For prosperity and innovation to continue, we must choose to preserve the honest relationship of self-interested individuals working in cooperation with a government of limited and divided authority.
This land of a free people and a free-market economy has generated a great wave of innovation that has benefited all of humanity. The essence of freedom and prosperity that moved around the world in the past 200 and some years has been driven primarily by the United States. With our economy now stagnating, it has become more important than ever to return to the basic Constitutional freedoms that have made prosperity possible.
My son came home from college to visit recently. After some time of catching up on things, the conversation turned to topics that interest him — and that means all things electronic. He explained to me why I needed the latest operating system update for the computer and how properly to configure the surround sound system for the HDTV. I could barely keep up with it. Somewhere in the conversation, it occurred to me that in the long view of human history, we have come a long way in a very short time.
Think about it. In the 1600s, the ships that brought the first settlers to our shores, and tools for tilling the soil they brought with them, were not much more advanced than those used by people thousands of years before. In the relatively short time since their arrival in the New World, there has been an explosion in technology and the standard of living for ordinary people.
Communications, for example, were revolutionized first by the telegraph, then by telephone, then radio, then television, and now by the Internet and the computer. In that same time, the average length of life has been doubled, and the quality of life has been greatly enhanced. Homes, heating, cooling, clothing, transportation, food, education, and medicine have quickly advanced as well.
While people around the globe have benefited and other countries have contributed, the American spirit of innovation and free enterprise has been a driving force behind much of the change. And that change has flowed primarily from the fruits that come from the individual freedoms that the Founders understood and turned loose.
In his book, W. Cleon Skousen calls this American phenomenon "The 5,000 Year Leap" that changed the world. Whether it was actually a 5,000-year leap forward is hard to say, but it certainly was a giant step in the advancement of human civilization.
The Founders generally agreed that the only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law. The Declaration of Independence called this "the laws of Nature and Nature's God." Constitutional precepts such as unalienable rights, habeas corpus, limited government, separation of power, no taxation without representation, were based on Natural Law.
The Founders intended a government that is subservient to the people (rather than the reverse), that rights are not derived by government but by a higher power, that the free market system more than any other provides the best, most efficient and most just opportunity for individual prosperity and for the welfare of the nation as a whole.
It would be wonderful if every American studied writings of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and others that have made our great nation possible, but sadly this is not so. In our collective ignorance, we are becoming hostages to our very own government. As Ben Franklin said, "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
Has our idea of "rights" become so corrupt that we are allowing the government to become our master? As the health care battle rages on Capitol Hill, could we be seeing a reversal of roles by the government and its citizens?
Today, many in Washington wish to overturn what they see to be outmoded notions of Constitutional law. We hear of conferring new, artificial rights not granted by the Creator, but by other men. The "right" to government-sponsored health care is only the latest example. And in the end, it is nothing more than a ruse intended to empower the state and deny everyone his or her true inalienable rights.
In just the past few weeks, we have seen it all. From grossly irresponsible spending of taxpayer money, to an ever-increasing national debt, to corrupt political payoffs, to expanding entitlements that we cannot pay for, the list goes on. The government corruption and mismanagement of our finances has been going on for decades, and it is getting worse. We must face the possibility that the great wave of prosperity that this nation has known from the beginning could be ending, and that our government is causing much of the decline.
The economic trend lines do not paint a pretty picture. Not to be too dramatic, but the bankruptcy of our government, a collapse of the American economy, and hence the world economy, could happen. That almost happened in the 1930s, and this time it could be worse.
One thing for certain, fixing society's problems is not accomplished by growing government and overstepping its constitutional role, but by a return to founding principles. For prosperity and innovation to continue, we must choose to preserve the honest relationship of self-interested individuals working in cooperation with a government of limited and divided authority.
From the beginning until today, the "noble experiment" of free people and free enterprise has produced phenomenal results. There has never been a greater need than now, however, to preserve our Constitutional principles. The future of our children is depending on it.
The title of your opinion, " The Choice Between Prosperity and Decline" indicates that there is indeed a choice. In my view that choice has left us. With the pillaging of the treasury by the non-contributing voters we have done away with choice. The non-taxpayer has no incentive to vote responsibly.
Everyone votes with their pocketbook. When he buys an item, he chooses a product or service on price, quality, and service. It matters little to the purchaser where the item originates. I have seen the most ardent union person refuse to have a union plumber, electrician, carpenter, etc., do work for them because they were too high in price. Same for goods produced overseas. Price rules. People buy in their best interests. The same goes for the choice between prosperity and decline observation that Jeff has made. This is not a rebuttal of what he has written, just my way of looking at it from an everyday observation of our society.
Only taxpayers and landowners should be allowed to vote. One man, one vote has failed in the past and it will fail today.
hvance: I think you're on the right track, we need to tinker with our present form of government, change some variables, establish new rules, revive some old rules, alter the political machinery; the form of government we cling to now is failing us. Like many, you've noticed that folks who pay little in taxes tend to vote for candidates who assure them, either directly or indirectly, they'll take money from other Americans and give it those voters who support them – and no longer even ashamed to make that admission. After watching this pattern recur throughout our country for the past several decades, from the local up through the federal level, there is little reason to believe it will voluntarily change. Nowadays, Americans, living off our ancestors' legacy of massive wealth, prefer to escape into unreality more and more frequently, there are no longer any "in your face" hardships to prevent us from indulging in our frequent dream journeys – one of the most recent mass escapes was electing Obama, a politician whose outstanding qualification was limited to "community organizer" – and all this to exist for a very short while within the delightful fantasy of a "post-racial" presidency.
When the voters awaken from their increasingly frequent escapes into dreams, the strong light of day illuminates the ugliness of our political culture prompting the voters to wish to quickly escape into yet another fantasy episode – dream journeys like universal health care for everyone without consideration of means, major education reform undertaken by professional, and unionized, educators, restoring America's manufacturing greatness through high tariffs and "Buy America" sentiments. And the dream hardest to awaken from is that our system of government is just fine the way it is, in fact, it's better than any system tried so far, it should never be changed. And the dreamers always assure you that all that is needed is for you, the citizen, to speak out, write your politicians, encourage others to do the same – that will affect "real" change.
When that nonsense doesn't work, they assure you the system is based on compromise, you can't have things exclusively your own way, you have to recognize "others" point of view. So you give up your free time when not earning the money to pay your taxes so various governments can distribute it to these "selfsame" others and you use the time to publicly speak your mind to bring about change – and when such futile activities don't result in restoration of cultural sanity, or even simple equity, you're encouraged to believe you've somehow won, or rather the system has won on your behalf through your active participation, blissfully ignoring the blatant fact you failed miserably to affect even the slightest change. If this kind of willful denial of reality doesn't indicate a psychotic dream state, I'm not sure what would.
Our society isn't changing in a healthy way, we're drug addicts to our present form of government "smack" and can't kick the habit. Over and over we announce grandiose goals to change our society, to improve the lot of the average American, none of which ever come to fruition, yet repeated failure doesn't deter us from immediately commencing another escape into unreality. Low interest mortgages for poor Americans through legal pressure from the government, the dream of home ownership for the very poor, a goal never attained in any society throughout human history, massive mortgage defaults, corruption, lies, the ultimate and eventual failure of the program – yet the irrational dream refuses to die, we'll awaken for a brief period and then sleep only to dream again about a new government program succeeding with the dream's familiar story line. And that's only one example of our mass psychosis – every thinking citizen could supply one or more examples of their own. Yet we pull away in horror from any suggestion that a form of government which supports such irrational dreaming must be defective, self-destructive and in severe need of change. Armed rebellion isn't the answer to devising rational government processes but it's often, by default, the only means which can force the sleepers to awaken.