There is an old joke told by family farmers about how difficult it is to make a living on a small farm. The joke goes like this:
A stranger asks an old farmer, “What would you do if someone gave you one million dollars?”
The old farmer pauses for a minute and then replies, “I guess I’d just keep on farming until the money’s all gone.”
It wasn’t the kind of joke that would make you laugh out loud. In fact, you had to be in a particular frame of mind to see it as funny, and not cruel.
Like I said, it’s an old joke.
Well, if you think about how the Democrats -- the modern liberal socialists -- have treated poor folks -- black, white, Latino, etc. -- and they just keep voting for them, it’s pretty easy to see that scenario as another cruel old joke. By now poor folks have had plenty of time to see what welfare and other Democrat policies do to people like them, how it ruins lives and strips people of their dignity. Though somewhere in his subconscious mind he knows that he has an unpleasant, unhappy future if he doesn’t take responsibility for his own welfare, the poor man keeps voting for the very Democrats who stand between him and a prosperous, fulfilled life.
Here’s how the farmer’s joke would go for the modern poor man:
A stranger asks a poor man, “What would you do if the Democrats said that you are the victim of an unfair world, that the world owes you a living, that personal responsibility is for fools, that a happy and fulfilled life is a cruel illusion always to be beyond your reach… and all you have to do is vote for us and do what we say … and we will forcibly take money from rich folk and use that money to take care of you for all of your unproductive, miserable life?”
The poor man pauses for a minute and then replies, “I guess I’d keep on voting for Democrats until the money’s all gone.”
Once again, not funny.
Of course, this problem is not a joke; it is an old and current reality. Good people have been stripped of their will to fend for themselves and have been deceived into thinking it’s someone else’s responsibility to care for them. While modern liberal socialists hold power in American politics that deception will be protected and fostered as though individual responsibility were a fantasy, or perhaps even an evil concept. The inevitable result: politicians gain more power; citizens, rich and poor, lose more liberty.
When people believe that it’s the government’s responsibility to care for them, to give them housing and food and healthcare benefits, they will come to see government handouts as a right and will want to fight for those rights with the same vigor that our founders fought for the right to not be controlled by a distant uncaring and overbearing government. The only solution will be painful. It will take years, perhaps a generation, to change the mindset of those who are locked in the welfare deception.
But it must happen.
America must get past this idea that some of her citizens are responsible for the welfare of other of her citizens. Far too many people see government checks and benefits as their only means of support. Those checks are backed by fiat money, with the potential value of the air inside a balloon about to be pricked.
The welfare state is unsustainable. It ruins countries, destroys lives, promotes hopelessness, dependency. The whole concept of forcibly taking money from one person and giving it to another person must be rebranded as evil, because it certainly is. If a person wants to directly help someone in his family, or help someone he knows, or help a worthy person who he has never met by giving money to his church or a charity, he should be able to do that. But to take money from one man and give it to another man is theft. And when the government does it, considering all the harm it causes, it is evil. It must be phased out, phased out in a way that gives people a chance to recover from its ill effects.
Then it must be banned.
The government’s taking of money from one citizen, business or organization of any type … and then giving it to other citizens, businesses or organizations must be made to constitute an illegal act with severe and specific penalties for those who attempt to pass legislation, create regulations, make judicial decisions, decree executive orders containing provisions to implement that redistribution of wealth. The final goal must be a government restricted to protecting the rights and property of its citizens through the police, the courts and the military.
You may agree with the general idea but think this solution too radical or improbable, perhaps unworkable. I once did too. The more I consider it, the more I study the historical success of capitalism, fettered though it may have been, the more readily I accept the notion that government interference is all that stands between America and unimagined prosperity. If every great idea was knocked down by the first naysayer, we would still be living in caves and eating raw meat. Read the works of those who believe in freedom, think what your participation should be in the future of mankind, act on what you learn.
Can our course toward disaster be changed? Yes. Do we have time? Yes. How much time? That is hard to say; it may be years; it may be decades. But if you are alive now it will likely affect you. If you have children it will certainly affect them. You can count on that. Can you have an impact?
You are not powerless unless you choose to be.
The answer to Bush, Obama, Clinton, Trump and every politician who has disappointed, scared, or harmed us: strip them of their power over us. The answer to every would-be tyrant, every crooked politician who would profit from his career-long position: strip them of their power over us. The answer to every strangling regulation created by well-meaning or ill-meaning politicians: strip them of their power over us. Strip them all of their power.
When it grows beyond protecting the rights and property of its citizens, government slowly destroys the moral character of the governed. We see more evidence of destroyed moral character every day. Smarter people than I have offered solutions to America’s dilemma. My initial solution is complicated to implement but easy to state: elect politicians closest to the ideal of government limited to protecting citizen’s rights and property. America will heal … and flourish. Even if you don’t think we should take it as far as I suggest, use my suggestion as a general guide when choosing candidates. Moderate, right-of-center candidates have contributed to the problem, not the solution. Choose carefully.
This will take time. Some of our choices will prove wrong. We will just have to look for better candidates. When we are eventually successful, the way to eliminate the scourge of socialism will become clear and will become possible. Along the way toward the freedom the founders envisioned, America will slowly improve. A great President could speed up progress significantly. Don’t expect that to happen, though it could. Some of us may not live to see the final results. But we must begin, for our children and for ourselves.
Ignorance is the seed, deception is the fertilizer, and the love of other people’s money is the root of modern liberal socialism. Political power is the stem that sprouts through fouled soil. Tyranny is the strangling vine and the poison flower that pollinates hatred, fear and death; it will eventually overgrow and smother and squeeze the life out of everything we know and love.
Think I am exaggerating? Think it won’t ever get that bad? Remember that we are the benefactors of a freer time, a time where markets operated with little or no interference, a time where people felt responsible for their own welfare, a time that could vanish completely. Note the alarming acceleration of our deterioration as a world power. Note the alarming rise in the cost of the welfare system. Note the alarming size of our national debt. Then review the history of tyranny.
Margret Thatcher said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Now take a few moments and imagine an America, imagine a world, imagine a future we may all live in, where government controls everything … and the money’s all gone.