Fundamentals
I listened to a guy opine recently about the cancer that is taking over the nation. He had some worthwhile thoughts on fighting the collectivist onslaught we face. He described the situation as being analogous with a medical affair: we can focus on treatment of symptoms, or on prevention through eliminating the causes (or risk factors) for the disease. In his opinion, our education system is the fundamental problem. Indeed, children are indoctrinated from a very young age to not only accept the fallacies promoted by government and media, but to actively promote the lies themselves. Kids who set out to conquer the world come out of our nation’s universities mind numbed and mumbling incoherently about fairness, greenness, and saving capitalism from its excesses.
The idea of fighting back the statist influence of our educational institutions is attractive because the concepts kids come out of school with are the concepts that will rule future generations. In other words, education is a fundamental problem, one that unaddressed will certainly speed up the coming crash. Unfortunately, it is impossible to pick out a single such fundamental to fix and turn the tide.
Consider last week’s tax day tea parties. I participated myself, who in his right mind wouldn’t go for an opportunity to protest the state’s tyrannical print, borrow, tax and spend policies? Yet, I can’t help but wonder (it’s really not even a question) how many of the protesters were actually excited about the McCain-Palin ticket only a few months prior. Have we been so dumbed down by the left-right paradigm that those who now profess fear over the “coming socialism” believe that they were advocating anything else in the elections of ‘08, ‘04, ‘00, ‘96, ‘92, ‘88…..??
Politicians and mediabots create public spectacles and the sheeple eat them up. For instance, as Obama was engaged in negotiations to create a world regulatory body with the power to cap wages of U.S. executives (among other powers that will only expand with time), folks on a local talk show here were in a heated discussion about a police officer who pulled over a football player on his way to visit a dying relative. In another case, “Joe the plumber” became a hero during the last presidential campaign for getting Obama to utter the words “spread the wealth.” In reality, we were talking about a difference in tax rates that would amount to only a few percentage points difference. The tax system is already perversely progressive; a highly successful individual in New York pays well over 50% of his earnings in taxes. All the while, over 40% of the populace pays no taxes at all. And we’re worried about the coming socialism?
The point is, we’re distracted by the trivial while the fundamentals go largely unnoticed. It was, in fact, under a republican administration and 6 years of a republican congress that we saw the one of the greatest expansions of government in the country’s history. It was the second Bush administration that foolishly began implementing long ago discredited Keynesian economic policies. Bush began the bailouts. Bush preached the necessity of deficit spending in order to “stimulate” the economy.
Misinformation via education is a fundamental problem indeed. Greater individual choice through private sector initiatives could fix that problem. The ridiculous tax code is another fundamental problem. Without the ability to manipulate that code, politicians and lobbyists would essentially be standing naked and embarrassed out in the rain. But again, I must return to the Federal Reserve as the enabler of government’s wild experiments. As Americans argued over wallpaper patterns, the Fed decreased the value of the dollar by 95% since 1913. As media worldwide praised Alan Greenspan as the greatest financial genius of all time, he presided over 60% of the dollar’s decline. And now, as an $11 trillion deficit finally begins to turn some heads, the Fed’s presses are overheating in an effort to sustain the facade of American wealth it has perpetuated for decades.
The moral of this story? If you must take in any news, take it with a grain of salt. Whether it be the networks, your favorite cable channel, or your favorite radio program, you will rarely see the fundamental problems facing our (former) republic addressed.
