I Want Our Country Back

It’s time to take back our country. Time to send a message that our government is there to serve us; not to rule us, or even take care of us; but to serve us. There are a number of specific areas that I want to address today:

Item 1: Get your hands out of my pockets! I’m tired of seeing the government taking our hard earned money and redistributing it in ways that I wouldn’t consider if I had the choice. Why should I have to support a Louis Armstrong Museum in New York ($150,000); a bike trail in Minnesota ($700,000); or a river walk in Massachusetts ($1,000,000)? I’m not saying that these places can’t, or shouldn’t, be built. But if they are so desired, let the people who desire them pay for them. If people don’t want to spend their money on a particular item, then don’t build it. If it’s illegal to be a corporate embezzler it should be illegal, or at least immoral, to be a government embezzler.

Item 2: Let the free market system work. The more the government dips its fingers into the free market system, the more it screws it up. The system is supposed to have it’s ups and downs; winners and losers; successes and failures. When we decide to save a company from itself, we have corrupted the system. We have rewarded failure and made the playing ground uneven for the competition. Look at the auto industry takeover. At this moment Toyota is going through a difficult time, and it has a tough time ahead to make itself whole again. But how many have wondered this? Would the government be taking a different course if they weren’t majority stockholders in two of Toyota’s chief competitors? I hope that they would treat a GM recall the same way, but isn’t it a conflict of interests to even be in this position?

Item 3: Be careful with Healthcare. A majority of the people in our country are generally happy with their healthcare. There are problems, I agree. But to take the course to remake the system with no definite understanding of what the results will be is foolhardy. A private company can take such risks, with their own money. Our government does not have the right to do so. Please don’t roll the dice and bet the house that this plan will work. Fix the system, one part at a time.

Item 4: Are we a Socialist Country? No, and we probably won’t become one tomorrow either. But we are closer to being one now than we were 25 years ago. And we were closer then, than we were 25 years before that. And so on. We are getting closer and closer, and one day we will all look up and wonder, “How did that happen?” And in theory, Socialism isn’t terrible - in theory. However theory doesn’t hold up in the real world. Entrepreneurs work hard to reach the rewards that are out there. Lazy people work as little as they have to in order to survive. As you take away incentive, you take away desire. The more you redistribute the wealth, the less reward there is for those who have the desire, to strive for more. And the less incentive there is for others to want to work harder.

Item 5: Who is running our country? I believe that our founding fathers created our government based upon the idea that they were there to serve the people. Citizens left their farms and businesses and served as representatives in the government. They did it knowing that it had to be short term so they could get back to providing a living for their families. Now we have lifetime politicians. Many of them have never worked in private industry, much less run them. Yet now we put them in a position to make the decisions that can destroy the institutions that have made this country great. Public service should be that: a service, not a career path.

Is our country perfect? No. But it’s better than most others. Is capitalism, or a free market perfect? No. But remember what Winston Churchill said about capitalism vs. Socialism: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” I’ll take the blessings over the miseries any day.

There are many who want to disparage President Obama on what he is doing. I believe he is actually doing a great thing for our country. There is an old saying, which even though not truly science, rings true here for me. The saying is, “If you throw a frog into boiling water, he will jump out, but if you increase the heat of the water slowly, he will get accustomed to the increasing heat and eventually get cooked”. This country has been slowly being cooked in the waters of Socialism. Thank you President Obama, for throwing us into the boiling water. It’s time to jump out of the pot and be free again.

Say a prayer for somebody today.