Posted on 01/20/2013 5:23:45 AM PST by Kaslin
People have an incredible knack for self-preservation that nations sometimes, surprisingly, lack.
The United States of America is not unalterably locked into future bankruptcy, taking you and me and hordes of other innocents down together. But the road to that fateful — if not in ways “fatal” — day now lies stretched before us like a superhighway.
Indeed, it is the path of least resistance.
“For all the bitterness in Washington these days,” Ezra Klein wrote last week in the Washington Post, “it’s easy to miss the broad consensus that undergirds our contentious politics.”
That consensus, as Klein notes, has Democrats victorious in “the debate over what the government should do” (everything!) and Republicans “mostly” prevailing on “how much the government should tax. Sadly, the two sides of that equation don’t come anywhere near to adding up.”
So, the federal government still does today everything it couldn’t afford to do yesterday and promises to do much, much more it can’t afford tomorrow. Sure, it will tax rich folks just a little bit more for their obnoxious success, but it will carry on as usual, plunging ourselves more than $1 trillion further into debt each year. This despite the fact we’ve already piled up nearly $17 trillion in debt, tripling our national IOUs in the last twelve years.
Even if the men and women elected to Congress, and thrust into the role of money managers at our Madoff-on-the-Potomac, see the fiscal catastrophe approaching, will they speak out? Will they demand spending cuts, impose (foolishly, in my view) tax increases, or reform the entitlement programs that account for nearly two-thirds of all federal spending?
They haven’t yet. Even knowing that Medicare’s trustees just announced the Medicare spending will outstrip Medicare payroll taxes by 2024.
In fact, the most often hurled charge during last year’s campaign by both Republicans and Democrats, was each claiming that the other was trying to cut $700 billion from Medicare. If only it were true! This seemingly massive cut, which helped make Obamacare look fiscally less damaging and then was accepted in Paul Ryan’s budget, is largely a phony promise to make phantom cuts, stopping fraud and waste — just like they’ve been promising with no noticeable result for decades.
Medicare, taking into account Obamacare, is expected to double its dollar figures in the next ten years — even as Congress supposedly cuts $700 billion. Or put another way, ten years from now, the federal government will be spending almost as much more for Medicare, yearly, than will have been supposedly cut in all ten years combined.
Congress can’t even put together a straight piece of legislation when the country is teetering on the ledge. The fiscal cliff bill was larded up with all manner of million-dollar, billion-dollar giveaways to special interests. In the face of skyrocketing debt, the bill raised taxes, preserved pork barrel politics, and left entitlements and spending untouched.
Apparently, no one ever said or wrote that, “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.”
Or “When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
Or that “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury.”
But the statements make so much sense in describing America today that they’ve been attributed Ben Franklin and Alexis de Tocqueville . . . and some Scottish fellow, named Alexander Fraser Tytler, or Lord Woodhouselee.
I’ve long noticed that when citizens vote directly on issues, through ballot initiatives and referendums, they are far more frugal than are the legislators and executives they elect to public office.
It says a lot that, at the federal level, we have no direct say.
In the coming years, we citizens must find a way to enforce fiscal sanity on our governments by ballot initiative at the state and local level as well as by saying “No” at the federal level — to politicians bearing gifts, bought with borrowed money and leaving behind a bill that’s coming due. [further reading]
I have a dream... that one day states will be taxed based on how much or how little their senators vote to spend. If Sen. Hornswaggle P. Wastrel votes for oodles of spending, then the taxpayers of his state pay more. If Sen. Ver E. Frugal votes against most spending, the taxpayers in his state pay less in federal income taxes. This would enshrined in the Constitution.
I can dream, can’t I?
Don't be stupid. Of course it is.
A popularly-elected legislature cannot reduce expenditures. It cannot even reduce the rate of increase.
It has never happened, anywhere in the world, since 1945.
There is no possibility - none at all - that a future legislature, or even a series of them, will arrange revenue to exceed expenditure by even $16, never mind $16 TRILLION.
So, the future bankruptcy, or, more likely, dissolution with debt repudiation, preceded by civil war, of the United States of America is as close to a sure thing as anything in this world.
Have a nice day.
A country can either have cash reserves, or no cash reserves and spend taxes that come in as they comes in, or borrow and be in debt. Obviously we’ve been placed in the latter category thanks to the new world order effort.
War triggers the most spending of any government activity, so for America that would mean yet more borrowing.
Civil war would happen in America only if the military is divided in its allegiances as it was during the Civil War.
Our military is being propagandized right now, away from Christianity towards statism, preparing them to change their oath from the Constitution towards an international power. The propaganda effort has been going on for quite some time.
General (ret) Colin Powell and General (ret) John Abizaid are not sitting on the Council on Foreign Relations by accident; they are working for the new world order.
If there were to be an economic collapse in the U.S., it would allow for the public to accept the end of U.S. sovereignty and cede it’s financial independence as part of increasing world government to “protect” from a future occurence.
Civil War would also justify foriegn nations participating in the war to “help” the side backing globalism.
Through control of the media, globalists (they changed their brandname from new world order) control much of the electoral process in the U.S. Outsiders are ridiculed and marginalized.
The Ivy League schools are the globalists training grounds. John Abizaid attended Harvard.
This is correct, and is a major concern.
Time grows short.
Would be an interesting thought experiment to see who would take which side.
Who would be the modern-day Kościuszko, Pulaski, Lafayette?
Would China & Russia stand pat on the surface, but aid & abet via proxies?Which ones?
Would cities devolve to where Posse Comitatus was suspended?Yes, I know it's possibly moot now anyway under the Homeland Security blanket Would official UN troops be included?
Dang, this would make a good movie or novel, if it wasn't so scarily possible.
Something long overdue is the contemplation of an entirely new US constitution, as a theoretical thing, that essentially outlaws the greatest of the failures of the last 200+ years.
As such, the preamble to the new constitution should be a reformed Bill of Rights, that these Rights are more important than the organization or even survival of government, or judicial precedent, because they are natural rights, endowed by the Creator, not government.
The particulars of such a constitution would be extensive, but utterly neglectful of leftist opinion or input, as they have proven themselves incapable of reason, and oppose the very principal of limited, constitutional government.
A truly Christian nation would have an explicitly Biblical Constitution that would recognize the two divinely mandated institutions, the civil government and the Church as two separate and distinct roles that are complimentary and each have their own sphere of power. Many people fear forced belief, and statist propagandists promote that fear. The Bible, of course, could not be more clear that forced conversion has no effect on salvation and is a wicked lie. Biblically there is ample instruction on how to relate with unbelievers and basically it is what we have today, complete freedom within the civil law. Unbelievers, being outside the Church, are not subject to it’s courts. There is also great concern of a “state church”, but actually there would be freedom to have different denominations with the restriction that they could not preach heresy. The mainstream denominations we have at this point have a lot of wrong doctrine, so perhaps it is not the right time to make this move.
Warning - we need to be very careful regarding Constitutional conventions at this point.
The reason is that for the past century, and increasing quite a bit in the past few decades, the globalist banker elites pursuing one world government have sought just such a convention because they have such dramatic control of politicians, law, government (via the national debt), academia, elections, the Federal Reserve, the press, etc., that they would without a doubt control the convention at this point and that would be exactly what they need to end American national sovereignty.
The founding fathers were very clear on that subject. The European kings and princes *always* claimed authority because it had been granted by God. And because they were “God’s anointed”, if you disagreed with them, or their law, you were not just a criminal, but were opposed to God.
So the founding fathers were careful to be respectful of God, and to note that civil rights were bestowed by God, only enumerated by men; but the rest of the government was of, by, and for men. It was not written in heaven, but by men, so if men wanted to change it, it would not offend heaven.
Thus *nobody* could claim either power or righteousness in the law, “Because God said so. And if you disagree you hate God.”
This being said, an unwritten concept of the constitution is that religion and religious faith *does* have rights unique to it, including a “right to be left alone” by government, for the most part. Importantly, this includes taxation, which would be an onerous burden to many churches.
Religious faith has morality, which is in the popular mind, the right to follow the dictates of their church, is rules written in heaven. Though seldom to religious agree what these rules are.
On Earth, however, people have ethics, which means they follow the written laws of men. A wise choice, unless you want to be ruled over by someone else’s religion.
IMHO...
The Constitution is utterly vague on religion other than to say in the most general statement that “freedom of religion” is not to be “infringed”.
It does not define what “religion” is, so it is wide open to interpretation and exploitation.
At the height of the Reformation there was much more wide acceptance of getting back to TRUE doctrine. The thinking was - if the Bible is the revealed Word of God, it must be sufficient for us. How could man improve upon God’s Word ? Are we saying God left something out ? Or we know better than God or that God put something in the Bible that is wrong ? All such questions are logically nonsensical if one believes that God is the Living God of the Bible, of course.
Thus the Reformers sought to reform the faith; theirs was the doctrine of the “Pilgrims” of 1620, essentially the Westminster Confession of Faith. Their theology dominated American culture and society through the early to mid 1700’s. By then, all the people they had come here to run away from - followed them here ! Lower class and middle class and upper class folks all started pouring in from Europe seeking economic liberty, making the most of their connections, escape from legal judgements, etc. The religions of these newcomers were - Anglicans, Episcopalians, None, Barely, and numerous others, along with some Reformed that had not come over early on. There was no way to stop this immigration because the place still was part of the British Empire and subject to British law - if Britain said people could come here they could.
Church denominations, meanwhile, departed more and more from the core of the Bible in their teachings - the gains of the Reformation were increasingly watered down as the influence of the Old World denominations seeped into their communities here in America. This gained momentum starting in the 1700’s and increasingly in the 1800’s and since then. “Puritans” in America were made out to be stodgy, nasty people who were “no fun”. The Dutch Reformed and Huguenots which had large populations around New Jersey and New York also saw their doctrine gradually watering down giving way to modernism.
Once public schools were introduced in the 1800’s and education of children was taken out of the home and turned over to the government, doctrinal decline continued even faster.
A lot of Christian denominations today preach their own theology that is opposed to and extremely different from true Biblical theology.
That’s why since WWII we have seen dramatic increases all across society in immorality - people are making up their own morality since they have virtually no recollection of anything about the Bible at all.
It is crucial to remember that the only reason our vague Constitution held up at all during the early 1800’s before Courts began to really disregard it’s intent is because at that time the general populace was still somewhere in the ballpark on Biblical morality. So at that time the public would not stand for civil laws to be passed that were obviously aimed at attacking Biblical moral law; immoral politicians would be essentially run out of town on a rail. The general public was not relying on the Constitution as their yardstick to measure right and wrong and what was acceptable and what was not. A majority were relying on at least some knowledge of the fundamentals of Biblical moral law and English Common Law traditions and they viewed these as the standards to which politicians would be held.
Nowadays, without a correct understanding and belief in the Bible, we see many Americans looking to the Constitution as some kind of moral guide. But the Constitution can not serve in that role. It simply does not address morality. It does not even reference the Bible in order to define its use of the word religion. Unlike our believing ancestors, our unbelieving populace of today is therefore free to make use of the Constitution to promote practically anything as religion or brand any religion as “radical”, according to their political whim. And very few people have any awareness at all that capital crimes in civil law have legitimacy because they are in the second table of the law and other moral laws as defined in God’s Law Word, the Bible. The Bible serves as an unchanging rule, independent of current public opinion. If capital crimes are only capital crimes because a person says so, then other people in the future can say they are not crimes. We then have moral relativism; right and wrong are defined based on popular vote. Think about mass exterminations by various leaders of their own countrymen, like those that occurred under Josef Stalin. Those exterminations were done by the civil government under it’s law. Whatever Stalin wanted to be law was law.
When a nation is not an explicitly Christian nation where its leaders acknowledge a) Biblical limitations on their authority, b) their own Biblical accountability and c) their duty to abide by God’s Law Word, it leaves itself wide open for tyranny.
I’m sorry, but my distaste for kings and princes is well founded in history. They are almost entirely villains, and they offer nothing to mankind other than the yoke of oppression.
But let us assume America was today guided by religious principles. Our justices of the Supreme Court are either Catholic or Jewish, there are no Protestants. And look at the admitted religions of our current congress:
http://www.pewforum.org/uploadedImages/Topics/Issues/Government/1%281%29.png
What would you expect from this bunch but a mess. And the odds against the nation being led by a denomination of your satisfaction are almost nil.
Yet *each and every one of them*, if they are actively religious, would insist that the moral teachings of *their* particular sect or faith should be the correct interpretation of the law.
There is no ecumenism in the law, and if there was, it would be an akempucky, a muddled mess, far more divided than even Pakistan, where the largest of the tiny minorities is the government.
No thank you. God is in his court in heaven, and priests are in no agreement in what He wants, what He demands, or for that matter, anything about Him.
As flawed and corrupt as they may be, I prefer the laws of men, that have no standing in heaven, and can be changed by better men when they are repugnant.
Read Machiavelli’s The Prince. It is the guidebook for kings, princes, scoundrels, and yes, pragmatic Democrats and Republicans. For those who crave power, it guides them as much as does the Bible. Or more. Trust not in men, but doubly do not trust them when they claim the mantle of heaven.
For all our troubles in the last 120 years or so, with Congressional and Presidential and juridical overstepping, the worm in the apple at the Foundation was Alexander Hamilton, who introduced "trapdoors" (modern geekspeak, I realize, but very descriptive) that have allowed his successors -- Lincoln in great part, but also John Marshall, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and the execrable 'Rat presidents and "_Residents" since "Landslide Lyndon" -- to build Hamilton's ideal of "Empire without the King".
fyi...
After America got it’s own super big finance and monopolists in the latter half of the 1800’s, those folks linked up with their counterparts in Europe who had been lending to those nations.
When the lending starts small there’s not much influence, but when the lending gets big - a nation’s creditors start exerting control. And imagine if you were part of a cartel that was the lender to every nation. You’d view governments and politicians as if they were junkies and you were their heroin dealer. You’d just use your billions to control the boards of their newspapers, thus be able to eliminate politicians you didn’t like, thus you’d usually be able to place your own men into office. Monopolists start to see competitors as stupid and annoying.
search the web with this...
j p morgan council on foreign relations
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
