It seems to me that somewhere along the way the American population forgot what America stands for. We forgot what made America different and have replaced those differences with an assumed arrogance without being able to support such a claim (not to mention without continuing the traditions that actually made us “better”). Why? How? Was it merely the removal of a strong family unit within the priorities of our nation? Is it evil capitalism? Is it education? Is it inevitable?
Education is perhaps the easiest culprit to find. Rarely do schools produce critical thinkers rooted in an unrevised history of their country anymore. We teach based on how to feel good about yourself instead of how to actually accomplish goals in life WHICH WILL IN RETURN MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD! I’d love to spout off about the infiltration of collectivism, Marxism, and socialism into our system; yet in the interest of time and space I would merely offer a book titled “None dare care it treason-25 years later” for you to read if you are open to a well sited and eye-opening read. Education used to be the responsibility of the parents and LOCAL school authorities. We have allowed politicians to convince us that we are not able to educate our children anymore. They have stolen the right of self-determination away from the rearing of our children. How can it be that in a “free” society we are forced to pay taxes for our schools when we might not have children, or perhaps we want to send them to a private school? Lord forbid that we want to send them to a religious school; for then we are told we have to pay the taxes for schools we don’t use because of the separation of church and state. This is ridiculous. The separation of church and state was put into place to prevent the state from forcing religion upon us. It was written in order to ALLOW, in fact, everyone to worship in their own way. What about the GI bill being used at a religious college (which it can be)? How is that any different? The real question shouldn’t be about religion, or test scores, or budget levels, or the frigging teachers’ union (who represent themselves more than any teacher and certainly more than any child). The real question should be: why are we letting Washington take our money in order to build a system of bureaucrats who justify their jobs and growing budgets with their own failures? If we believe that one party, or one President truly changes much we are falling for the systems’ primary defense. It is the existence of the system that we need to fight, in other words, the bureaucrats. Those people rarely change and they are the ones left to interpret and, more importantly, implement the supposed coming “changes”. No child left behind failed just as the next promised “solution”. They will have a few success stories to tempt us with, but overall the system will continue to waste our money and line the pockets of the bureaucrats, unions and politicians while leaving the schools, parents and teachers to take the blame. How is that logical? Looked at in another light, what if they truly solved the problems? Our grades shot up, international competitiveness improved, colleges were filled to the brim…..what then? How do they justify growing their budget and continuing most of the jobs they have “created” ? How much longer would they need the infrastructure they have built up? Is it truly in their best interest to solve the problem in the first place? My father once told me that it is the nature of a bureaucracy to always grow. I have thought about that a lot since he said it decades ago. Look at our government. How much money have we spent trying to solve social issues in the past 50 years only to see the problems get worse every decade? Education is at the heart of these issues and must therefore be the first we solve.
It is enough to point out that all learned values, behaviors, ethics and knowledge are either positively or negatively affected by the parents and family. I don’t care who works in a family. I don’t care if you both work. I don’t want to tell you what to do or how to do it. I’m merely saying that choices have consequences and when we stopped producing a strong family unit (which happened for many more reasons than just dual working parents). When we left behind the HUMAN (not American) tradition of a strong family unit we stopped creating not only the best children but the best environments in which to produce those children. We have become the selfish consumers our government has been pushing us to be. This attitude of “me first” supported by our government’s policies of tax exceptions, welfare and bailouts has encouraged us to ask the wrong question again. If we truly valued the liberty our country was founded upon we would place our efforts to the task of continuing that tradition through the production of well taught, well raised, respectful children and not more cars, bigger houses and better vacations. Perhaps if the value and history of the liberty our country provided was taught better (not to mention if it was still there) then we wouldn’t have the amount of single parent families either. Perhaps you wouldn’t have some people refusing to have kids in “this world” as well.
The “me first” mode of living is not going to allow freedom to continue. By allowing our federal government to take as much money as they want (which they can due to the IRS) we have in turn become a nation fighting against each other for what we are allowed to keep. We have let immorality creep into our lives and the absence of morals has assisted us in finding justifications for abhorrent behavior. Whether it is men fathering children for whom they do not care, women murdering fetuses in lieu of responsible sexual behavior, domestic violence, drug addictions, gambling problems, narcissism or whatever other issue you care to name; these problems will always exist but the proliferation of these situations is inexcusable. We allow the inevitability of a few problems to justify the immoral behavior of the majority. We relinquish control over our lives to a federal government while we can blame them for our failure and troubles. Meanwhile the government gives us reasons to segregate ourselves from both each other and the unifying principle of liberty. We fall for it every time. Perhaps instead of this “me first” culture, it ought to be a “we” first culture. That is what produced America and what can save it from itself.
Finally, a quick work about capitalism. Don’t blame it because we don’t have it. We have a partially socialistic and partially corporatist state. When industry and government get together (lobbyists) to write laws benefitting each other (profits or campaign donations/support) then there is no capitalism. I will close with an example I love to use. If we had capitalism we wouldn’t have issues with oil and its pollution such as we do. If our government were protecting the people through enforcing the laws on personal property and harming others then the free market would have been held accountable decades ago with the resulting price of oil forcing industry to take another path from the oil dependent one on which we find ourselves.
I hope that in 2012 people vote for their nation’s health and for their grandkids’ liberty. Look at their records of accomplishments and CONSISTENCY. Look at who pays for the campaigns of our candidates. Look at who runs the negative ads. Then realize that there is one person who runs on principles. There is one person who runs on a record that never varies. There is a Republican who wins in a Democrat district with common sense and logic. There is one person that runs for the people and just because the media and establishment hate him ought to get you to at least take a look at him.
RON PAUL 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment