Brimacombe
Regular Articles - Click on the Go ► below for the article you want. Go ►07/04/11-Happy 235th Birthday Want some other great reading? Go to the AMERICA the EXCEPTIONAL Bookstore Happy 235th Birthday On this day, 235 years ago, our American forefathers gave witness to the truth that God creates all men with the individual right to life from the moment of conception, and that each life has the God-given right to pursue individual happiness through the God-granted liberty with which each of us is created. Our forefathers declared these truths despite the failure of all preceding human generations to recognize them. The history of mankind up to that point had been marked by men struggling to free themselves from the control of other men. All of human history had been a sad saga of kings, khans, sheiks and shamans ruling other men. The breadth of man’s potential had been subjugated to the will of the powerful. In 1776, in this new world of America, individual citizens declared their independence from the rulers of the old world. Here, at the end of thousands of years of human struggle, individuals are free to pursue their destinies as they see fit, without the need for approval from anyone, especially the governing class. Here, as in the eyes of God, princes and paupers are judged equally by the strength of their character and the product of their industry. What followed was the greatest level of human achievement in history. The miracle of America attracted millions from around the globe. And prosper we did! Still lurking in the minds of men, however, were the dark forces of the powerful seeking to control the less powerful. These forces were either brazen in their audacious demand for power or, more often, wrapped in the lamb’s fleece of seeking solutions for mankind’s problems. In all cases, however, not even the lamb’s fleece could hide the wolves’ teeth of those selfish for power. Millions suffered the atrocities of communism and Nazism. Millions more are now suffering from modern Islamofascism. Even in America, millions are suffering from dependency on an unlimited government created by a self-anointed, Ivy League elite governing class. Individual liberty is being trampled beneath the boots of those preaching what’s “best for society,” “the greater good” and “social justice.” Individual industry is being taxed to provide benefits for the non-industrious. Half of the population is now deemed to be too poor to support our national government. Our national government now ignores economic contributions by individuals and companies and instead doles out rewards to those who are well connected with the governing class. The well connected now prosper at the expense of the less well connected. So on this 235th birthday of America, we are at a crossroads for human civilization. Individual citizens must stand up and be counted in support of what made America the most exceptional experiment in human history. Individual citizens must deride those who would cynically criticize individual initiative as greed and individual achievement as taking something from others. Individual citizens must not stand silently when members of the governing class lie to them and promote class envy. Citizens must mock those attempts for the blatant power grabs that they are. The governing class must have their lamb’s fleece stripped away so that their wolves’ teeth are bared to all. America must be reclaimed by the people from the governing class. Government institutions must be stripped of the power they’ve usurped at the expense of the people. The governing class must be sent back to their academic cloisters where they can share their utopian ideas with their fellow know-nothings without foisting their failures on the rest of us. In short, it is time for the adults to return. America needs to end the embarrassment of incompetent and foolish leadership. America needs to return to its roots, where citizens use their God-given liberty to pursue their individual happiness without answering to anyone but God. The First 10,000 We passed a milestone at 2:56 a.m. EDT (1:56am CDT, 12:56am MDT, 11:56pm PDT) yesterday - 10,000 friends on our facebook page. That's quite a leap, since the page has only been active for 19 days. So Thank You to all of our new friends. Since everyone came to our page looking for a site about "Citizen Patriots working to restore Limited Government, Economic Freedom & preserve Individual Liberty," we decided to put together a description of what our group of friends looks like. First, all of our friends fervently love their country. They display it in many ways, from their musical tastes to the books they read. Second, those with children and grandchildren love to show them off on their facebook pages. And why not - they're all wonderful! Our friends also love their pets: dogs and cats of all descriptions, as well as horses, cockatoos, reptiles and other critters. For news, nearly all turn to Fox News. Not too surprising, since so many other news sources seem to at least lean to the left. For ethnicity, our friends say they're Native American, English, Scottish, Irish, Italian, French, German, Austrian, Greek, Swiss, Russian, Polish, Czech, Mexican, Cuban, Salvadorian, Nicaraguan, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino, Australian, Tongan, etc. From what our friends say about their relationships, they're either single, married, separated, divorced, widowed, in a relationship, or, my favorite, "it's complicated." For religion, they're Christian, Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Pentacostal, Nazereen, Jewish, Agnostic, Buddist, Muslim, Athiest, etc. Based on their pictures, our friends like to fish, hunt, swim, hike, bike, run or just sit in the sun. They've been educated at the School of Hard Knocks, or in high school, college, technical school and through military training. Our friends also speak some exotic languages, like Drunk, Hawaiian Pidgin, Hillbilly, I do, Jive, 70s Jive, Gibberish/Jibberish, Uber-Jibberish, Language of Love, Newspeak, Old speak, Pig Latin, Playero, Redneckology, Sarcasm, Slang, Southern Slang, Spanglish, Spinglish, Texan, Tex-Mex, Womanese, Ur Mom, etc. For employment, our friends can be found in every occupation, including Accountants, Actors, Aircraft Mechanics, Airline pilots, Airline Service Agents, Architects, Artists, Auto Mechanics, Bankers, Bench Jewelers, Builders, Career Placement Counselors, Carpenters, Charter Fishing Boat Captains, Chiropractors, Computer Scientists, Correctional Officers, Counselors, Dads, Delivery Drivers, Designers, Detectives, Domestic Engineers, Drywallers, Electricians, Engineers, Environmental Consultants, Firefighters, Florists, Foresters, Grandparents, Horse Trainers, Hospital Administrators, Insurance Agents, Interior Designers, Investigators, Investment Brokers, Landscape Designers, Lawyers, Librarians, Lobstermen, Machinists, Mail Carriers & Supervisors, Marketing Specialists, Masons, Members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard, Ministers, Moms, Mortgage Brokers, Musicians, Nurses, Office Managers, On-Air-Personalities, Painters, Pastors, Physicians, Pizza Crust Makers, Plumbers, Police Officers, Politicians, Postmasters, Principals, Professors, Public Relations Directors, Real Estate Appraisers, Realtors, Retail Clerks, Retail Store Owners, Roofers, Salespeople and Sales Managers, Shelf Stockers, Silver Appraisers, Singers, Small Business Owners, Songwriters, Students, Surgeons, Tae Kwon Do Instructors, Taxi Drivers, Teachers, Tool & Die Makers, Truck Drivers, Veterinarians, Watchmakers, Welders, etc. We think our friends are great! After all, they're American Citizen Patriots. The Fate of Our Nation in the Balance Let’s see if I understand the situation in Wisconsin and other states, like California, Michigan and Ohio. I go to work for a state or local government – I teach school, work as a prison guard, work as a maintenance person in a government building, council the unemployed, maintain roads, etc. I get a pay check for $26.251 per hour. I like it that my pay is 33.3%1 more than the private-industry rate of $19.681 per hour. Like 99%1 of my fellow state and local government workers, I get retirement benefits. Too bad, I think, for the 26%1 of private-industry workers who don’t get those benefits. Also, like 99%1 of my fellow state and local government workers, I get medical benefits. Too bad again, I think, for the 14%1 of private-industry workers who don’t get those benefits. I like those medical benefits even more since I pay only 11%1 of the medical premiums versus the 20%1 that I’d have to pay if I worked in private industry. If I get sick, I get paid sick leave, just like 98%1 of my fellow state and local government workers. I don’t know what I would do if I was part of the 26%1 of private-industry workers who don’t get paid sick leave. And as much as I like my state or local government job I really like the 11 days of paid holidays1 I get every year. I sometimes have to laugh at my private-industry neighbors on those 3 days every year1 that they have to work while I’m enjoying a paid holiday. Oh, it’s pretty sad that some of my private-industry neighbors got laid off from their jobs. That has almost never happened to me or my fellow state and local government workers. It’s pretty sad, too, that so many of my private-industry neighbors will have to work at their jobs well into their 60’s or 70’s. Their retirement plans just don’t compare with those that I and my fellow state and local government workers enjoy. Heck, some of my state and local government worker buddies retired after working only 20 years. And their retirement benefits are greater than what many of my private-industry neighbors are earning on their jobs. But, hey, now this newly-elected Republican governor and Republican legislature want to change things. They say the state can’t afford all of this. Well, nuts to them. I’m just going to take paid sick leave and join in the protest down at the state capitol. I have my rights, too. Yes, that’s an attitude I could adopt if I was a state or local government employee. And that’s why we have a problem. I don’t think that I’m overstating it to say that the struggle now going on in Wisconsin and spreading rapidly to other states is the most important political battle of the 21st century. The outcome of that struggle, I believe, will answer several important questions. Here are some of them:
The fate of our nation, based on individual liberty, limited government and economic freedom, hangs on the answers to these questions. Notes: 1 Douglas Belkin and Kris Maher, Wisconsin Democrats Keep on the Move, The Wall Street Journal, February 19-20, 2011; pg A3; Source: Labor Dept. First they ignore you, Here's one way you may consider to help:
Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You – Yada, Yada, Yada Fifty years ago today, on Inauguration Day 1961, when President Kennedy exhorted Americans to “Ask not what your country can do for you…” I felt a small twinge. I’m from the first year of the baby boom, after all, and we’d been told to ask for (nay, demand!) everything. We were to be given the best of everything. The best schools, cheap college educations (or nearly free in wild places like California), fast, sporty cars fueled by daddy’s wallet and all to the beat of rock ‘n’ roll music. And here was President Kennedy, the youngest President ever, telling us not to ask for things. Didn’t he get it? We were entitled! Yep, we were told in a thousand different ways, our parents endured the deprivations of growing up during the Great Depression and then fighting the endless, bloody, monstrous World War II so that we, their children, wouldn’t have to do as much in our lifetimes. Sure, as a first year boomer, the ideas were still a bit new. We were expected to earn some money for ourselves when we were in high school. But we weren’t supposed to work too much. Life was too short for that. We were supposed to enjoy our youth – something our parents never had the luxury of doing. It didn’t take many more years of boomers to instill the idea of entitlement into our generation. It became pretty obvious that we were, as we were constantly told, “the brightest and best educated, generation ever.” There was no limit to what we would achieve – and nobody should try to stifle us in any way. What followed Kennedy’s exhortation was a decade-long inferno of generational self-indulgence. The movement was led by a self-appointed cadre of misfit rich kids who were eagerly followed by a wave of first of the family college students liberated by being away from parental supervision. It was all fueled by beer, birth control pills and psychedelic drugs. Take responsibility for ourselves? Are you kidding? We were liberated! We boomers marched for civil rights for blacks. We burned bras and demanded equality for women. We burned draft cards (and a lot of buildings) to protest against a war in Viet Nam we didn’t want to fight. We were entitled, after all! We were fulfilling the stated part of our parents’ dreams – we weren’t going to suffer like they had. Somewhere along the line, however, some of us realized that most of our parents also expected that we take responsibility for our lives. We couldn’t always live off of Daddy’s money and expect everything to be handed to us. Maybe that’s what President Kennedy meant. We needed to grow up and start asking what we could do to contribute. Instead, however, we demanded more. And Kennedy’s cynical successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, used the occasion of a University of Michigan commencement speech to propose the Great Society, a program to give us even more goodies, this time paid for by the federal government. We boomers accepted the LBJ goody bag readily. But being the ingrates we’ve always been, we hounded him out of office when he demanded that we fight his war. How dare him! We were entitled, after all. So where are we now, fifty years after JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you” exhortation? Well, we’re facing retirement at a time when the government entitlement tank has run dry. Our Social Security and Medicare programs will start disintegrating long before the last boomer even starts retirement. When our children look at their payroll-tax ravaged paychecks and their enormous outstanding student loans, they will rightly look at us in disgust when we whine about our entitlement plight. I guess we should have listened to our “young generation” President. No, not this generation’s “young generation” President, Barack Obama. He wants people to look to the government to solve everyone’s problems. We should have listened to the “young generation” President from fifty years ago, John F. Kennedy, who exhorted us to take responsibility for ourselves. By ignoring JFK and living the entitled life, we boomers will now face an increasingly uncertain future, where deprivation will likely return as a normal way of life. "Yeah, Whatever" Around this time every two years we citizens have the opportunity to watch new Senators and Members of Congress take their oaths of office. “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion...” Though I don’t think you’ll hear any of the new representatives say it, several must be thinking “Yeah, whatever.” Supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States just isn’t worthy of their time and effort, they seem to think. Many members of Congress feel that their role is to make a difference, as that tiresome cliché goes. Or, they’re in Congress to help people by showering them with federal dollars pouring from bureaucrat-operated spigots. “Some of my friends are for this proposal, and some of my friends are against this proposal,” the Congressman explains, “and I’m for my friends.” “I can’t get reelected without delivering the pork,” many candid Washington politicians claim. They honestly feel that their constituents send them to the nation’s capitol for the purpose of shaking down the rest of the nation’s taxpayers in a never ending quest to see who can drain the most money out of the treasury. While all of this seemed to work for many decades, times have changed. There just isn’t any money left. Decades of entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare have finally caught up to economic reality. Too few dollars go into the coffers of these programs and too many dollars get paid out. It use to be that Tom, Dick, Harry, Sue, Mike, Fred, Cathy, Bob, Jan, Paul, Ted and Sally all paid in to Social Security while only Chester was taking money out, a 12 to 1 ratio of payers to takers. Now Tom and Dick have joined Chester in retirement, leaving only Harry, Sue, Mike, Fred, Cathy, Bob, Jan, Paul, Ted and Sally to continue providing the money, a 3.33 to 1 ratio of payers to takers. Harry wants to retire soon. That will change things to a 2.25 to 1 ratio of payers to takers. This is how it might look: The Past
Now
Soon, Harry wants to retire
At the rate of taxes required to support Chester, Tom, Dick and Harry in retirement, Sue, Mike, Fred, Cathy, Bob, Jan, Paul, Ted and Sally may get pretty fed up with this system. They may even start a nasty political battle to end the program. All of this could have been avoided, of course, if members of Congress had taken their oaths seriously. There’s no provision in the Constitution granting the federal government the power to create entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. Yes, Congress can pass a tax, which is what the courts have ruled Social Security to be. But unless the Congress also reigns in the “benefits” paid for this entitlement program to stay in line with the tax they’ve voted to collect from citizens, then the more likely it is that Sue, Mike, Fred, Cathy, Bob, Jan, Paul, Ted & Sally will be demanding strong political action from those who’ve sworn to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
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