Jul

4

I must confess that I love me some Fourth of July. It is a uniquely American celebration, raucous, loud and quite often tacky in the way only Americans can be. We have a huge party in the neighborhood today and there will be loud music, screaming kids, fireworks, too much food and I have sworn to do my part to make sure there is an excessive amount of delicious adult beverages as well. It will be as John Adams commanded "solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore."

From that humble beginning in 1776 what an incredible nation we have grown. Our achievements in the arts and sciences have been almost beyond measure. We have grown great businesses and great cities over our years. Often we have stood as the last bastion against oppression and evil incarnate. I have traveled the length and breadth of the lower 48 and can tell you we have grown a citizenry of incredible bravery, compassion and determination unequaled on the planet. We have sent men to the moon and solved many dread diseases that once threatened the population. We have spawned great music and great literature. It is a great country and I feel fortunate, if not blessed to have been born here. Unfortunately we have allowed much to go wrong along our journey and at times it threatens to end this great experiment in liberty that our forefathers began.

As I do every year at this time before I start tipping the Sangria and blowing stuff up I reflect upon where we are as a nation. This is still an incredible nation but I fear we are no longer the bright shining city on a hill that serves as an example of freedom and liberty. We are still the home of the brave but I do not really think we are the land of the free so much anymore. When government can tell you how large a soda you can buy, what type of oil you may cook with, who you have to fire and how much you have to pay them or who you love or marry it is not exactly what I would call a state of liberty. When government can decide how you can live your personal life and interferes in every aspect of your life it is not a free society any longer. We have allowed government to grow and consume that vision the founding fathers originally have. It is not necessarily inspired by evil but rather in the name of some greater good, quite often the children. But as Benjamin Franklin warned us at the very start of this grand experiment ""They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

HL Mencken warned us about the spread of government and that slow slipping away of liberty when he said "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." For that matter Plato was probably the first to warned us about governments inevitable infringement of the rights of the people telling us so very long ago "When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there is nothing to fear from them then he is always stirring up some wary or other in order that the people may require a leader."

I worry that the political parties have done such a fantastic job of spreading government s reach into our daily lives by sowing dogmatic discord throughout the populace. The straights hate the gays, the blacks don't trust the whites, the Northerner dislikes those in the south, the farmer hates the city dweller. We turn gay rights and family values into war cries and march off under our banner to demand our rights and more importantly privileges. The two parties rally the folks around their causes and drive a deep divide into the populace all the while strengthening their death grip on the seat of power and the public purse. If we could all forget what it says on our voter registration card we would be better off as a nation and as a people. Keep in mind that the only real difference between the two parties is how they sway the voters. The Democrats wish to regulate everything but what goes on in your bedroom and the republican want to regulate nothing except what goes on in your bedroom. Both parties are deeply in bed with Wall Street and Corporate America and no amount of ridiculous advertising or rhetoric can change that. They go to great lengths to gerrymander voting districts and do whatever is necessary to keep the two party system entrenched in our society. One again it's our own fault. We were warned that this would happen.

In 1870 John Adams was already concerned about the two party system at work. He wrote then that "There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution." George Washingt5om expressed his fears on political parties in his farewell speech telling the citizens of the fledgling republic "However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

I often fear that George Bernard Shaw was right when he said "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." It seems that many would prefer the soft comforting bosom of government to standing up on their own two feet and taking what they want from life on their own effort and merit. If a child is failing in school it must be the governments fault not our own. If we are not earnings much as we want then the generous purses of government must take from someone who is and redistribute it to us. Government should protect us from ourselves and everything around us. That old catch phrase"Why that's outrageous, There ought to be a law" has done an enormous amount of harm over the centuries and unchecked will do more in the centuries ahead. Shaw also once said "Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve." The challenge then for us is to deserve more. In the opening scene of HBOs series Newsroom says that we are not the greatest nation on earth, but we could be is our challenge. We could be. We should be. Live in such a way to deserve more.

We need to quit accepting the unholy morass of crony capitalism and go back to the invisible hand of the market as described by Adam Smith so many years ago. Make corporations and government responsible for their decisions and the harm that they do. Whenever someone lectures me about how Wall Street caused the crisis and ruined many Americans and by god the government needs to something about it, I remind that in fact the government did do something about it. They bailed out the very banks that helped create the crisis. But if you are ranting about the situation but have a Bank of America or Chase credit card in your wallet because it is just so convenient you are tying the invisible hand of the market behind its back and are as big a part of the problem as the bankers and legislators. If you are upset about the Gulf Oil spill but pull into BP for gas because it is on the way to work you are as big a part of the problem as the oil company itself. We tend to look for government to punish all these violators when they are in fact in bed with most of them.

We can be the greatest nation on earth if we go back to a nation that embraces personal responsibility. We need to work, learn and strive to accomplish our dream and desires for ourselves and our families and not wait for it to be given to us. We need to each get up each today and do what we can to make our lives better and educate our children in such a manner that they can do the same when it is their turn. The outcome of your life depends on you and your effort and mine should depend on mine. The opportunities are there if we just insist the government get out of the way and allow us each as individuals to achieve our dream. By independent effort and achievement alone do we become a great society.

We need to quit worrying about everyone else does with their life or who they are to become a great a nation once again. Who is marrying who, or sleeping with who is none of your business. Who likes to smoke a little pot instead of drinking a beer is none of your business. The fact that someone's skin tone is different than yours should have nothing to do with your opinion of them. Which version of the great granddaddy in the sky they favor is no business of yours either. As long as they harm no one and do not rely on you to support them let people live their own lives and you do the same.

We need to restore the spirit of personal generosity. As Jesus said the poor will be with us always.. Even the conservative Austrian Economist Hayek once said "There can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody." But we have allowed the safety net to become a way of life for far too large a percentage of the population. We need the kind for generous spirit that helps those less fortunate on our own inclinations and not one enforced at the end of a tax collectors pistol. If life has blessed you then you should look for an opportunity to help others progress in their lives. Because you want to, not because the government makes you. We need to get the government out of the charity business and the people back in it. Our social policy should be based on educating our children and growing an economy that provides jobs for them when they graduate.

We are not the greatest nation in the world right now. But imagine an America where everyone is free to live their own lives in their own way. Where we provide a safe place to educate and teachers do not teach to the test but inspire a lifelong love of science, math, literature and the arts. Where the government does not take as much as half of your income to spend on failed social programs, foreign aid to nations who despise us and illegal wars. Where every child grows up knowing they have a chance to achieve a good life and discover their own version of the pursuit of happiness. Where you can marry who you want, love who you want. Where the rights of the individual come before the desires of the masses. Where the tax code is fair, reasonable and limited. Where business are allowed to grow and create jobs. Where people take responsibility for their own needs, desires and actions. Where Freedom means free to live you own way as long as you cause no harm to others. That America will once again be the greatest nation in the world.

We can make it so. We just have to live in such a fashion as to deserve it.

Now, let the good times roll. It's the Fourth of July and we celebrate what has been and what we can Be. God Bless America and pass me that BBQ!

Cheers,

Tim


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