Socialism is as Socialism Does

Ronald Reagan taught us, “How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”  

 

Barack Obama’s mentor as a young man was communist party member Frank Marshall Davis.  As a community organizer he was a follower and promoter of the communist fellow-traveler Saul Alinsky’s methods and goals.  As a professional in Hyde Park he associated with socialist radicals such as Bill Ayers.  As an up-and-coming Chicago Politician he attended the church of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, an outspoken proponent of the socialist Black Liberation Theology. As president he appointed communist Van Jones to be one of his many Czars.  Mr. Obama says he is not a socialist.  However, simple logic tells us if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck you can be relatively certain it’s a duck.

 

Mr. Obama has told us that he seeks to be a transformational president like his idol FDR.  He was bold enough to tell us just days before the election in 2008 that he would fundamentally transform America.  In just one term he has accomplished much along the way to changing us from what we have always been into what the Progressives have always wanted us to be.

How has Barak Obama transformed us?  Into what is he transforming us?  A look at his impressive *list of firsts as president of these United States points in the direction he is herding us:

·      First President to have a Social Security number from a state where he has never lived

·      First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States

·      First President to violate the War Powers Act

·      First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico

·      First President to require that all Americans purchase a product from a third party as a condition of citizenship

·      First President to spend a trillion dollars on shovel-ready jobs and then joke that shovel ready wasn’t quite as shovel ready as he thought 

·      First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters

·      First President to by-pass Congress and implement laws such as the Dream Act and Cap-n-Trade through executive fiat

·      First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees

·      First President to tell a CEO of a major corporation (GM) to resign

·      First President to terminate America's ability to put a man in space

·      First President to cancel the National Day of Prayer and to say that America is no longer a Christian nation

·      First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present

·      First President to send the families of fallen service members a form letter signed with an auto-pen

·      First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it (DOMA)

·      First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke-out on the reasons for their rate increases

·      First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state it is allowed to locate a factory

·      First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN)

·      First President to actively try to bankrupt an American industry (coal)

·      First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-Corps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case

·      First President to appoint 45 czars to his office

·      First President to golf more than 100 times separate times in his first three and a half years in office

·      First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records

·      First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing to earn it

·      First President to go on multiple global “apology tours” and concurrent “insult our friends” tours

·      First President to go on 16 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends paid for by the taxpayer

·      First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife

·      First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense

·      First President to publicly read from the Quran & tell us the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth

·      First President to recite the Muslim call to prayer in perfect Arabic

·      First President to tell the military men and women that they should pay for their own private insurance

·      First President to side with a foreign nation over one of America’s 50 states (Mexico vs. Arizona)

 

Mr. Obama is leading us from being the first among nations to being just another vote in the United Nations.  Now there’s a level playing field for you.  And now it’s time for another election, some say our most important, some say perhaps our last.

In many ways this election cycle is refreshing.  For generations the Progressives have pretended to be something they are not to win elections.  They have pretended to be dedicated to the American dream of personal liberty, economic freedom and the belief that America was different from other nations, that as the world’s first and most enduring modern experiment in a republic based on limited government we were exceptional.  Although the policies of the Progressives have always been at odds with this assumed identity at least every election cycle they would tip their hat to the America of our fathers and portray themselves as a Thomas Jefferson or an Andrew Jackson. 

Therefore, 2012 is shaping up to be the election where the Progressives cast aside their mask and run as who they are: the American version of socialism promising to tax the rich and spread the wealth around, from each according to their ability to each according to their need. 

If Mr. Obama wins re-election on this platform the Progressives will finally have their chance to give Americans the same kind of cradle-to-grave utopia the happy people of Russia, China, North Korea, and Hitler’s Germany have had the fortune to endure.  If Mr. Obama wins re-election espousing the true intentions of the Progressives, to change the constitution from a rock solid foundation for freedom into a living document that is a dead letter, he will succeed at his vow to fundamentally transform America.

He will fundamentally transform the dreams of our fathers for a land of liberty and opportunity into the dreams of his father who was a pro-communist social engineer and America will become just another country trying to build heaven on earth by plundering some to benefit others.

 

As to his  utopian beliefs and aspirations President Obama has said, “I am confident we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth”

 

President Reagan also told us, “Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don't need it, and hell where they already have it.”

 

*Lists of Mr. Obama’s firsts are found numerous places.  The sources referenced for each first are merely representative of the many available for each.

 

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

 

 

 

 

 

The god Particle I Don’t Think So

Arrogance is a funny thing. Not Ha Ha funny, but funny none-the-less.  I was watching one of America’s leading physicists the other day, a man made famous by his co-authorship of String Theory and made popular by his ability to make people without a scientific education believe they understand what he’s talking about.  He repeatedly made the statement that today physicists understand 99.9%of how the Universe works and that the .01% that was missing is the never before seen but previously postulated Higgs Boson particle popularly known as the god particle.

The reason he was on a popular news show was because other scientists in Switzerland had announced that they had found the ever elusive god particle by producing a mini-Big Bang in the world’s largest cyclotron by smashing atoms together.  The Big Bang is what atheist scientists have to call creation because all their evidence proves that the universe, just started.  They have come to believe that at one moment there was nothing and then a split nano-second later there was everything.  Since they find it impossible to believe that God merely said, “Let there be” and it was they instead have mentally manufactured the Big Bang Theory, which along with the Theory of Evolution is taught to every school child as if it were established fact. 

The Big Bang Theory goes like this: once upon a time there was nothing except the tiniest of points that contained the essence of everything.  They even say there was no time because time itself was nonexistent before the Big Bang.  Then spontaneously this tiniest of points exploded and in a flash it expanded into gases and stars and planets and galaxies.  Using rooms full of chalk boards these highly educated scientists prove that all of everything came from something: a teeny tiny point of compressed something. 

They piously tell us all their observations prove this is so.  All their chalk filled blackboards prove this is so.  All their experiments prove this is so.  And now after they have discovered 99.9% of the truth the production of the missing god particle absolutely proves it is so.  Just give them a little more time and they will be able to tell us exactly how the universe created itself.

How nice.

Luckily there are these eloquent popularizers who are able to act as a verbal interface allowing the scientifically and mathematically challenged masses peek behind the curtain.  It’s a good thing because it is our tax money that pays for all their orbiting telescopes, cyclotrons, and blackboards.  And since the majority of us are Christians who believe God created the world it’s convenient to have someone to explain to us why all the money we spend proves we are actually deluded provincials with a quaint faith in an unseen Father who created and upholds everything with His word, wrote a book to tell us about it, and then sent His only Son to die at our hands for our redemption. 

Now that is money well spent.  Pay billions and billions to have scientific shamans to tell us that what we believe are fables and what they believe is fact.  Maybe we should spend our billions on magic beans instead, and then we could climb up to heaven and find out what really happened.  Or maybe we should build a tower that reaches into heaven so our priest-king-scientist could give God a physical, and then tell us all about why He isn’t there.

Our super smart highly educated and well financed scientists tell us they don’t operate on faith; instead they operate on logic and objective evidence.  Yet when you examine their chain of thought and peer into their evidence it is a fabric of conjectures based upon one leap of faith after another.  They have convinced themselves the air castles they have constructed are more than science fiction, but why should we believe them?  They do sound sincere and they do act as if they know what they are talking about, but so does the flim-flam man who tries to sell us the Brooklyn Bridge or the politician who tells us they can manage the debt and give everyone everything.

For one thing their very confidence that they have the universe 100% or even 99.9% figured out ought to tell us these wizards aren’t ever going to really give us a heart, or courage, and certainly not a brain.  They may give us a medal or a degree and then explain how they are just what they promised when they aren’t but they can’t deliver on the real thing.  When Toto finally pulls the curtain back will we then realize we have spent billions upon billions to supposedly prove fantasies labeled as truth when we have had the truth all along: God created the universe, and we are here because of Him, in Him, and for Him.  That may be too simplistic for the wizards to believe but their flights of fancy ought to be too fantastic for us to swallow.

For instance all these grand theories of everything never tell us where the incredibly compressed point comes from.  They never tell us how long the point was in a state of perfect equilibrium just hanging there in the nothing.  They never tell us what would have caused the point to explode.  Yet they try to tell us they have it all figured out. Go figure.

I find it comical that believing in an all-knowing all-powerful God who created everything and everyone is too hard for people to believe but when a highly educated, highly financed, and media savvy spokes model tells us that everything created itself millions of people nod their heads and stand in line to give them more money for more experiments and blackboards so that we can expand our knowledge to what 110%?

This all reminds me of two things.

One:

There have been other times when societies and their wizards thought they knew everything.

A man named Ptolemy once proved that the whole universe revolves around the earth.  Eventually a complicated model was constructed by dedicated mathematicians and philosophers to demonstrate and prove how it worked.  Galileo among others was arrested, tried, and convicted for saying the Earth revolves around the Sun.  Once the alchemists knew there was a philosopher’s stone that would turn iron into gold.  At one point the leading lights of science knew the world was flat while Columbus knew he could sail from Europe to Asia in a straight line.  In the 1890s scientists assured us we knew everything about everything.  Now the Big Bang explains it all and the god particle is the key to understanding how nothing became everything.

Two:

All these theories of everything that eliminate God remind me of the story about a scientist who when asked where his computer came from didn’t know so he said, “There was a pile of parts laying in a junk yard for billions of years and one day they were struck by lightning and out popped this computer.”  This scientist had a blackboard full of equations that proved he was right.  He had spent billions of tax dollars conducting of experiments that proved he was right.  And he sounded very convincing when he explained it all. His theory was accepted and taught in all the schools, so now our children can come home and tell us where computers come from.

And the cow jumped over the moon.

It also reminds me of the story about a scientist who said to God, “You’re not so much.  I’ve figured out how to create life in my laboratory.”

“You have?” said God.

“Yes I have and I’m willing to have a competition to prove I can create life just like you,” said the scientist as he wrote two rooms full of equations to show God how much he knew.

“Okay,” said God as He stooped down picked up some dirt and started fashioning a man.

The scientist picked up some dirt and started pouring it from one test tube to another when God smiled and said, “Hey!  Get your own dirt.”

Even if we can prove how something happened does that tell us why?  Since every chain of events has to have a beginning our wizards have had to come face-to-face with “In the beginning.”  However, without faith they can’t see the forest for the tree.  So instead of giving God the glory for his creation they try to construct creation without a creator, which reminds me of the atheist who knows there is no heaven and prays there is no hell.

I love to listen to the wizards.  I read their books and watch their shows.  However, I march to the beat of a different drummer, “And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

 

 

Education is the Foundation of the Future

Have you ever asked yourself, “How can Progressives like President Obama hate America?  How can anyone who was raised in the most free and prosperous society in the History of the world believe America is an imperialistic power and the source of evil?”

If we can’t understand our adversary we may defeat them, but we will never know what it is that motivated them.  This lack of understanding leaves us open to assault by the same forces in the future.   If we wish not only to defeat Barack Obama and the forces of Progressivism in the November elections but also to set America on the path to restoration we must understand the root cause of the Progressive delusion and modern Liberalism which Michael Savage has correctly labeled a mental illness, and I consider a Socially Transmitted Disease.

If you want to understand something it is necessary to learn where it came from and how it came to be.  Even if President Obama was educated partially in his adopted country of Indonesia he is a prime example of the assembly-line progressive education that has become the norm in America today: bash America at every chance and cram the idea of a living constitution and the necessity for government intervention in every aspect of daily life. 

We’ve all heard horror stories of the anti-American bilge being pumped into our youth in today’s schools, so the following personal experiences shouldn’t shock anyone too much.

As an educator I participated in a program that combined college and high school classes so that students could earn credit towards their high school diploma and at the same time work on an Associate Degree. I was happy to work in this program, and I helped many hard working students earn their Associates at the same time they earned their high school diploma giving them a decided advantage when they went on for their Bachelor degree.  

During the course of my years in the trenches of blended education I was in control of the college side of the class; however, I had no authority to stop the blatant dissemination of Progressive propaganda that made up the totality of some teachers’ curriculum.  While in the classroom I strive to present material in such a way as to lead students in the direction of critical thinking.  I would present both sides and urge students to evaluate and come to their own conclusions.  Many times after a semester of teaching Political Science students would come up and ask, “Now that the class is over tell us, which are you a conservative or a liberal?”

Many of my high school teacher colleagues were not so subtle.  Here are two examples that were more the rule than the exception in many classes:

1.      One Political Science class had the following assignment; watch Fahrenheit 9/11by Michael Moore and then write an essay on how many ways President Bush lied to trick America into an unjust war.

2.      In a History class the students were assigned to read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and then write an essay on the dehumanizing effects of capitalism.

The list of such blatant and crude attempts to mold our children into good little Progressives that I witnessed would fill a book on how not to teach, but this is nothing new.  I am sixty three years old and though not as out-in-the-open or in-your-face I was subjected to the same type of illiberal liberalism when I was a youngster in school. 

In grade school I did encounter one History teacher who had been in the profession since before my father was born.  She still thought it a good thing to teach American History as an objective subject instead of a vehicle for her own agenda.   She inspired students to look at the evidence and think.  She however was the exception.  From Math to English, from Geography to History teachers were constantly extolling the benefits of government social programs and depicting America as a world-class bully marching around imposing its will on poor little nations that couldn’t protect themselves. 

In high school I was suspended for accusing a Social Studies teacher of being a communist.  Years later he admitted that he in fact had been a communist since the forties.  Another teacher rejected any History paper that he felt was too patriotic which he dismissed as jingoism.  A teacher of Russian spent more time in class extolling the virtues of the USSR than teaching the language.  When I complained about this forty five minute daily propaganda session I was again suspended.  All of this took place back in the 1960s.  This isn’t a new problem.

The Progressives realized long ago that if they could take over the nation’s education system they could raise up generations of Americans with no conception of the uniqueness of America as the world’s bastion of freedom and liberty.  Today we see the fruit of this campaign: legions of voters ready to throw away our heritage for a government check.  The descendants of the Founders are willing to surrender their freedom to strive for the best in exchange for the security of just enough to get by.

So as the wisest woman I have ever known, my wife asks me, “What can we do now?”

Back in the early 90s we decided that what we needed to do was go to school so that we could become teachers.  Neither of us wants to impose our ideas on others, but we do want to present the materials in an objective manner and help our students acquire the critical thinking skills necessary to be informed citizens.  Whenever a student asks me to figure out what their grade is during a semester I tell them, “If you give a man a fish he will eat for a day.  If you teach him to fish he can eat forever.”  I then proceed to teach them how to find an average and how to translate that into a letter grade.

What can we do now?  We can’t all become teachers but we can all become involved in our local school boards.  We can all do our due diligence and find out what is being taught at our local schools, and we can follow the procedures to correct what is wrong and implement what is right.  One thing is for sure if we do not regain control of our schools we will lose the future.  Our leaders are leading us down the primrose path to collectivism.  Our education establishment is conditioning America to accept it.  Step-by-step, inch-by-inch we have strayed from a federal republic operating on democratic principles with liberty and justice for all to a centralized bureaucracy dispensing cradle-to-grave loot taken from producers and redistributed to non-producers.  We may have gotten here step-by-step but we are not too many steps away from one step too many.  Barack Obama has stated that his goal is to fundamentally transform America.  From stimulus slush finds, shadow governments, and imperial edicts he is systematically remaking us into a centralized state based on social democracy and wealth redistribution. 

In 1962 the leader of the socialist slave camp we knew as the USSR, Nikita Khrushchev, said “The United States will eventually fly the Communist red flag…The American people will raise it themselves.  We can't expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism.”

Education has led the way to this precipice and only education can lead our way back.  If we don’t learn from our mistakes and once again begin building up America through education we may learn that Khrushchev was right.

Did we win the Cold War defeating an enemy dedicated to our destruction to end up proving the wisdom of a cartoon character, “We have met the enemy and he is us”?

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

If it isn’t Right it’s Wrong

Back in the nineties when Pat Buchanan was wise enough to label the Culture War for what it was some of us asked, “How can a moral wrong be a civil right?”  This was back when those coming out of the closet were asking for freedom, and not trying to deny freedom to others.  Today the radical homosexuals froth at the mouth and impose boycotts against anyone with the impudence to say they support traditional values and with the bad taste to say they are married to their first wife.

The Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media joins the radical homosexuals distorting what was initially said and fanning the flames of hate.  Pandering politicians join in the pile-on and use their offices and the power voters entrusted them with to punish a lawful business because their CEO exercised his first amendment rights and stated something that not too long ago was so widely accepted it never would have had to be said.

Culturally the majority of Americans now live in a nation controlled and subjugated by a vocal minority intent on forcing their values on the rest of us.

Back in the nineties after America had defeated the Evil Empire we stood unchallenged as the world’s sole superpower.  Our industrial base was an 800 pound gorilla in everybody’s room.  We were the largest creditor nation in the History of the world.  Our science and our technology were the definition of cutting edge.  Today China rises like the red dragon in the East.  We are the largest debtor in the History of the world.  The fastest computer, the largest accelerator, and the number one computer and smart phone manufacturers are all in Asia.  Our manned space vehicle program is a memory, our astronauts have to hitchhike to a space station we paid for and built, and the Chinese have just announced they are going to the moon to replace the stars and stripes with communist red.

Technologically we are standing still at best while former third world nations lead the way to a brave new world.

Politically we are watching the Mideast go south.  We are bogged down in a quagmire in Afghanistan where the ultimate winner won’t be the corruption we have installed as government. The Chinese control the Panama Canal and the Port of Los Angeles.  NATO had a hard time defeating the definition of a tin-pot dictator and his band of sub-Saharan mercenaries.

How did all this happen?  How did it happen so fast?  Is there anything we could do to reverse our slide into insignificance?  Is there anything that will be done to lead the way back from the brink?

How did all this happen?  How did it happen so fast? 

The Culture War has been waged aggressively by its proponents: those who wanted an end to America’s traditional Judeo-Christian ethics and those who wished to profit politically by the end of the America we had known and loved.  The coalition of social deviants, media boosters, and political panderers rolled over a live-and-let-live public as they achieved their dreams and changed moral wrongs into civil rights.  It is now considered unacceptable to state your personal beliefs if they diverge from the culture of the lowest common denominator. Political correctness strangles freedom from college campuses to board rooms.  The murder of unborn babies has made the womb the most dangerous place for an American child. Television, movies, and music are filled with vile hateful filth.  Triple X superstores and legal gambling are now the trophies for the victors and tombstones for the vanquished in a war Mr. Buchanan was pilloried for having the courage to name.

What about the technology?

In their exuberance and hubris our leaders, Bush the First and Clinton the Last, decided that we could make free trade work for our advantage when it had killed every other empire that ever followed it to cheap consumer goods and industrial destruction.   Ross Perot was ridiculed when he would ask, “Do you hear that giant sucking sound?”  That’s American jobs being sucked out by NAFTA.”  But he was right.  Our balance of trade with Mexico went from more than a billion dollars a year surplus in 1994 to more than a 64 billion deficit in 2011.  This was followed with so-called free trade agreements with country after country systematically turning a positive balance of trade into a negative. 

Then when we combined free trade agreements with an American innovation, shipping with containers, we set the stage for our markets to be overwhelmed by Chinese imports.  Today if the balance of trade and the content of that trade were examined it becomes apparent that America is fast becoming a de-industrialized colony of China as they have been a financial colony of ours.  We supply them with vast amounts of invisible credit via the pegged, undervalued, yuan-dollar exchange rate and raw materials while they supply us with cheap manufactured goods.  Our own money is inflating a mercantilist predator poised to devour our industrial base. Even our military now relies on Chinese parts and our security may rest upon components that are designed to either malfunction or provide a backdoor for hackers.

What about politics?

Bush the First crowed about creating a New World Order and couldn’t beat a womanizing bubba in a tux.  Clinton the Last spent his Peace Dividend buying votes and gutting the military.  Bush the Next led us into a war in Iraq we never should have fought and refused to leave a war in Afghanistan he didn’t notice we had won.  Obama the Destroyer of Worlds leads from behind while following the UN, apologizes for American exceptionalism, and bows to foreign leaders.  When you fight a war against an enemy you won’t name how will you know if you have won?

Is there anything we could do to reverse our slide into insignificance? 

How do you end the degradation of our society into an open sewer of licentiousness?  Values are taught in the home or they are picked up in the street.  Ethics are passed on by people who believe there are absolutes and who live consistently as if those absolutes actually matter.  Telling our children to do as we say not as we do has produced generations of people who do whatever they want.  Hedonism and conspicuous consumption have combined to give us a world where getting what you want is prized above getting what you deserve.  Let those who live right be salt and light in this world and those who seek the day instead of the night will follow.  Billy Graham, Phyllis Schlafly, and the Bible are right Larry Flint, Hugh Heffner, and Bill Clinton are wrong.  And if it isn’t right it’s wrong.

Take the steel boot of regulations off the throat of industry and innovation.  Allow economic freedom and the invisible hand of entrepreneurship will once again transform America into the powerhouse of industry and technology.  Adam Smith and Milton Friedman had it right; Keynes and the Progressives have it wrong.  And if it isn’t right it’s wrong. 

End the so-called free trade, and insist upon equitable trade.  If someone uses tricks to add fees to our products add the same fees to their products.  If someone restricts our products in their markets put the same restrictions on their products.  Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan had it right; our progressive politicians have it wrong.  And if it isn’t right it’s wrong. 

 Return to what was once traditional American policy: a friend to all and entangled with none.  Why are American troops still garrisoned in Europe, Japan, and Korea?  Why are America’s finest stationed in hundreds of bases in over 100 nations?  Bring our troops home.  Let them guard our own borders from the hordes that now walk across them every day.  Let their bases provide an economic stimulus to American towns and cities instead of those of foreigners.  Washington, Hamilton, and Monroe had it right. The Bush dynasty, Clinton, and Obama have it wrong.  And if it isn’t right it’s wrong.

What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong.  How do we restore what’s wrong with America?  We do what’s right.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

Is the Inertia Greater Than the Momentum?

The causes of our problems are not hard to see.  Americans aren’t obese because evil restauranteers are forcing them to eat fried butter on a stick.  We are bulging at the seams because we eat too much and exercise too little.  Americans aren’t trapped in upside down mortgages because evil bankers waylaid us and forced us to sign up for a house that was too big and cost too much.  We’re living in homes we can’t afford because we wanted them and thought we deserved them even though we didn’t have an income that could support them.  Americans aren’t buried in personal debt because credit card companies mailed us credit cards.  We carry an average of $14,517 household debt because we wanted what we wanted when we wanted it and couldn’t wait until we could pay for it.  And America isn’t drowning in national debt because we did anything more difficult to understand than electing people who bought our votes with entitlements we didn’t need and couldn’t afford.

The problem isn’t that we don’t know the answers.  Instead it’s that we don’t want to face up to the fact that the free ride has to stop if we’re going to get off before we land in Athens.  America’s economy is beginning to resemble one of those increasingly ridiculous action movies where the hero gets blown up, shot, stabbed, and hit with a brick only to jump up ready to roll.  Every time a bubble bursts instead of allowing the economy to bottom out and correct itself the Government spends as it borrows from foreign countries and the Fed creates money out of thin air to pay for it.  It’s time our leaders learn we have learned that blowing up a bubble to take the place of the last burst bubble is not building an economy.

As boom and bust turned into boom to boom to boom we have inevitably made our way to KABOOM!!!

The coming crash in this double dip dilemma is going to be a double whammy.  We are currently blowing up a new financial bubble providing Fed funds at near zero % that the banks then loan out at 3-4% pumping more and more money into the system.  And in a reprise of the 2000 dot.com crash the social media bubble is once again giving us billion dollar companies that aren’t making any money for anyone except the gamblers in the stock market casino.  

The Federal Government keeps inflating bubbles to avoid the real crash so they can continue to buy votes with entitlements and pay for them with funny money.  This postpones paying the piper, but it increase the bill when it finally comes.

Today the government Leviathan is devouring America’s income.  In 2012 it’s estimated that the central government will consume 24 % of GDP kicking back 4% to the States and localities, the States will swallow 10% of GDP, and the local entities will inhale 11%.  Subtracting the 4% Federal to State shell game and the governance of America is today costing us 40% of America’s production.  On top of that the regulatory burden grows heavier every day until everyone everywhere is in violation of something.  And we wonder why industry isn’t expanding?  When you eat your seed corn and make impossible to follow guidelines for planting you can’t expect a bumper crop.

With money pouring out of a 5” hose how can anyone take the politicians promises to cut the deficit and reduce the debt seriously?  The most draconian plans suggested so far, such as Representative Ryan’s doesn’t balance until 2040 and that is only if future politicians decide to play nice and not buy votes with free goodies which is about as likely as a dog with fleas not scratching.

That’s the problem: a dysfunctional government made up of kleptomaniacs writing phony checks on the future and a population addicted to easy money and unfunded entitlements.

What’s the solution?  We as a people must kick the entitlement habit.  Like any addiction our national addiction to freebees has debilitated us.  It has made us dependent on the outside stimulus.  Where once families and churches took care of the needy we have been taught for generations that Uncle Sugar will do it, so we have let Uncle Sugar do it.  How has that worked out?  Ever since the government bureaucrats have stepped between the givers and the receivers welfare hasn’t been well and it isn’t fair.  Many of us know people who need help who are denied and people who should be helping themselves who are riding in their Cadillacs to spend their food stamps.

After more than 15 trillion dollars and four decades of a war on poverty the percentage of Americans below the poverty line is higher than it was when we started.  There are more people on food stamps, more on disability and more that have just dropped out of the work force than ever before, and the only answer Washington seems to have is we haven’t spent enough yet.  That’s like telling the heroin addict who almost died last night of an overdose that the problem was he didn’t shoot up enough junk.

How do we stop spending?  How do we balance the budget?  This is like the question the backslider always asks, “How do I get back to God?”  The answer to the backslider is, “You get back to God.”  The answer for the nation is, “we stop spending more than we bring in.”  The politicians have a way to make that solution work: raise taxes until income matches outgo.  This brings up another problem: we can’t eat the goose that lays the golden egg and expect to collect more eggs tomorrow.  In any country that robs Peter to pay Paul eventually everyone changes their name to Paul.  Case in point, we now have more people qualifying for disability each month than people finding jobs. 

Yes, this is a call for austerity.  Yes, this will cause major dislocations.  Yes, when drug addicts quit taking the poison their bodies have come to crave they get sick.  In time drug addicts recover and once again becomes normal people able to stand on their own without the chemical prop of a debilitating drug.  In time if we as a nation will kick the habit of cheap money and government handouts we will once again learn to stand on our own two feet, hold our head up high, and proudly say, “This is America the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

If we will do this the last half of the twentieth century will be but a prelude to the American Century.  If we don’t, the sun will set on the American dream as we devour ourselves in an orgy of hedonism and self-gratification.

The election is coming fast.  Survey your choices and find people who have the courage to lead us in a return to fiscal responsibility before we face the coming collapse of the world we have known.  For if we cast our bread upon the water it will return to us after many days, but if we sow the wind we will reap the whirlwind.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens