Last Of The Sour Grapes Series

It has become common for advertisers to exploit events by holding large sales named after a particular holiday. Usually those placing the ads will brag about dropping prices or having zero percent interest for a certain amount of time.

However, in the ads for car and truck sales that I have seen lately, there is a new gimmick designed to get you into the salesroom and into a new vehicle, cheap or free gas. I have seen ads that promise you $2.99 gas for life if you buy their vehicle. I have seen ads that promise $1000 in free gas if you buy before the end of the July 4th weekend. I find that indicative of our economic situation that auto dealers are playing upon your concerns about the rising cost of gasoline.

As I watch these ads over this July 4th weekend, a wide range of emotions have passed through me. I normally begin by becoming angry that these advertisers desecrate a holiday meant for remembering our nation's independence, and the sacrifices made by our founders, all so that they can sell a few cars and trucks. Then I proceed to thoughts of concern over our nation's floundering economic situation. Finally my thoughts return to the people of this country.

Lately I have been awfully harsh on the American people. My methods may not be as effective as I would like, but I am only trying to get people to open their eyes and see what is behind the damage that is being done, and has been done, to our nation by our government, and by those outside influences who wield control over them. I want people to stop trusting their leaders at their word, to stop trusting the mainstream media to provide them with all the facts, or the truth for that matter.

When something as precious as your individual liberty, or the survival of your country is threatened, ought not you to do all that you can to protect it? Would anyone who holds even the slightest amount of honor and dignity cower in the corner, or sit in another room watching television while the safety of his home or family is threatened? How could that same person refuse to take action in defense of his nation or their liberty, especially when it is being threatened by the very people he has entrusted to safeguard it?

Is this what we have become, a nation of timid little mice, too afraid to be different, to take a stand, speak out, and fight if necessary, with whatever abilities that God has given us, against corruption and evil so pervasive, so coordinated that it threatens the very existence of our nation and our Constitution?

Or could it be that we have become so absorbed in our own self-gratification that anything that requires us to take the time to research and to question the legitimacy of the actions of our elected representatives is considered an unwanted intrusion upon our time?

Our ancestors who fought, and those who paid the ultimate price for our liberty, must be hiding their faces in shame at how we have allowed such a travesty to befall to happen to the principles upon which this nation was founded, to witness this nation deteriorating while our liberties are trampled upon by people of our own choosing.

When we go to the polls to vote for a candidate, we no longer have the slightest idea what the duties are of the person for whom we cast our vote or what his qualifications are. Would you hire someone to do a job at your house if you did not know what first needed to be done? Would you not check that person's qualifications to make sure he or she was trained and licensed to do the job properly? If you would do all that work for something as minor as making a repair to your home, why would you not do the same for someone who has the ability to raise your taxes, send your son off to war, or in the worst case scenario, ruin your country and erase your God-given rights?

When people go to vote, they no longer cast their ballot for the candidate who promises to do what is best for our nation. Instead, they vote for whoever makes the most appealing sounding promises that will benefit them as individuals.

Alexander Tytler is often quoted as saying, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”

Whether or not he actually said that is irrelevant. The fact is that it aptly applies to us. We now have two candidates running for office who are the most unworthy I have seen in my fifty years of existence on this planet. The people who follow them, particularly the followers of Barack Obama, are almost maniacal in their misdirected, mindless loyalty. They refuse to even consider that their candidate may have some serious flaws that make him unworthy to be President.

It is not just the people to blame. The political parties put their support behind these candidates as well. If you will recall, Ron Paul ran on the Republican platform and was shunned and neglected by his own political party.

I wrote both the national and the state Republican Party offices asking how I might obtain Ron Paul material, banners, flyers and such to post and hand out while he was actively campaigning. I never once heard from them. The political parties had already decided that Ron Paul was not going to get their support.

George Washington had the following to say about political parties, “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.” Washington also warned us to “Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”

Our system of government is quite simple, and at the same time exquisite in its design. The Constitution grants the individual branches certain powers to do certain things, the whole time we the people have the ability to recall those whom we elect for overstepping the authority granted them. Again, George Washington said, “The power under the constitution will always be in the people. It is entrusted for certain defined purposes, and for a certain limited period, to representatives of their own choosing; and, whenever it is executed contrary to their interest, or not agreeable to their wishes, their servants can and undoubtedly will be recalled.”

However, somewhere along the line, we fell asleep at the wheel, we took our eyes off our government and turned them to our own personal gratification. Our government began to grow in both size and scope of its powers as the power-hungry expanded their domain of power. We were told that the laws they passed were in our best interests. Daniel Webster warned us about good intentions, “Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions.”

When a person is lied to enough times, without ever having the opportunity to hear the truth, that lie becomes the truth to him. When the truth is finally told, that person is often unwilling to accept it, and those who speak the truth are scorned and ridiculed as conspiracy theorists or whackos.
When people write about our liberties being stripped away from us by our government, those who read these articles laugh at us. They, obviously have not done their homework, and they are not taking seriously the warnings about human nature and power given to us by our Founding Fathers. They do not understand what the true meaning of liberty is.

Thomas Jefferson described liberty as, “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”

Does that sound like the society we live in today, where all we do is get taxed, licensed and regulated by government? James Madison, who is considered to be the author of the Constitution, once stated, “[T]he powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction.”

When we vote, we elect people to do a job in our government. They are to represent our wishes in government, as long as those wishes are within the powers granted to them by the charter that is the Constitution. They have no authority to take one step outside the powers granted them by the Constitution, yet they do so regularly. That happens because we are, a) ignorant of what the Constitution says, and b) we expect the government to take care of us. Ben Franklin once said, “The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”

Individual liberty means that you are free to do as you please as long as your actions do not infringe upon the rights and safety of others. However, there is also a flip side to that, and that is that liberty means that you are also responsible for your own actions, and ultimately for your own success or failure.

When our government passes a law under the umbrella of the ‘general welfare’ clause of the Constitution, it claims that it has the authority to do what is best for us, whether we like it or not. However, James Madison said this about the general welfare, “With respect to the words, "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the details of power connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution…[that] was not contemplated by the creators.”

Therefore, the only way that we as a people can know if our government is doing the job it was hired to do is to educate ourselves as to what the Constitution says, and to keep ourselves informed as to what our government is doing. The consequences of not doing these things are already apparent in the lamentable state of affairs of our nation.

Thomas Jefferson said one more thing that I find interesting: “Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.”

Is that what our nation has become, a group of mindless zombies who blindly follow along without contemplating the repercussions of our government's actions? I fear that may be the case when I see people throng around a candidate such as Barack Obama as if he were a messiah. I fear it may be so when I am told by people what their reasons are for voting for a particular candidate.

If that is the case, I would ask that people stop asking God to bless America, and instead ask that God save America, save it from itself, for it is obvious that it does not know how to do so on its own.