545 vs 300,000,000 EVERY CITIZEN NEEDS TO READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THIS JOURNALIST HAS SCRIPTED IN THIS MESSAGE. READ IT AND THEN REALLY THINK ABOUT OUR CURRENT POLITICAL DEBACLE.
Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years.
545 PEOPLE By Charlie Reese
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Have you ever wondered, "If both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY DO WE HAVE DEFICITS?"
Have you ever wondered, "If all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY DO WE HAVE INFLATION AND HIGH TAXES?"
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason.. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall.. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red ..
If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems..
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.
Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
What you do with this article now that you have read it......... Is up to you.
This might be funny if it weren't so darned true.Be sure to read all the way to the end:
Tax his land, Tax his bed, Tax the table At which he's fed.
Tax his tractor, Tax his mule, Teach him taxes Are the rule.
Tax his work, Tax his pay, He works for peanuts Anyway!
Tax his cow, Tax his goat, Tax his pants, Tax his coat. Tax his ties, Tax his shirt, Tax his work, Tax his dirt.
Tax his tobacco, Tax his drink, Tax him if he Tries to think.
Tax his cigars, Tax his beers, If he cries Tax his tears.
Tax his car, Tax his gas, Find other ways To tax his ass.
Tax all he has Then let him know That you won't be done Till he has no dough.
When he screams and hollers; Then tax him some more, Tax him till He's good and sore. Then tax his coffin, Tax his grave, Tax the sod in Which he's laid.
Put these words Upon his tomb, Taxes drove me to my doom...'
When he's gone, Do not relax, Its time to apply The inheritance tax. Accounts Receivable Tax Building Permit Tax CDL license Tax Cigarette Tax Corporate Income Tax Dog License Tax Excise Taxes Federal Income Tax Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA) Fishing License Tax Food License Tax Fuel Permit Tax Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon) Gross Receipts Tax Hunting License Tax Inheritance Tax Inventory Tax IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax Luxury Taxes Marriage License Tax Medicare Tax Personal Property Tax Property Tax Real Estate Tax Service Charge T ax Social Security Tax Road Usage Tax Sales Tax Recreational Vehicle Tax School Tax State Income Tax State Unemployment Tax (SUTA) Telephone Federal Excise Tax Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax Telephone State and Local Tax Telephone Usage Charge Tax Utility Taxes Vehicle License Registration Tax Vehicle Sales Tax Watercraft Registration Tax Well Permit Tax Workers Compensation Tax
STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.
What in the hell happened? Can you spell 'politicians?' And I still have to 'press 1' for English!?
I hope this goes around THE USA at least 100 times!!! YOU can help it get there!!! GO AHEAD - - - BE AN AMERICAN!!!
TO PEE OR NOT TO PEE --Words of wisdom from an unknown person:
Like most folks in this country, I have a job. I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes & the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to get that paycheck, in my case, I am required to pass a random urine test (with which I have no problem). What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test. So, here is my question: Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass s one to earn it for them? Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their BUTT----doing drugs while I work. Can you imagine how much money each state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check? I guess we could call the program "URINE OR YOU'RE OUT"! Pass this along if you agree or simply delete if you don't. Hope you all will pass it along, though. Something has to change in this country - AND SOON! P.S. Just a thought, all politicians should have to pass a urine test too!
Barack Hussein OBAMA, in his Cairo speech, said: "I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of America's story."
AN AMERICAN CITIZEN'S RESPONSE:
Dear Mr. Obama:
Were those Muslims that were in America when the Pilgrims first landed? Funny, I thought they were Native American Indians. Were those Muslims that celebrated the first Thanksgiving day? Sorry again, those were Pilgrims and Native American Indians. Can you show me one Muslim signature on the United States Constitution? Declaration of Independence? Bill of Rights? Didn't think so. Did Muslims fight for this country's freedom from England? No. Did Muslims fight during the Civil War to free the slaves in America? No, they did not. In fact, Muslims to this day are still the largest traffickers in human slavery. Your own half brother, a devout Muslim, still advocates slavery himself, even though Muslims of Arabic descent refer to black Muslims as "pug nosed slaves." Says a lot of what the Muslim world really thinks of your family's "rich Islamic heritage," doesn't it Mr. Obama? Where were Muslims during the Civil Rights era of this country? Not present. There are no pictures or media accounts of Muslims walking side by side with Martin Luther King, Jr. or helping to advance the cause of Civil Rights. Where were Muslims during this country's Woman's Suffrage era? Again, not present. In fact, devout Muslims demand that women are subservient to men in the Islamic culture. So much so, that often they are beaten for not wearing the 'hajib' or for talking to a man who is not a direct family member or their husband. Yep, the Muslims are all for women's rights, aren't hey? Where were Muslims during World War II? They were aligned with Adolf Hitler. The Muslim grand mufti himself met with Adolf Hitler, reviewed the troops and accepted support from the Nazi's in killing Jews. Finally, Mr. Obama, where were Muslims on Sept. 11th, 2001? If they weren't flying planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon or a field in Pennsylvania killing nearly 3,000 people on our own soil, they were rejoicing in the Middle East. No one can dispute the pictures shown from all parts of the Muslim world celebrating on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and other cable news networks that day. Strangely, the very "moderate" Muslims who's asses you bent over backwards to kiss in Cairo, Egypt on June 4th were stone cold silent post 9-11. To many Americans, their silence has meant approval for the acts of that day. And THAT, Mr. Obama, is the "rich heritage" Muslims have here in America! Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention the Barbary Pirates. They were Muslim. And now we can add November 5, 2009 - the slaughter of American soldiers at Fort Hood by a Muslim major who is a doctor and a psychiatrist who was supposed to be counseling soldiers returning from battle in Iraq and Afghanistan. What a wonderful blessing Muslims are to America!
The mention of "The Civil War" evokes references to the bloody epoch during the mid-nineteenth century. But in a larger sense that Great Conflict is not ended for it served only to settle some issues and left others with which we are still engaged in an internecine struggle. The words of Abraham Lincoln are now even more appropriate to our very existence.
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."
The most immediate concern for Lincoln was preserving the Union in order to save our country and our identity. But now, the most perilous threat to our survival as an American identity our forefathers envisioned is the socialist agenda perpetrated by supercilious "effete snobs," as Spiro Agnew aptly described them, who ignore the unmistakable historical record that socialism is now and always has been a failure. Mark Steyn's lecture to Hillsdale College [see below] explains the horrible flaws of socialism.
Liberals, more properly termed socialists, are well-intentioned. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In their self-congratulatory bubble, they can never entertain any real debate about their concepts. Such legends in their own minds cannot conceive that they have not already arrived at the true gospel of the universe. Any facts which pierce their armor of arrogant smugness must be ridiculed and discredited with a furious and unrelenting smear. Keith Olbermann, for example, is still counting the number of days since President Bush announced, "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. Obama and Biden are already trying to take credit for the very success that Bush's policies are finally poised to achieved.
The liberal absurdities have finally awakened a "sleeping giant" of mainstream American sentiment to crush this assault on our nation, our way of life, and our freedom.Just as there was no compromise possible with the Confederacy, there is no acceptable "moderate" position with socialism.Every move toward the left means loss of freedom and our national identity.
Article from the Wall Street Journal Form by Eddie Sessions:
"I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he's led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.
In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? "Dreams of My Father" was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The "Audacity of Hope"followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself. There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a "communist with a small 'c'" was the real author. His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial.. He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley's formidable political machine at his disposal. He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before? He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed "cool" in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance. And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole.
And then John McCain did something crazy. He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state of Alaska . It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984's Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat. The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary. Now, nearly a full year into his first term, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President. Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters.
Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to "wish away" some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West. Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread. It knocked on the doors of Europe , having gained a foothold in Spain . The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign "world tour" were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions. Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party's hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party. It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues. Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an "obstreperous" Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against "jumping to conclusions" about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted "Allahu Akbar." The absurdity of that was lost on no one. He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber "an isolated extremist" only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot.
He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America . He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity. And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame. The pattern repeats itself. He either blames any problem on the Bush administration or he naively seeks to wish away the truth. Knock, knock. Anyone home? Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual's life. When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man has spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review. He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden. We laugh at the ventriloquist's dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States of America ?"
Live Free or Die By Mark Steyn Lecture at Hillsdale College, 2009
My remarks are titled tonight after the words of General Stark, New Hampshire’s great hero of the Revolutionary War, “Live Free or Die.” They appear on our license plates, and no disrespect to Michigan, but they are the all time greatest license plate motto. And believe me; I was born in Ontario where the license plate says, “Yours to Discover.” When I first moved to New Hampshire, I assumed General Stark had said it before some battle or other, you know a of bit red meat to rally the boys for the charge—a touch of the old Henry V at Agincourt, that kind of thing. But I soon discovered that the General had made his famous statement decades after the war in a letter regretting that he would be unable to attend a dinner. And in an odd way, I found that even more impressive. In extreme circumstances, many people can rouse themselves to discover the old primal impulses, but it’s much harder to maintain the “Live Free or Die” spirit, I think, when you’re facing not an immediate crisis, but just a slow, remorseless, incremental, unceasing ratchet effect. So, “Live Free or Die,” it sounds like a battle cry, “We’ll win this thing, or die trying! Die an honorable death!” But, in fact, I think it is something far less dramatic. It is a bold statement of the reality of our lives in the prosperous West. You can live as free men, but if you choose not to, your society will die. So, that’s what I want to talk about tonight.
I write in the first chapter of America Alone that much of what we call the Western World won’t survive the Twenty-first Century. And much of it will be gone well within our lifetimes. There’ll still be geographical areas marked on the map as the Netherlands or Germany, but they won’t be Dutch or German in any recognizable sense. And I get a lot of gloomy mail from readers, and it often concludes with, “… fortunately, I won’t be around to see it.” And I always write back, “Unless you’re a centenarian in the late stages of bird flu, you will be around to see it!” These changes are happening very fast.
So, let’s pitch things on a little ways. Let’s see what the world might look like down the road. In 2015, there will be fewer gay bars in Amsterdam, supposedly “the most tolerant city in Europe.” That’s to say, no one will be opening any new ones, and the old ones will have begun closing. Amsterdam, like Rotterdam, Antwerp, and many other western European cities from Malmo (Sweden) to Marseille is on the brink of majority Muslim status. Brussels has a socialist government and of that ruling government caucus, 10 of the 17 members are Muslim. That’s to say, the capital city of the European Union has a Muslim majority government right now in 2009.
As for the Netherlands, there’s already an epidemic of gay bashing in this boundlessly tolerant Euro-Utopia. And the geniuses at the University of Amsterdam who were asked to investigate it have attributed it to young Muslin men being confused about their own sexuality. BINGO! Telling Muslim youths they’re just closeted homosexuals seems certain to lessen tensions in the city! While you’re at it, a lot of those Turks seem a bit light in their loafers, too, don’t you think? So, 2015, the gay bars start moving on to San Francisco, Miami Beach, wherever the next bolt hole is, wherever you can buy a few years of peace. 2020, there will be significantly fewer young people in Germany—not just because of the deathbed fertility rate. Already over 30% of German women are childless. Among the country’s university graduates, by the way, over 40% are childless. By mid century, Germany will have 1.1 workers for every retiree. And long before that, the dwindling number of young ethnic Germans will have figured out the math. At Oktoberfest in 2020, the young lad in the lederhosen serving you your foaming stein of beer will be single-handedly propping up entire old folks’ homes. Except he won’t! He’ll have done the arithmetic and he’ll have scrammed and headed off to Australia in search of a livelier youth scene, or at any rate, a livelier late middle age scene. And the guy taking his place in the biergarten won’t be wearing lederhosen because he’ll be Muslim, and they don’t like to expose their knees. And, come to think of it, he’s unlikely to be serving beer either.
The EU would need at least another 50 million immigrants by 2020—working immigrants, that is. They’re not always [working], especially with Euro-welfare. Another 50 million immigrants to keep wrinkly old Gerhardt and Jean-Claude in the lavish social programs to which they have become accustomed! So, by 2020, the present net immigration trickle in Germany will be a flood. Let’s nudge it on a bit. 2025, there will be no Jews in London, England, except a few elderly remnants. There are about 150,000 Jews in London right now. It’s the 13th biggest Jewish city in the world. But there are approximately 1,000,000 Muslims. Which population has the wind at its back? Right now, the highest number of Jews are found in the 50-54 age group;the highest number of Muslims are found in the 4 years and under category. According to a story in the Times of London last month, the Muslim population is increasing 10 times faster than the rest of society. In January in London, youths attempted to burn the Brondesbury Park synagogue. In Helsingborg, the congregation had to take shelter as windows were smashed and burning rags thrown in. In Brussels, a Molotov cocktail was lobbed into the synagogue. In Toulouse, a synagogue was firebombed. In Ville La Belle, a Jewish schoolgirl was brutally beaten by a gang jeering, “Jews must die!” And in Denmark, several school principals have announced they will no longer accept Jewish pupils, as they cannot guarantee their safety. By 2025, there will be Jews in America, certainly, in Israel, one hopes, but not in many other countries.
So, let’s take it down the road a bit more. What of America circa 2030, around the time today’s generation of Hillsdale students will be taking leadership roles in American business, politics, and culture? Now my books are often assumed to be about radical Islam, fire-breathing Imams, the excitable young men jumping up and down in the street doing the old “Death to the Great Satan” dance. That sort of thing. It’s not. It’s about us. It’s about a possibly terminal manifestation of an old civilizational temptation. Indolence, as Machiavelli understood, is the greatest enemy of a republic. When I ran into trouble with the so-called Human Rights Commission up in Canada, it seemed bizarre to me to find the progressive left making common cause with radical Islam. One half of the alliance professed to be pro-gay, pro-feminist secularists; the other half are homophobic, misogynist theocrats. Even as a cheap dinner theater version of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, it made no sense. But, in fact, what they have in common overrides their superficially more obvious incompatibility. Both the secular big government progressives and political Islam recoil from the concept of the citizen, of the free individual, entrusted to operate within his own societal space, assume his responsibilities, and exploit his potential.
In most of the developed world, the state has gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood: healthcare, childcare, care of the elderly, to the point where it has effectively severed its citizens from humanity’s primal instincts, and oddly survival instincts. Hillary Rodham Clinton said, “It takes a village to raise a child.” It’s supposedly an African proverb. There’s no record of anyone in Africa ever using this proverb. But let that pass. P. J. O’Rourke summed up the book superbly, “It takes a village to raise a child. The government is the village, and you’re the child!” And by the way, even if it did take a village to raise a child, I wouldn’t want it to be an African village. Even African villagers don’t want to live in African villages. If you fly over West Africa at night, the lights form one giant coastal megalopolis. Not even African villagers regard an African village as a useful societal model. But nor is the European village. Europe’s addiction to big government, unaffordable entitlements, cradle-to-grave welfare, and a dependence on mass immigration needed to sustain it has become an existential threat to some of the oldest nation states in the world. And now, alas, the last holdout—the United States—is embarking on the same grim path!
The road to hell is paved with Euro-Canadian public policy. This is very sad, it is very sad, to see the journey we are embarking on. After the President unveiled his budget, I heard Americans complain, “Oh, it’s just another Jimmy Carter—it’s LBJ’s Great Society applied to health care—it’s the new New Deal!” You guys should be so lucky! Those nickel and dime comparisons barely begin to encompass the wholesale Europeanization that this budget and these expenditures foresee. The 44th President’s multi-trillion dollar budget, the first of many, adds more to the national debt than all the previous 43 Presidents combined—George Washington to George W. The President wants Europeanized healthcare, Europeanized daycare, Europeanized education, and as the Europeans have discovered even with Europeanized tax rates you can’t make that math add up. In Sweden, state spending accounts for 54% of GDP. In America it was 34% 10 years ago. Today, it’s about 40%. In four years, that number will be looking very Swede-like. We’re on the path to 54% and beyond. But forget the money; forget the deficit, the debt, the big numbers with the 12 zeroes on the end. So-called fiscal conservatives often miss the point.
The problem isn’t the cost. These programs would still be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a check to cover them each month. They’re wrong because they deform the relationship between the citizen and the state. And even if there were no financial consequences, the moral and even spiritual consequences would still be fatal. That’s the stage Europe’s at. America’s just beginning this process. I looked at the rankings of personal and economic freedom in the 50 states, published by George Mason University last month. New Hampshire came in number one—the freest State in the nation—which all but certainly makes it the freest jurisdiction in the Western World; which kind of depressed me. Because the Granite State feels less free to me than it did when I moved there. You sort of hope that there’s always somewhere else out there just in case things go belly up and you have to hit the road. Colorado and North Dakota were numbers 2 and 3, Michigan was number 14. And way down in the bottom in the last five: Maryland, California, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and the least free State in the Union by some distance--New York. How does the song go? “If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere.” If you can make it there, you’re some kind of genius. “This is the worst downturn since the Great Depression,” announced Governor Patterson a few weeks ago. So, what’s he doing? He’s bringing in the biggest tax increase in New York history. If you can make it there, he can take it there—by state tax, sales tax, municipal tax, a double beer tax, a tax on clothing, a tax on cab rides, an I-tunes tax on downloads from the Internet, a tax on haircuts—137 new tax hikes in all. Call 1 (800) I heart New York today and order your new package of state tax forms for just $199.99 plus the 12% tax on tax forms tax and the 4% tax form application fee, partially refundable upon payment of the 7.5% tax filing tax. If you can make it there, you’ll certainly have no trouble making it in Tajikistan. New York, California—these are the great iconic American States—ones we foreigners have heard of. To a penniless immigrant called Arnold Schwarzenegger, California was a land of plenty. Now Arnold is an immigrant with plenty in a penniless land. That’s not an improvement. What’s the motto on the license plate there?—“I’ll be back--for more of your money!”
One of he predecessors as Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, famously said, “We have a nation that has a government, not the other way around.” In California, it’s the other way around. California is a government that has a State. Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Terminator, can’t terminate anything. Ask him to terminate a government program. State law requires him to hire 200 people to do an impact study studying the impact of terminating the Department of Impact Study termination and they’ll get back to you in a decade. And the once Golden State is still in the early stages of the process. California has thirty something million people. The Province of Quebec has 7 million people. Yet California and Quebec have roughly the same number of government employees. “There is a deal of ruin in a nation,” said Adam Smith, “and America still has a long way to go”--which is why it’s better to jump off the train as you’re leaving the station and it’s still picking up speed rather than when it’s roaring down the track and you realize you’ve got a one way ticket on the oblivion express. Indolence. Indolence, Machiavelli’s word. There are stages to the innovation of free people.
America, which has held out against the trend, is now at Stage 1—the benign paternalist state promises to make all those worries about mortgages, debt, healthcare disappear. Every night of the week you can switch on the TV and see one of these ersatz town meetings in which free-born citizens of the republic, I use the term loosely, petition the sovereign to make all the bad stuff to go away. “I have an urgent need,” a lady in Fort Myers beseeched the President. “We need a home, our own kitchen, our own bathroom.” He took her name, Henrietta Hughes, and he ordered his staff to meet with her. And hopefully he didn’t insult her by dispatching some no-name deputy assistant to associate secretary of whatever instead of flying in one of the big time tax-avoiding Cabinet secretaries to nationalize a Florida bank and convert one of its branches into a desirable family residence for her with a swing set hanging where the drive-through ATM used to be. But the audience loved it! “Yes!” they yelled, “Amen! Praise God! Thank you so much!”
As all of you know, Hillsdale College takes no Federal or State money. That used to make it an anomaly in American education. It’s in danger of becoming an anomaly in America, period! It’s not just education now. Banks take government money. Carmakers take government money. Insurance companies take government money. If you ever go to England and switch on the T.V., you’ll see the country’s most famous soccer club, Manchester United, blazing shirts advertising their sponsor, AIG—the American taxpayer, that’s you, now sponsors Manchester United. Maybe it’s time for Hillsdale College to launch the Hillsdale Insurance Agency, The Hillsdale Motor Company, and The First National Bank of Hillsdale. The executive supremo at the Bank of America is now saying: Oh! If only he’d known then what he knows now, he never would’ve taken the government money! Apparently, it comes with strings attached! Who knew? Hillsdale College knew, for sure, but nobody else!
If you’re a business, when government gives you 2% of your income, it has a veto on 100% of what you do. And if you’re an individual, the impact is even starker. Once you have government healthcare, it can be used to justify almost any restraint on freedom. After all, if the state has to cure you, it surely has an interest in preventing your needing treatment in the first place. That’s the argument behind, for example, mandatory motorcycle helmets or the creepy teams of government nutritionists currently going door-to-door in Britain and conducting a “health audit” of the contents of your refrigerator. Government workers examining the contents of your refrigerator! They’re not yet confiscating your Twinkies; they just want to take a census of how many you have. So, you do all this for the “free” healthcare, and in the end you may not get the free healthcare anyway. Under Britain’s National Health Service, for example, smokers in Manchester are denied treatment for heart disease. And the obese in Suffolk, are refused hip and knee replacements. Patricia Hewett, the British Health Secretary, says that it’s appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of “lifestyle choices.” So when you have government healthcare, you’ll also wind up living a government lifestyle. Smokers and the obese may look at their gay neighbor having a wild time at the nightclub having multiple partners all week long and wonder why his “lifestyle choices” get a pass while theirs don’t. That’s the point! Tyranny is always whimsical. And if they can’t get you on the grounds of your personal health, they’ll do it grounds of planetary health.
Not so long ago in Britain, it was proposed that each citizen should have a government approved travel allowance. If you take one flight per year, you’ll pay just the standard amount of tax on the journey. But if you travel more frequently, if you take a second or third flight, you’ll be subject to additional levies, in the interests of saving the planet for Al Gore’s polar bear documentaries and that carbon offset palace in which he lives in Tennessee. Isn’t this the very definition of totalitarianism light? The Soviets restricted the movement of people through the bureaucratic apparatus of exit visas. The British are proposing to do it through the bureaucratic apparatus of exit taxes--indeed the bluntest regressive form of taxation, as with the communists, the nomenclatura, the Prince of Wales, Al Gore, Madonna—they’ll still be able to travel about hither and yon—what’s a 20% surcharge to them?--especially as those for whom vast amounts of air travel are deemed essential—government officials, NGO’s, environmental activists—they’ll no doubt be exempted from having to pay the extra amount. But the ghastly masses will have to stay home. Freedom of movement used to be regarded as a bedrock freedom. The movement is still free, but there’s now a government processing fee of $89.95. And the interesting thing about this proposal was that it came, not from the Labour Party in Britain, but from the Conservative Party.
That’s Stage 2 of societal innovation—when the state as guarantor of all your basic needs becomes increasingly more comfortable with regulating your behavior. Free peoples, who were once willing to give their lives for liberty, can be persuaded very quickly to relinquish their liberties for a quiet life. When President Bush talked about promoting democracy in the Middle East, there was a phrase he liked to use. “Freedom is the desire of every human heart.” It’s unclear whether that’s really the case in Gaza and the Pakistani tribal lands. If it’s a choice between freedom and killing people, in Gaza it doesn’t seem likely that freedom would win out on that vote. But it’s absolutely certain that it’s not the case in Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, London, New Orleans, and Buffalo. The story of the Western World since 1945 is that invited to choose between freedom and government security, large numbers of people vote to dump freedom every time—the freedom to make your own decisions about healthcare, education, property rights, and a ton of other stuff. I suggested to President Bush that he might like to try using his “Freedom is the desire of every human heart” line in New Jersey and Rhode Island, and if it catches on there then applying it to Ramadi and Tikrit. It’s ridiculous and unbecoming for grown men and women to say I want to be able to choose from hundreds of cereal brands at the supermarket, thousands of movies from Netflix, millions of songs to play on my I-pod, but I want the government to choose for me when it comes to the peripheral stuff like healthcare.
A nation that demands the government take care of all the grown-up stuff is a nation turning into the world’s wrinkliest adolescents, free only to choose their record collections. And don’t be too sure you’ll get to keep your record collections in the end. That’s Stage 3—when the populace have agreed to become wards of the state. It’s a mere difference of degree to move from regulating their actions to regulating their thoughts. When my Anglophone friends in the Province Quebec used to complain about the lack of English signs in Quebec hospitals, my response was that if you allow the government to be the sole provider of healthcare, why be surprised that they’re also allowed to decide the language in which they’ll provide it to you? But as I have learned during my year of hell in the Canadian human rights law, that’s true in the broader sense, too. In the interests of cultural protection, the Canadian State keeps foreign newspaper owners, foreign T.V. operators, and foreign bookstore owners out of Canada. Why be surprised then that, in return, it assumes the right to police the ideas disseminated though those newspapers, bookstores, and T.V. networks that it does graciously agree to permit?
When MacLean’s magazine and I were holed up in 2007 for the crime of “flagrant Islamophobia,” it quickly became clear for a distressing number of journalists, a profession that brags about its courage incessantly—far more than, say, firemen do—an awful lot of journalists are quite content to be the eunuchs in the politically correct harem. A large number of Western journalists see no conflict between attending lunches for World Press Freedom Day every month and agreeing to be micro regulated by the state in what they write. The big problem for those of us arguing for classical liberalism is that in modern Canada there’s hardly anything left that isn’t on the state drip feed to one degree or another. Too many of the institutions to which healthy societies have traditionally looked as outposts of independent thought—churches, private schools, literature, the arts, the media—either have an ambiguous relationship with government or are downright dependent on it. So, that’s Stage 3.
Then comes Stage 4, in which dissenting ideas and even words are labeled as hatred. In effect, the language itself becomes a means of control, which is very cost-effective. If you can’t express opposition, it’s very hard to be opposed to the government. Despite the smiley face banalities of it, the tyranny becomes more naked. In Britain, a land with rampant property crime, undercover constables nevertheless are paid to dine at Surrey restaurants on Friday nights to monitor the conversations on adjoining tables lest someone in private speech should make a racist remark. An author interviewed on BBC radio expressed very mildly and politely some concerns about gay adoption and was then investigated by Scotland Yard’s Community Safety Unit for Homophobic, Racist and Domestic Incidents. A Daily Telegraph columnist, a colleague of mine, was arrested and detained in a jail cell over a joke he made in a speech. America, Britain, and even Canada are not peripheral nations. They’re the three English-speaking members of the G-7. They’re three of a handful of countries that were on the right side of all the great conflicts of the last century. But individual liberty flickers dimmer in each of them. The massive expansion of government under the laughable euphemism of “stimulus,” that’s Stage 1, comes with a quid pro quo down the line—Stage 2. Once you’re a child in the government nursery, why shouldn’t a nanny tell you what to do? And then Stage-3—what to think. And Stage 4--what you’re forbidden to think. And then the final stage.
I said in the beginning that big government is not about the money. It’s more profound than that. A couple of years back, Paul Krugman wrote a column in the New York Times asserting that while parochial American conservatives drone on about family values, the Europeans live it, enacting policies that are more family-friendly. “On the Continent,” claims the professor, “government regulations allow people to make a desirable trade-off to modestly lower income in return for more time with friends and family.” As befits a distinguished economist, Professor Krugman entirely failed to notice that for a continent of family-friendly policies, Europe is remarkably short of families. While America’s fertility rate is, more or less, at replacement level (2.1), seventeen European nations are at what demographers call “lowest-low” fertility (1.3 or less), a rate from which no society in human history has ever recovered. Germans, Spaniards, Italians, Greeks have upside down family trees—four grandparents of two children and one grandchild. How can any economist analyze family-friendly policies without noticing that the upshot of all these family-friendly policies is that nobody has any families?
As for all that extra time they have, what do they do with it? Europeans work fewer hours than Americans. They don’t have to pay for their own healthcare, they’re post-Christian, so they don’t go to church, the state has supplanted most civic groups, they don’t marry and they don’t have kids to take to school, to basketball, to the 4H stand at the county fair. So what do they do with all that time? Forget for the moment Europe’s lack of world-beating companies. They regard capitalism, red in tooth and claw, as this bizarre American fetish and they mostly despise it. Where is the great European art? What have the continentals got to show for all of the free time—all the quality time—for which government gives them money? Where are Europe’s men of science? They’re at American universities. Meanwhile continental governments pour fortunes into prestigious white elephants of Euro-identity, like the Airbus 380—the QEII of the skies. Have you ever seen this thing? You’ll know it when it’s flying over your town. It’s like a total eclipse over you and three adjoining States. It carries a thousand passengers at a time, or it would if only someone would order one of them. Which they might consider doing, once all the airports have extended their runways to handle it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure it’s a terrific invention. It’ll come in very useful for large scale evacuation operations, circa 2020.
Charles Murray, in his book In Our Hands, made a marvelous aside. “Give people plenty and security and they will fall into spiritual torpor. When life becomes an extended picnic with nothing of importance to do, ideas of greatness become an irritant. Such is the nature of the Europe syndrome.” That is the situation the Europe is in right now. It can be a very agreeable, genteel decline. You still have terrific restaurants, beautiful buildings, a great opera house, the accumulated capital of the past. But you are nevertheless in decline. And I am worried that the United States is now embarking on the same road to decline. Every Democrat running for election tells you that they want to do this or that “for the children.” If America really wanted to do something for the children, it could try not to make the same mistake as most of the rest of the Western World and avoid bequeathing the next generation a leviathan of bloated bureaucracy and unsustainable entitlements that turns the entire nation into a giant Ponzi scheme. That’s the real “war on children,” to use another Democrat catch phrase. Every time you bulk up the budget. you make it less and less likely they’ll win that war, and you’ll make it more and more likely that people will take the option that they do in Europe and simply cease to have children altogether.
Conservatives often talk about “small government,” which frames the issue in leftist terms—they’re for big government. The point about small government is that it gives you big freedoms, and big government gives you very little freedom. The bailout and the stimulus and the budget and the trillion dollar deficits are not merely massive transfers from the most dynamic and productive sector of the economy to the least dynamic and productive. When governments annex a huge chunk of the economy, they also annex a huge chunk of individual liberty. You fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the state into something closer to that of junkie and pusher. And you make it very difficult ever to change back. Americans face a choice. They can rediscover the animating principals of the American idea of a limited government, of a self-reliant citizenry, of the opportunities to exploit your talent to the fullest, or they can joint most of the rest of the Western World in terminal decline. To rekindle the spark of liberty once it dies is very difficult. The ennui, the fatalism is in many ways more pathetic than the demographic decline and the fiscal profligacy, because it is subtler and less tangible and even harder to rally against. But once in a while it swims into very sharp focus.
Here’s the writer Oscar van den Boogaard from an interview with the Belgian paper die Standard. Mr. van den Boogaard is a Dutch gay humanist—which is pretty much the trifecta of Euro-cool. He was reflecting on the accelerating Islamification of the continent and concluding that the jig was up for the Europe he loved. “I am not a warrior! But who is?” he shrugged. “I have never learned to fight for my freedom; I was only good at enjoying it.” In the famous Kübler-Ross five stages of grief, Mr. van den Boogaard is past denial, past anger, past bargaining and depression, and arrived at a kind of acceptance. “I have never learned to fight for my freedom; I was only good at enjoying it.” Sorry! Doesn’t work—not for long! Back in New Hampshire, General Stark knew that. Mr. van den Boogaard’s words are an epitaph for a continent. Whereas, New Hampshire’s motto “Live Free or Die” is still the greatest rallying cry for this State or any other. About a year ago, there was a picture in the papers of Iranian students demonstrating in Tehran and waving placards. And what they’d written on those placards was, “Live Free or Die.” They understand the power of those words, and so should we.
