Getting It Right- Taking It All For Granted Is Dangerous!

October 4, 2007

By: Sid Riley

This column presents a non-partisan, conservative viewpoint about items of interest in our community and our lives. Focus is on items that are impacting your pocket book, your personal freedoms, and your rights. I hope that you will read the column regularly and that it occasionally influences your opinions and actions. Now, on to the subject of the week:
"Taking an unconcerned, casual approach to this great lifestyle that we enjoy, in this great nation we live in, and these great freedoms and rights we claim, is a very dangerous approach to take."
These blessings can all be lost and taken away! And the change can occur before you are aware that it is happening. If you know the name of the quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons but don’t know the name of your national senator, or if you are more involved in the outcome of "Desperate Housewives", than you are in the political processes, local and national, then you are opening the doorway for the potential loss of these valuable assets.
One of the great works of literature is a book entitled "Candide", written by Voltaire in the mid 1700"s. In this book a poor, naïve boy struggled through life with terrible things happening all around him, as others took advantage of his lack of understanding. His parents were killed, he was repeatedly robbed, his girlfriend was robbed and raped by pirates, and all the while he accepted it all with the philosophy of "Alas, it is acceptable since this is the best of all possible worlds." Or, "It must be this way, since it has always been this way". He was the eternal optimist.
I get the same sensation that I experienced when I first read those reactions by poor Candide when today I hear someone say things like, "That’s just the way it is", or "You can’t correct the problem, it is just too big and too complex", or "You have to comply, Tallahassee has mandated it", and " You can’t buck the system", "You might as well go with the flow and play the game", "It’s only grant money, not tax money","It’s always been that way", and "If I don’t spend it, someone else will".
These weak, gutless philosophies live imbedded deep within our bureaucratic establishments. They help wasteful, ill conceived monetary systems and concepts thrive and multiply. These ill conceived approaches assure that no corrective movements will ever be initiated, thus moving our economic and governmental systems into a changed world that promises to destroy our economy, our lifestyles, our government, and our freedoms. We are evolving into a world that we would not want to live in if we could see into the future.
The decline of our national family structure, fatherless families and babies born out of wedlock, the failure of many portions of our school systems, the increasing acceptance of violence, the erosion on our society caused by rampant drugs, the heavy burden placed on the national systems by a constantly ballooning welfare cost which is enhanced by the presence of millions of illegal aliens that are automatically ushered into the welfare programs, the cost of maintaining a strong military presence in the face of continual threats from terrorist, a national "I’ll sue you" attitude caused by the presence of too many hungry lawyers, the unfortunate failure of our judicial systems, and the ever widening gap in philosophies of our political parties that thus renders government at the national level impotent…. all of these negatives working in concert weaken the basic fibers of our national soul.
Another real threat to our standard of life comes from major changes in our economic systems caused by political and perhaps personal motivation. The concepts of a "global economy", and "free trade", which were ushered in by both parties during the Clinton era are just now exhibiting their impact on our national economy. Most politicians are lawyers, not businessmen and not economist. They are ill qualified to make critical, far reaching national economic decisions.
I think they gave away the farm, and we are going to eventually suffer dearly from these philosophies that are quickly changing the United States from an "industrialized society" into a "technology and service" based society. That concept may have benefited some few businesses and industries, but in total the concepts and the subsequent trade deals such as "most favored trade status for China", GATT Treaty, NAFTA, and others have caused a major portion of our good paying manufacturing jobs to move to Asia, has eroded the tax base, has downgraded job and pay levels for the common workers, has diminished our standard of living, and has left every community’s industrial park full of empty, decaying buildings that ten years ago housed vibrant domestic factories and productive workers.
Since these foolish deals were made, our negative balance of trade has soared to unbelievable levels as we import much, much more than we export. This has weakened the dollar to historic levels, thus making foreign oil cost many more dollars, and costing us all more at the pump each time we scrape up enough money to fill our tanks.
We are trading our standard of living downward towards some "global" average. Bad deal!
Simultaneously with these negative factors influencing our lives we have a dramatic shift in employment to government jobs at the local, state, or national level, or into growing industries that are almost totally dependent on government funds for their markets. We are becoming a socialistic, semi-communistic economic system. Free enterprise and capitalism are disappearing and becoming "dirty words". These concepts have been overtaken by government regulation and regulators, over taxation, and liberal based administrative requirements that escalate costs and reduce productivity.
Due to the constant growth in the size and scope of governments, our property rights and our personal rights are constantly being diminished. Things we did without any concern twenty years ago we now find are illegal and you must now get a permit and have some bureaucrat sprinkle "holy water" on your project before you can proceed. You only live on your property…..they control it! The "Land of The Free" is becoming less free!
I will not accept a Candide approach to this situation. It is not the "best of all possible worlds", things can be changed. In order to accomplish changes at all levels we will have to organize and focus our votes in a single "block vote" in order to force a stop to these destructive concepts and actions.
This coming year is an election year. Join the fight! Become concerned and involved in what is going on around you. The system tries to distract your awareness by getting you to think about other, meaningless news such as O.J Simpson or Britney Spears. Do not let this happen, notice the budget increase notices, added bureaucracy, wasteful spending (such as unneeded new buildings), expanded social programs, foolish environmental requirements beyond what is justified, unnecessary sidewalks, poorly managed public projects, excessive raises and bonuses, excessive self awarded bureaucratic benefits, abusive monopolistic practices by utilities, and the multitude of other maladies that are occurring all around you.
Help in the fight in the coming months and you will be "Getting It Right"!