Clearly, based upon the voting habits of the average American ever since FDR introduced Big Brother’s “New (Nanny State) Deal,” freedom is just too tough for the average American. That’s the only way to explain why Americans are voting themselves back into bondage in an effort to trade their freedom for free-stuff.
Freedom is worth less than free-stuff. Who knew, besides Marx and Lenin? It turns out that the father of Socialism Karl Marx was right, “Democracy is the road to socialism,” - at least in any nation where the people are ill-informed of history and apathetic towards their future.
I have often pondered the logic of our Founders who saw fit to lay the future of the greatest free nation ever known to mankind in the hands of folks unable to read history, much less write it. In the end, it seems that entrusting freedom and individual liberty to folks who can’t even manage their own household might have been a silly notion.
Unable to Manage Personal Health
We must have government controlled socialized medicine. But since Americans don’t like the word socialism, we’ll have to call it something else. Maybe we’ll call it Universal Health Care. That sounds much better than socialized medicine, don’t you think?
Unable to Manage Personal Wealth
We have a “graduated tax” system by which we can legally confiscate privately earned assets “from each according to his ability” and redistribute them “to each according to his need.” Since this idea was also hatched by Karl Marx, we call it a “graduated income tax” so that nobody will notice what it really is. We’ll trade our unalienable individual right to define and pursue (earn) happiness for some government enforced greater good.
Unable to Manage Our Sexual Appetite
We are trading the unalienable individual right to life for more progressive conveniences. Since free-sex often results in unplanned parenthood, we’ll have to legalize a special kind of murder that only mothers are allowed to commit. We’ll call it “abortion” so that people won’t know it’s an innocent child being murdered. And since free-sex also tends to result in unplanned life threatening sexually transmitted disease, we’ll need a federal budget to take care of those who can’t take care of themselves once they contract those diseases. And last, since free-sex includes anyone or anything, we will need to re-define the term “marriage” so that everyone has equal access to all the government handouts designed to promote only the traditional family unit.
Unable to Manage Our Work Habits and Productivity
We need some ex-organized crime bosses to head up a few labor unions so that they can make sure that the least productive employees get their fair share of payroll and vacation time at the expense of those willing to do the work of three men. We’ll give up our right to succeed to avoid our right to fail.
Unable to Keep Up with Politics
We won’t waste time trying to read up on history or current events. It’s all just too frustrating and confusing anyway. We’ll just let union bosses use a portion of our individual earnings to buy the politicians they think we need. If that doesn’t work, they can always buy another one. Politicians are always for sale, some of them, pretty cheap. If we don’t belong to a labor union, we’ll just send a few bucks to the national committee of choice and hope for the best.
Unable to Manage a Family
With our divorce rate now over 50 percent, and every household needing two incomes just to have life after taxes, children are raising themselves. Since we failed at managing the traditional family unit, it will indeed take a village to keep our kids out of prison or worse.
Unable to Compete in the World
Great competitors thrive on competition; they don’t run or hide from it. Though America was once the home of the greatest competitors on earth, those days are gone. Since we can’t compete with the world anymore, we seek to withdraw from the world, take our football and go home, outlaw or at the very least, use government restraints to keep other nations from outshining American productivity in the free market. We need to isolate ourselves from those who now out-produce us with better products at lower prices. It’s the only way we can return to being a big fish in our own little pond.
I can keep going, subject after subject, and so can you. Clearly, the average person, even in America, is not well suited for self-governance, self-reliance or self-determination.
In light of this news, it’s clear that freedom and liberty is one of those dangerous things that one should not try at home, even in America. The land of the free belonged to the brave, who were willing to risk failure in pursuit of success. According to the voting stats, that was generations ago, before average Americans opted for FDR’s Nanny State Deal and threw in the towel on individual freedom and liberty.
Oh sure, we talk about loving freedom and demanding individual liberty. But when push comes to shove, we vote against these ideas and in favor of government issued economic security which can only exist in an environment whereby we take “from each according to his ability” and redistribute “to each according to his need.”
Unwanted Freedom
Real freedom is tough. Individual freedom comes with a few unsavory friends, namely individual responsibility and natural consequences for both our actions and our inactions. The right to succeed brings with it the inherent right to fail. The right to make choices brings with it the possibility of making bad choices. The right to make even bad choices carries with it the right to face the natural consequences of those choices.
It’s all just too hard. That’s why many of our 300 million Americans have opted to entrust their lives and their entire future to just 545 special Americans. They place the entire nation and the personal well-being of 300 million Americans in the hands of just 545 special Americans whom they trust to know best and act in their best interest. Since we have made such a mess of our individual lives, we hope that these 545 special Americans will do a better job of managing the commune than we have done for ourselves.
545 Special Americans
One President, one hundred senators, 435 house members and nine Supreme Court judges decide everything today. This is the 545 special Americans entrusted with the total well-being of 300 million American citizens. They are indeed special… they must be.
Nearly each of the 545 are millionaires, riding in limousines, flying in private jets, living in one or more mansions, wearing only the finest designer cloths and eating at all the best restaurants. Most of them were all but broke before grabbing the brass ring of federal office, but they will never be broke again. 300 million average Americans have seen to that.
They write and re-write via interpretation, the laws they live above and they now decide what is best for every American since the average American has traded their freedom of choice for free-stuff from the public trough.
It’s called an oligarchy and becoming one of the special 545 is easy. It’s a matter of knowing how best to pander to the desires of the electorate always in search of more free stuff. There are only 545 positions available, but anyone who can pander to the people fluently, can have one of these positions, even if they have a resume void of achievement like Barack Obama, a life long career of crime and corruption like Hillary Clinton or decades of working against fundamental American principles like John McCain.
These 545 are very special. They are not held to any standard at all, so long as they can tell the people what they hope to hear, that more gifts from the public trough await them, and we won’t even be saddled with those difficult conditions inherent with personal freedom.
This is the New American Dream
The old American Dream of individual liberty and personal freedom at any cost has been traded for a more progressive American Dream of free-stuff at any cost, in search of a peaceful life free from natural individual consequences for the choices we used to make individually.
Individual freedom has been traded for a greater communal good whereby every American will be given a government issued economic floor in exchange for accepting the government imposed ceiling that must come with it.
Sure, it’s socialism. But it’s Democratic Socialism because every American voted for it, or failed to vote against it. America always has the government it deserves because it always has the government it elected.
The majority of Americans no longer trust themselves with freedom, individual liberty and the burden of natural consequences for their choices. So they turn those decisions over to the 545 special Americans they elected to take care of every detail.
It’s not American… But it is democratic! Welcome to the new improved progressive America…
