Citizens' Address

To the government of the free peoples of the United States of America:

I write this letter in the spirit of somber diplomacy on behalf of my country: my government, my fellow citizens; our soldiers, scientists, workers, rich, poor, young, old, strong, defenseless, faithful, and faithless. It is a citizen’s address to the nation. I think I’m going to say some things here that millions of us think and feel very deeply yet may not have the capacity to make known. You may take it as a prophetic warning of sorts. This letter will go to several government officials, journalists, and media professionals. Receiving this letter neither means I agree nor disagree with your particular policies. I respect you as part of the system of government and therefore acknowledge you as responsible for how it operates, as are we all. I hope you will spread this message to those who need to hear what needs to be said. These words may present some difficulties because the means of obtaining votes and power often veers contrarily to the system on which our country might operate most soundly. I’ll try to keep to the point, for surely you are continually bombarded with overzealous and miscellaneous information. Perhaps that is why it has become too easy to stop listening to the voices that matter, the voices of those who empower you. In the 1700’s, King George also neglected to listen to the voices until the people finally had enough. Surely we have not come this far to de-evolve.

I’m writing this letter because our country is at a crossroads, and as one of its citizens, I am very concerned for my people and their government. To live in this country is a tremendous blessing, and the freedom we have gained has been purchased in blood at prices too high to refund and is supported on the shoulders of millions of hard working people. So when government tells us that we will all have to make sacrifices, you are spitting in the eyes of those who already have and already do make sacrifices every day. Now, if you don’t care about America, I’ve probably lost you with that sentence. I am not one of these people who think there should be no government. I do see government as a useful construct for a variety of reasons. But right now, our government seems like a lost man driving down a dark road, unsure of which way to turn at the upcoming fork, continually guessing with gusto. The election process has determined that we want “change” whether or not we know if it will be a blessing or a curse when it comes. Furthermore, it is easy to see why our country might settle for slipping into a more socialist routine. Sometimes it is far easier to grasp at straws just to have something in hand, even if it is just straw. So eager to believe in something, we are beginning to believe in anything. It is at times like these we are the most disadvantaged and vulnerable. It is at times like these that your profession can have the most meaning and the most potential for greatness. Therefore it is also at times like these that you are tempted to do too much.

There is a monumental problem staring us in the face, but its progression is slow and risks going unnoticed. This problem, if uncorrected, will most likely lead to our downfall. It will eventually weaken our society beyond recovery and, by proximity, destroy our government along with it. History has shown that the greatest societies tend to fail from within. Something is coming over us, and the country is being changed from the inside out. It is like a frog which will float, happy and still, in a pot of cool water while the heat is slowly turned up to a boil and never take notice. It will simply be too late once the water is bubbling over. So what is this mysterious Trojan Horse? It’s hard to define, and that is part of its power over us. Some might call it selfishness, irresponsibility, or even stupidity. Others might say it’s a battle between conservatism and liberalism. Some might even go so far as to blame it on the influence of a notorious spiritual being called Satan. The point is: something is happening, and people can sense it. Though we might feel better to ignore it, I believe, if allowed, it will continue its slow erosion of us like rust on a sunken ship.

We are periodically downgrading our morality, incorporating false beliefs in an effort to remain politically correct, and allowing an anything goes mentality for those on the fringe while minimizing those in the center. We are becoming a nation of weaklings who are afraid to use the words “Merry Christmas” or admit that any choice can be wrong no matter how absurd. Good riddance to the racial prejudices of yesterday, but I am talking about something more. We are so afraid of the stigma of persecution that we absorb every culture and all ways of thinking to the extent that no room is left for logic, self-direction, or even self-defense. The culture of America itself is dissipating like a morning fog. We not only tolerate the intolerant but put them on a pedestal and invite them as keynote speakers. Most critically, we are taking on a diffusion of responsibility. We tend to believe that “someone else” will solve each difficult problem. That “someone else” has become the “government”, our catchall. We think that the government will care for those in need, use tax funds appropriately, and oversee our very morality. We are developing into a welfare society which, in an effort to make everyone responsible for everyone else, will end up making no one responsible for anything.

Love your neighbor! It’s an ancient principle; recommended by many, practiced by few, and often preached loudest by those who apply it the least. No matter how much you wish it were so, love and caring cannot be forced into practice by law or by taxation, especially when the government has free reign to decide who my neighbor is and how much of my income they deserve. As personal incomes continue to be confiscated thru taxation to produce programs, you should expect the individuals of this country to be less able and less willing to take personal responsibility in improving the country’s wellbeing. You should expect to see shortages, and long lines, and bad decisions made in chaotic uncertainty. As our individual responsibilities decline, yours, on the other hand, will multiply; and, as the programs continue to grow with each generation, a false dependency grows with them. For our money, we will expect that poverty, education, and healthcare be managed efficiently on our behalf. Yet we know that the overhead to run these programs will eat away most of the benefits of having them at all. How much do we pay just to have an IRS to take our money away? How absurdly complex it has become. If it were not so serious, it would be almost comical. Our government, with all its education, money, and power, is on the verge of becoming a grand imposition upon the people it is supposed to represent. Its micromanagement misses the spirit of its purpose.

Government is becoming increasingly responsible for the souls of America. Regrettably, however, its members are often corruptible and power driven rather than service driven. Just ask yourself what motivated you to work in government. What motivates you now? Have you been assimilated into its culture and forgotten the importance of your representation? It is far too rare to see a government official motivated by genuine service to the American public who puts the long term needs of America above his or her own myopic desires. President Obama’s wife once said that her husband was going to help cleanse our souls. Now, he might be a decent person and may turn out to be a great leader, but may the Lord help us if we begin to follow any one particular man as our true moral compass. That is how people wind up with Der Fuehrer who also, as it turns out, brought promises of economic stability and knew how to feed on the desperation and dreams of the people.

What hope do we have left if our full faith and trust is in an organization that legalizes the disintegration of live babies in the womb for the convenience of hormonal teenagers? What percentage of the millions of abortions each year is due to medical emergencies involving the mother’s life versus that of the child? Is it even a single percentage point of the whole of this underground holocaust? And yet that health argument seems to be the linchpin in the logic of the right of the mother to care for her own body by aborting the child. Even in the case of rape, we focus too little on preventing and punishing rapists (i.e. the cause) and far too much on treating the symptoms. How many millions die due to a simple fear of responsibility; a fear that is increasingly fostered by congress? Responsibility is dying, and you are trying to solve it with euthanasia. Once it dies, it will not be coming back.

What hope do we have in an economy where investment is stifled because government interaction has made markets so uncertain that the risk of commerce outweighs the reward? How much of the stock market’s recent decline is due to government interaction? What hope can we have in a government that is more interested in making good impressions on other countries and outside influences that would use us as whores than it is in freeing its people to set the standards by which “good” is defined? What trust can we put in our law when legislators continuously slip pork into bills like roofies in a martini and when judges are appointed who think it appropriate to suspend the law on the basis of ethnicity or socio-economic status, leaving those in the middle poorly represented. Law is logical by nature, and its purpose is protection. Yet you have the ability to mold it into a useless tool of politics. The further it strays from reality, the less it will be worth following.

The author, CS Lewis, said it well: “We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” Some politicians speak highly of being responsible for your neighbor while continuing to raise people up in a nursery state and refusing to wean them off of the government’s teat. We have trusted you for a long time, and your poor are still poor. Don’t believe in free-markets? Wal-Mart has probably done more than any government program to make goods more affordable to the poorer individuals in our society, therefore increasing their economic standard of living, and yet you speak of the evil of free-markets as if they are even allowed to operate to their full potential here. But it gets the votes, doesn’t it? What else could motivate you like an overbearing mother to have us depend on you for so long? We are like baby eagles that, never having been pushed from the nest, simply sit, growing older and sicker, unable to fly, flapping our atrophied wings in frustration. Collecting more worms from the nests of slightly healthier eagles hasn’t worked. Only the eventual push from the nest will do. It scares you to let go of your power. That suggests you have too much. It scares us to be free, for it means we can fail. But if we cannot fail, we were never free. America is powerful because it is a collection of individuals. Only individuals are smart, they make things happen, they think, they produce, and they solve problems. People, as a collective, can be a herd of frenzied beasts. Treat them as a herd, and you will get a herd. Whether you’ll like being trampled underneath is another matter.

As we teach young men and women more culturally popular particulars like Black Studies, we teach them less about history overall. One chapter in history becomes all of history. Too many young people don’t know where they’ve come from prior to 100 years ago, and since history so often repeats itself, they can’t see where they are going. We narrow their view and their horizons for the future. We teach them less math and science. We set them up to say, “Do you want fries with that?” and then wonder why they are being kept down by “the man” and therefore still need you. My fear is that this may be what you want but not really what the people need.

Want to be a free thinker? Then don’t just stop at Marx and Keynes or assume that a homosexual minority atheist with a Harvard PhD must always be right because if you disagree with him over global warming, or climate change, or whatever we’re calling it now, you’ll be labeled an anti-intellectual bigot. Some brilliant people can come up with some brilliantly poor ideas. For instance, we’ve let businesses have allowances to keep them afloat rather than force them to overcome and adapt through the process of creative destruction by healthy competition and then watched them squander the money like irresponsible teenagers. And every few years we lend, rinse, and repeat. Chrysler recently paid a lot of money for a Wall Street Journal ad to thank the American people for the money we gave them to stay in business. I’d prefer my money back or a better more competitive car than their lousy thanks. Government bailouts and so many of your programs simply result in unfettered waste. Say, wasn’t Chrysler bailed out once before already?

Finally, on a more philosophical note, how will you judge right from wrong if you have no standard for doing so? All you have are the demands of the many pulling you in different directions. It looks like America is losing sight of its guiding standard. Hint: it is still printed on our currency; at least until our ridiculous fear of offending atheists and nihilists becomes overpowering. My, how much time we spend fretting over those who believe in nothing. Anyone can create their own morality and persecute the “bigots” that disagree. And yet bigotry only matters because there is a standard by which to judge it as wrong? It takes real men and women to live up to this standard and make the right choices: to defend babies rather than slaughter them, to defend our nation, help poor old people with their heating bills rather than rely on a federal program to play Robin Hood or an oil company to get in a generous mood, and to draw a line in the sand when the line must be drawn. For in never drawing those lines, you don’t always make peace; you may lose a war on both fronts. Perhaps you forget that the stroke of your pens change the everyday lives of real citizens of this great nation. As you take part in its political leadership, rather than forget and repeat the mistakes of yesterday with each generation, it is critical that you remember that we, the people, are America! As you drive America down that dark dusty road with no map, no GPS, and no faith; what direction will you decide to take? Will you finally put Americans back in the driver’s seat, or will you guess until the car finally breaks down on a proverbial bridge to nowhere?