Greetings to all,
I just had to comment on this. To find the story, here is the link: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=35018#c1
I think I know the direction that Mr Buchanan was heading for. The problem is, I never agreed with his whiny words and policies. Even now, people are still blaming “W” for their woes. You want to know the true reason why for our decline? The fact is, the US has been pointing fingers at others for over 30 years. JB tries to make this point, but it is lost after recital of rhetoric garbage. The way the US can get out of this is for all of us to ‘take ownership’, stop the blame game, and do what needs to be done.
But here is the crux: what is it that needs to be done. You will hear “we have so many problems..”, “the issues are numerous and vast..”, “there isn’t a simple solution or steps of solutions..”. Dont you believe them. In order to figure out what the problems are, we need to figure out who we, as a people and nation, are.
So, what is the United States of America? Now, you may be thinking “Gawd, not another history lesson..”. Well, too bad. The reason why schools push for 12 years of history is two fold: to rewrite history for selfish malicious use, and to get people sick of history to forget about it. It is like navigating a ship, driving a car, or even just walking from point A to point B: if you don’t know where you are at and how you got there, how can you plot where you are going to go?
Anyways, what were our American ancestors? Here is a link describing “American Colonists” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_colonists . While I will not recite the whole page, I would like to copy the first paragraph: The term colonial history of the United States refers to the history of the land from the start of European settlement to the time of independence from Europe, and especially to the history of the thirteen colonies of Britain which declared themselves independent in 1776.[1] Starting in the late 16th century, the English, Scottish, French, Swedes, Germans and the Dutch began to colonize eastern North America.[2][3] Many early attemptsnotably the Lost Colony of Roanokeended in failure, but successful colonies were soon established. The colonists who came to the New World were from a variety of different social and religious groups who settled in different locations on the seaboard. The Dutch of New Netherland, the Swedes and Finns of New Sweden, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the Puritans of New England, the English settlers of Jamestown, and the “worthy poor” of Georgia, and otherseach group came to the new continent for different reasons and created colonies with distinct social, religious, political and economic structures.[4]
Now, there is something very very wrong with this summary. Can you tell what it is? Is it incorrect? No. Are there any wrong references? No. The problem with this summary is that it is watered down. It does not have the heart and soul of what was done and accomplished. Let me explain.
Imagine yourself a colonist. You board a ship, overcrowded with people, a ship that is maybe 80 ft in length and you are lucky if 12ft in width. You travel from one continent to another, that is, over 3000 miles of water that at any point, you could drown. Sickness was always rampant. If you were a woman, you always had to worry about rape. You were lucky you would eat once a day. You finally come over to America. You have very little with you, because of no space on the ship, or, you were poor and had very little to begin with. You are on a land that you have no familiarity with. You are melded into a society of people you do not know about. You have very little to no money, and if you had money, you could buy very little. There were homes with no heat save a fireplace, no air conditioning, very few clothes you could wear. And why would anyone put themselves through this? Because, for the chance. The chance of being free, free of clergy persecution, free of corrupt government officials, free of unfair tax levies, free of social miscreants and fools, etc etc. The concept of freedom. The thought of freedom, but derived from pure sacrifice, devotion, belief, and faith.
Do you see the difference between the two summaries of American colonists? Which one has the heart? Which one excites the senses, the fears, the digust, the joy of hope? The first is definition through society’s acceptance of language. Mine, is a definition of the heart and soul. And, there is the basic problem/solution that we need in this country. Do you think the colonists pointed fingers at others for their problems? (well, in a way they did..hence why they were colonists..but other than that). Do you think they looked for handouts? Did they expect to be clothed, fed, sheltered, given money, health services, financial pensions, 3 cars in the driveway, cell phone for every family member, laptop and LCD plasma TV for each person, twittering their facebooks, worried about keeping up with the neighbors, going green while finance going red, etc etc? I know, I put in ‘modern everyday concerns’ with that of old. But I did this with purpose. Do you see what the average ‘joe’ now worries about vs even just 100 years ago? 100 years. That is simply 4 generations? Maybe 3?
Ok, enough of the history lesson. I did mention that the steps to turn things around are simple. And they truly are: that is, IF you keep what our founding fathers/mothers went through.
1: Only if you are a citizen, or going through the path of legal citizenship, STOP all entitlements. This means, no health care, no welfare, no government handouts of any type. These services have been paid for by citizens and soon to be citizens. We have over 12 million illegals in this country. If each one is given $10,000 of various handouts, that is $1.2 trillion dollars handed out.
2: Those that are citizens and on welfare, cut out the fat. How many times has each one of us saw some woman with 2 or 3 kids, in a grocery store, with more gold bling on her body, looking like she just came out of a salon, driving a nicer car than you own, pay for groceries with food stamps? It is said that 1 out of 12 adults are receiving food stamps. If only 1% of them are cheating, that is still over 83,000 adults. Average amount of food stamps is $250 a month. That is almost 21 million a month, nearly $250 million a year.
3: Hand the bill to the country for every illegal we transport back to them. It is estimated that it costs over $80,000 per illegal we catch and transport back to their country of origin. This, is a service. If we merely catch and transport 25,000 illegals, that is $2 billion a year. The actually number is much higher, closer to a million. But think about that. If 25,000 brings in invoices over 2 billion, then a million would be over $80 billion dollars. Let us just invoice Mexico alone at 25,000 illegals. You know they would enforce and beef up their own border patrols just to prevent this!
4: Invoice other nations. What do I mean? Invoice every other country that asked us for help on a military level since 1963. Every military base we have overseas, every military action we performed at the host country’s request, etc etc. Then, take these ‘bills’ to the UN and tell the UN to shove it up its arse, proving “we are doing the job you sworn to do”. Now, reality is, they won’t do a thing. But, show to others that we have been the ones shouldering the load with an ungrateful lot. But lets say payments do come through. Take every dime of those payments and pay to the veterans, current military personnel, and those survived by the military personnel that died performing their duty and love to this country.
5: Present each bill/law on the table of House, Senate, and Presidency that is no more than 50 pages in length AND it can only contain material directly related to the bill. Too much pork in each bill, too much bureaucracy. Take again, military pay increase. That should be its own bill. A good subtopic is increasing the payments of veterans who have severe medical disabilities. That, would be a valid sub topic. Trying to get a grant for a farm in San Francisco area for 33 million dollars to grow soybeans and peanuts have nothing to do with this bill. It should be its own seperate issue. To enforce this, allow the people in each house and senate district to do a ‘recall’ of the person they elected every 6 months if 25% of the citizens agreed it is within bounds for review. What do I mean? If a senator is going crazy, not listening to their constituents, and causing severe distress and embarassment to their representative community, then, hold a vote and a meeting to see if that person should be removed from office. This would force elected officials to be more honest and stop wasting our taxpayer monies for their salaries and their personal agendas.
6: Now, when it comes to voting, I personally feel that there should be a compentcy test passed. Not anything specific about the candidates or anything like that, but a test on basic government structure and process. So many people who are voting are ignorant of the jobs, dutites, and responsibilities for each branch of local, state, and federal government. So, an example of just 10 questions each about the local, state, and federal government, with a 70% success rate to pass would allow you to vote. People may say that this goes against the Bill of Rights. I say, the blatant stupidity among the public of not knowing their own government, party, and candidates that they are voting on is against my right as a US citizen. Example: The day of the presidential election 2008, a reporter asked 513 confirmed Obama voters simple questions that pertained to Obama, Biden, and top Congressional democrats. 12 questions were asked of each person (the same 12 questions). 0.5% got all 12 questions right. The other percentages of questions/answers were staggering. However, when asked about questions of McCain and Palin, and the questions asked had lies as answers, each one of these people answered those questions “correctly”. They were also asked about Sarah Palin seeing Russia from her backyard and I think 85% said that Palin did say that (it was actually Tina Fey in her famous SNL skit, Sarah Palin never ever said that). What this test showed, is that the general public, ignorant of their own electoral system, can be programmed of how to vote. This video does exist, a little bit of searching can find it. I went through the trouble and found the Zogby poll link for everyone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9htwW21K8s . Bill of Rights. I believe in it with all my heart. I just don’t believe in the people generally anymore. Not until this trend turns around.
I could go onward with other points, and I shall in another post. At the moment, this is enough for everyone to digest all this information properly. Until then, take care.
W/R
Hause.