastise ourselves in words we’d never apply to another, certainly never towards someone we love. If our spouse or child experiences something irritating, an accident, a time-consuming error that makes him or her angry, your usual reaction is to sooth and help in resolving the problem. Yet when we do something similar, ourselves, we immediately express self-hatred for our failing to do something smarter. Prudence can’t explain why it works this way, but “the force,” God, the Universe, or Life, cannot deliver the best, most fortunate opportunities to you if you are immersed in hatred of yourself, OR, toward others. It’s an equation: Love fits into it but hatred never does. Love yourself – you are a product of love and of an investment by your mother and others of love. You never deserve to be hated.
The greatest gift we can give, whether at Christmas or on any morning, is to review and refresh the love you are giving to yourself and others. Even in mundane, economic interactions like sales, the advice always is to imagine that you love the stranger you would like to have a sales relationship with, before you pick up the phone or walk into an office. It seems to make the interaction far more successful. Prudence can testify to this effect.
How different might all interactions be if every human projected love toward his or her correspondents. Unfortunately, our society and politics, even our elementary schools and teachers(!), spend much of their efforts at teaching children and grownups alike to hate others. What a gross distortion of the life opportunities God gives us every year and day.
Children, most sadly, are taught not just hatred of their race or skin color, but hatred of their selves. If born male, they are taught to forego the responsibilities of manhood and to pretend to be female; if born female, they are taught to forego the majesty of motherhood and to pretend to be male: two special forms of self-hatred. Part of the self-hatred process involves separation from parents and other relatives who won’t “confirm” their new sexual outlook. Learning to no longer trust one’s parents is a giant step toward hating them or, at least, hating their roles.
Children can be, and should be, taught to love themselves… not to hate themselves… or others. Like Critical Gender Theory, Critical Race Theory is an agenda based on hatred.
Questions of race and slavery generate peculiar ripples of hatred, essentially only in the United States. Millions are caught up in them, especially politicians of various stripes, who have learned that constant aggravation of these questions can yield political influence. Such influence is fruitful within a population of people who “enjoy” rubbing hatreds raw, including within themselves. Foolishly, politicians have figured out that hatred can be not only powerful, but profitable. Still, the strong feelings do not, and cannot, lead to solutions or transformation into positive feelings, outlooks and cooperation.
There are truths about slavery… and falsehoods. There are truths about racism… and falsehoods. Falsehoods seem to prevail, but truths about both subjects are immediately seized upon to draw false conclusions and false premises about what some true piece of history should force upon people of today. Just the fact of slavery in the past has proven sufficient reason to never stop hating, as evidenced by the renewed, and listened-to demands for “reparations.” Reparations justify hatred for white-skinned people: apparently whites owe an undying debt to blacks because of slavery. Whites, it seems, are prone to guilt over having succeeded in mastering so many sciences and skills. Not all skills, of course, but whites pioneered in many skills that not only have created comfortable standards of living and great wealth, but which have benefitted virtually all peoples on the planet. Perfectly? Absolutely not.
If we are waiting to stop feeling guilty until we are perfect, no less, we’ll wait forever. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t become better. But, are the children guilty of the sins of their parents? Only by choice and training; those who decidedly choose a better path than their ancestors, better ways to treat and interact with everyone else, skin color notwithstanding, should be respected and loved as anyone might be loved. There’s no guilt appropriate. Unfortunate and deceitful politics, however, casts all whites into the guilty column because some of their forbears owned slaves or mistreated blacks following slavery. What is owed to whom, today?
One of whites’ imperfections is an expectation that money can replace sin – the monetization of guilt. It is the fundament of perpetual welfare and the social welfare state. Perhaps handing over money for no value will convert hatred for whites into love for whites. That seems doubtful based on the “success” of the Great Society. Otherwise, every welfare recipient would run into the street to hug any taxpayer who wanders by their less-than-ideal, welfare-provided home. Nope. Giving free stuff makes only the most temporary of friendships and quickly reverts to resentment. The only “reparations” of any value or consequence to the quality of life for anyone, is teaching a person how to succeed in our culture, perhaps even helping that person to succeed for a limited time. But locking that person into perpetual victim-hood and welfare-poverty is a system designed to destroy that persons humanity and worth, yet we persist at it, waiting for the miracle socialists promise.
For their part, far too many blacks believe that destroying the society and culture whites have succeeded in, is going to make their lives better and balance the cosmic scales, somehow. That approach requires perpetual hatred and resentment – there is no love that is part of it. One doesn’t steal, loot, destroy and burn the work of others out of love. One doesn’t teach others to hate anyone, let alone a group, or to hate themselves… out of love. This is why socialism is an abject, deceitful lie: it is premised on the belief of the inability of the individual to elevate him- or herself, improving skills and understandings and esteem while teaching him or her to love the good in everyone and to strive against the bad. Under socialism, all trust is placed in others, mostly unknown.
Interestingly, America is full of blacks who have raised themselves up by working within the system and then transcending the system, leading the rest of us to better ourselves. In almost every field, great, accomplished black-skinned Americans have excelled and led. Why not emulate them instead of hating whites? Crappy politics, that’s why. Since the Clintons popped into the White House, hatred has become the overarching driver of political action: not freedom, not justice, not improvement of living standards, not wisdom in foreign policy, not budgeting on behalf of American citizens, not “America first.” Despite constant accusations from the Democrat left, most of the hatred emanates from Democrats and their allies. Yes, there are haters on both sides of the divide, but the distinction between left and right is gigantic, culminating in the Communist uprisings in 2020 and the Covid pandemic. There weren’t “right-wingers” burning America in 2020.
There weren’t right-wingers creating and pushing Covid across the planet, or creating and pushing ersatz vaccines into every body. Those were the works of the left. Why?
It wasn’t to increase individual freedom or to balance the budget; it wasn’t to prevent inflation of the monetary supply or to strengthen energy independence and the U. S. balance of payments with other countries; it wasn’t to solve our weak border enforcement, improve public safety, reduce the rate of drug overdoses and deaths or to strengthen the rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights in any way. Why would a political movement take significant, even drastic steps that weaken the United States of America?
Well, aside from enrichening its adherents, it would be to, well… weaken the United States.
Love of country makes us stronger; hatred of it makes us weaker. To govern and legislate in conformity with the warped ideas of the World Economic Forum and with the corrupted, communistic ideas of the United Nations, is to express hatred for the United States. To promulgate policies, persecutions and punishments that divide Americans into two classes – favored and hated – is to DIS-unite the previously United States: hatred.
This is the time of this most important year, when love of others, of law, of nation, of selves and of God, should be foremost in all of our intentions, yet our politics has failed us, creating problems that our democratic republic can’t solve, while rewarding hatred as the means to power. Let us pray as we see fit to return ourselves to a transcendent path, not the descendent path we’re on.
There are so many things to think about, wonder about, dream of or simply, profoundly contemplate… at Christmastime. Modern society provides thousands of distractions to contemplative thought, even of religious thought. It confuses young and old and even quite intelligent people, who, many of them, find comfort in overthrowing traditions and beliefs that, however jerkily, created pathways of progress and even enlightenment. Enlightenment’s end will be realized when “woke” ideologies capture the last government.
Christmas takes place at the altar of God, like it or not. Mankind is obligated to bring gifts of thanks to the Creator, gifts derived from multiplying what we have been given for a full year’s cycle of days and nights, pains and suffering, triumphs and failures, loves and losses, lives and deaths, babies and aged cadavers. If we manage to not be destructively distracted, we have much to offer our Creator, and offer it we must. This is not a new or even a “Christian” concept. Most religious traditions include significant measures of time, “moons,” seasons and solstices. The traditions that built our civilization caused the development of calendars that have a clear beginning and ending, recognized by everyone. Those who understood the segments of time and lengths of daylight hours gained great influence. As God and His prophets explained and taught spiritual laws, it was into the traditions of our incipient civilization that they fit them. As much as the first day of a new year is meaningful about beginnings, plans and courage to attempt new things, the end of the year is important for tallying the results and expressing gratitude for the victories and challenges thereof.
That there is believed to be a cycle of receiving and giving and of giving and receiving, all of which may contribute to a better destiny after one’s earthly life is finished, formed the basis of ethics, charity and hard work, and, it can be said, of honesty and personal responsibility. Populations that share these concepts develop individual consciences and the greatest of all gifts: self-control. This very capability is essential – indispensable – for the creation and maintenance of a personal relationship with God, God by any name, and, clearly, for the establishment of the democratic republic of the United States of America.
Many are alive today who, as socialists also do, believe that their purpose in life is to take as much advantage of society as possible. They expect levels of wealth, comfort and licentious rights as though by magic. Many don’t work or produce anything of useful value to others. If they are in college due to signed loan contracts, they tend to agitate energetically for “the government” to absorb their debts, as if they who signed those contracts were magically absolved of a solemn promise. It is an extraordinary expectation with literally no prior basis in law or social organization. Such an outlook is the diametric opposite of accepting an annual opportunity to live, multiply and serve others, and laying the results on the altar at the conclusion of the annual cycle. Education, parenting and religion have failed these people.
The American holiday, Thanksgiving, fits our founding philosophies perfectly. As we approach the end of each year, we are reminded unceasingly that it is time to give thanks for the blessings of freedom and of our Constitutional governance. Amongst the football, shopping, road-races and overeating, families and friends come together, let’s hope without conflict, where, even if not articulated, being thankful seeps in to the most unaware. But, thankful to whom?
Some might think they are thanking the government… for the good fortune that has found them in the United States. Yet the government spends most of its time limiting our freedom, not something to thank anyone for. However, we do enjoy a good fraction of the freedom that was present at our founding and we should be thankful for that. We still enjoy a measure of personal responsibility, the one ingredient in freedom that makes our personal choices meaningful as it makes our lives meaningful. Government seems to be actively eliminating personal responsibility as though everything good or bad that happens is a social consequence, not a personal one. That’s not what – or whom – we are thankful for, either.
Like love, hate or forgiveness, thankfulness is uniquely human. So, too, is the ability to worship. This combination of human attitudes and abilities is why socially sensitive civilizations exist. Add to them the sense of sacrifice that spurs preparation for a better future for ourselves and for others, and some of the most sublime philosophies of social organization, economics and government can be understood. The greatest advances of science and medicine would be impossible without certain attitudes, including sacrifice. These are attitudes common to what we call, “human nature,” and which are fought against consistently by philosophies of what we call, “socialism.”
Humans have a further grant from, well, their creator… certainly not from any government. We call it “free will” and it refers to the opportunity to choose from evil, which is to say, “away from evil.” Clearly, God (I’ll use “God” – easier to type, you know) brought humans into being on a planet where “free will” would always be tested against the blandishments of evil. Freedom will exist only so long as the young are taught about it and of it and, if truth be told, so long as God is worshipped. No form of governance that denies those understandings is able to keep people out of tyranny. For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, and hearts to maintain the courage of free will, I am thankful.
“The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.” Frederick Douglass
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Adams
