Use It or Lose It

We find ourselves in a peculiar era today. There are many people still alive who can recall a time when America was the envy of the world. Millions of immigrants fled to our borders for the chance to work even a menial job here. Intellectuals, doctors, scientists, and businessmen of all flavors came in droves to the freest country earth has ever held. Yet, we look around today and all the hard work seems to be crumbling in on itself. There are American cargo ships that must prepare for the possibility of pirate attacks (yes, pirates!). The greatest military the world has ever witnessed is unwilling to do what is necessary to protect American vessels on the open seas. Our country currently has over-zealous followers to a demagogue that resorts to extremely derogatory language against any who oppose them. This, of course, is not new, but the fervor has increased to the point of classifying anyone who disagrees with the present administration as right wing extremists (or “teabaggers”), and clumps them with right wing terrorists. Consider what this could mean if someone disagrees with a political policy and is deemed a terrorist under the Patriot Act (especially if the act is expanded).

This is the same country that flooded the world with unimagined goods and services. This is also the country that ushered in an era of unfathomed prosperity. Today, the average person living below the poverty line owns: a television, a car, a refrigerator, shelter, has money for food, and dozens of other amenities never possible to the richest kings of old.

The question becomes how did we get from where we were to where we are? The answer is simple. The hard working people, who produced all the great values we now enjoy, never spoke up against a government that grew brick by brick around them. It is the old story of the boiling frog experiment. Put a frog in a boiling pot of water and it will immediately jump out. Put a frog in a pot of room temperature water and slowly turn up the heat, and it will boil to death. Well folks, it looks like today we are the frog and we’re boiling.

But it’s not too late.

There are a myriad of ways a government can grow to eventually dominate our lives. It inevitably starts with words like “temporary” or “public interest.” A temporary fix will always lead to more “temporary” fixes. Once the government fails, which it almost always does, it will clamor for more, and bigger, “temporary” fixes. Anything done in the name of the public interest or public good is even more dangerous, primarily, because there is no such thing as “public interest.” A public is merely a collection of individuals, each with their own wants, needs and desires. When someone says they are doing something for the “public interest,” ask them; “Well, who decides what that is?” The answer in some form or another ends up being, “I do.”

Medicare in the 60’s was instituted because it was said to be in the best interest of the elderly to not have to rely on private charity. Despite the glaring fact that elderly people who were incapable of paying for their own medical care were taken care of by private charity. Social Security was instituted because it was in the public interest to have a guaranteed retirement plan paid for by everyone together. It was in the best interest of the country to force banks to invest in risky communities they normally avoided (e.g. the Community Reinvestment Act). It was in the interest of America to appease terrorists abroad for decades. Look what appeasement has gained us. The trend continues today. We are told it is in the public interest to bailout big banks, and big automakers. They are too big to fail is the alleged theory. The government tried to tell us it was in our best interests to let them take over our health care industry. Finally, some individuals decided to speak up.

These are only a fraction of our government’s policies for the past sixty plus years. They got away with it because of one reason. Like the frog, the American people never realized they were being boiled alive. As our freedoms were being slowly expropriated, there was silence. The only voices heard were arguing over which freedoms to eliminate next, and how to do it.

Our most important freedom, which is being hampered by both the Right and the Left, is our intellectual freedom. Our freedom to speak out is our protection against the formulation of a tyranny. Our founding fathers had a definite structure to the constitution. The Bill of Rights is our first set of amendments, with our first amendment being strictly about intellectual freedoms; such as free speech. They understood that without these freedoms, none others are possible. Unfortunately, it has been those against individual rights who have spoken their minds the most. The men and women who attempt to corrupt the concept of rights and apply them to whatever they desire.

What else is the meaning of the right to medical care, housing, jobs, food and all the other supposed rights? This is the idea that some people have the right to anything so long as they need it. Who shall provide for their need? This is when a proper right – or a right that infringes nothing on anyone else – is corrupted to mean whatever someone wants it to mean. The people advocating these policies force one group of Americans to pay for the need of another group. They accomplish this by shouting for the biggest gun in the world; the American government. The fact that this group expropriates the wealth of some to give to another by the use of the government, elucidates their true belief; might is right.

The people who advocated these so-called rights were the main individuals in the political and intellectual forum. The hard working American’s who paid for these policies were too busy producing values, and living their lives, to bother looking up long enough to notice the devastation around them.

We see where this silence has led America.

It is now time for those who never spoke up to take a stand, or one day we will all wake up to a totalitarian dictatorship with access to the most advanced weaponry on the planet. To stand by indifferently, crying that this can never happen in America is all our enemies’ desire of us. They aren’t interested in our support. They have their minority of fervent followers. They merely want you out of their way; they’ll gladly take your indifference.

If you do not use your freedoms, you will lose them.

To arm ourselves intellectually will take time and hard work, but it’s worth it. It is much easier to stop a dictatorship from occurring in our country than it will be to overthrow it. One can begin by reading books, articles, blogs newspapers and whatever else is available to start understanding the issues. Listen to intellectuals to hear what all are saying. Find sources on the internet, podcasts, and other online writings of people spending their time fighting for their liberties. Understand this, not all ideas were created equal; tread carefully. Hard work this may be, but vital to our future.

Once armed, it is necessary to be prepared to shoot your enemies on sight. Don’t be afraid, stand up on principles, such as the principle of individual rights, and you will soon discover your intellectual enemies will crumble like a house of cards – assuming you have rational ideas of course. It is very likely you will take fire, and this is why building your intellectual ammunition is so vital. Remember, once that freedom is gone, we’ll never see it again.

If it is your goal to bring America back to our intellectual foundation it must start now. It must start with each one of you. It is in all of our self interests to learn what is occurring in America today and take a stand. There is no longer an easy way to win back our freedoms. The easy way ended over a century ago. Now, we must work towards our own bright future. But not to worry, there have been great thinkers of the past, and today, that you can rely on. They were and are men and women who have paved the way for the possibility of a future with freedom; mental giants all. And, once you expose the enemy for what they are, mental midgets with an inferiority complex, they will shy away from any and all rational responses. Reveal their disguise and fight back the torrent of evils, now, before it’s too late.