Guest Editorial
BY MENCKEN'S GHOST | JUNE 15, 2011
The fix for the country that no one is talking about
The USA isn’t bereft of ideas to supposedly fix what ails it: raise taxes or cut spending, raise the debt limit or live within its means, reform Medicare or expand free medical care, invest in public education or offer choice in education, invest in green energy or drill for oil, invade other countries or defend the nation’s shores, pray to God in school or pray to the state in school, salute the flag or burn the flag, vote Democrat or vote Republican, watch CNBC or watch Fox News, and be fixated on Lady Gaga or on Weiner’s weenie.
None of these distractions will fix the country. They won’t fix it because they don’t address the root problem.
The root problem is theft. Theft has become the main activity of the U.S. government (and state governments). Instead of taking some money from all people to pay for the few public goods and services that cannot be provided by free markets and charities, the government now takes a lot of money from a minority of people for the unlimited benefit of a majority of people.
This can’t end in anything but bankruptcy.
The list of larcenies would run for more than 50 pages. Examples include crop subsidies given to farmers, subsidies of every description given to rent-seeking corporations (hello, General Electric), school lunches given to obese kids, handouts beyond imagination given to able-bodied and able-minded slackers, rich pensions given to avaricious public employees, and free medical care given to liars who say they can’t afford medical care as they drive expensive cars, gorge on unhealthy food, and mortgage their futures to buy every new gizmo and gadget.
Then there is the double-theft of Social Security and Medicare. After making phony actuarial assumptions about the programs, the government committed the first theft by confiscating people’s lifetime FICA payments – which were inadequate to pay the promised benefits in retirement – and spending the payments on other things. It is now committing the second theft by sending the bills for its lies and larceny to future generations.
All of this theft has created a feeding frenzy, where the objective is to steal from your neighbor before he steals from you. It’s as if we’re all swimming in shark-infested waters with bloody hams tied to our backs.
The absurd justifications and rationalizations for eating our neighbors are an insult to whatever intelligence and morals are left in the nation. The feeders speak of social justice, fairness, compassion, and, especially, the children, while they devour their neighbors’ hams. And then the media, which never had much intelligence or morals, runs story after story sympathetic to the feeders instead of their victims.
Eggheads in academia teach a similar slant to college kids with yolks for brains, as they enjoy their tenured positions that depend on government grants, student indebtedness, and serf-like graduate assistants who do the work of the pampered professoriate for little pay. Like their fellow egghead in the White House, these feeders despise the bourgeoisie, are steeped in leftist cant, and want to destroy what is left of the market economy that funds their privileged positions.
It’s no surprise, then, to hear students sniveling and demonstrating about the unfairness of tuition increases at state colleges. Because no one has told them where money comes from, and because they have grown up in a kleptomaniac nation, it doesn’t dawn on them that much of their education is paid in taxes by working stiffs who don’t attend college and who earn less then what they will earn after graduation. Nor does it dawn on reporters, who also didn’t learn much in college, to ask the whining students about the fairness of this.
One has to watch voyeuristic shows like “Judge Judy” or “Judge Joe Brown” instead of the mainstream news to know what many of the feeders are like. Ironically, such shows are a big hit with the feeders themselves, probably because they know the truth.
The nation was doomed to bankruptcy the first time that Americans – and thus government – justified the taking of money from some people for the benefit of other people, instead of for the true general welfare. Such original sin, which took place before the Founders had died, set a precedent and led to convoluted court decisions and purposeful misreading of the Constitution to justify an endless succession of theft.
Unless Americans stop all theft, the government will have no choice but to resort to the biggest theft of all times. Unable to cut the federal debt by honest means, politicians will cut it dishonestly. They will debase the dollar even more than they have already, relying on the burglary rings of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and the rest of the banking cartel to do the stealing in the middle of the night, unseen by citizens and the media, who will be too distracted by gagas and wieners to notice.
In the meantime, stay out of the water and try to hide your ham and wiener.
“Mencken’s Ghost” is the nom de plume of an Arizona writer who can be reached at [email protected].
