The Rasmussen Poll everyone should be familiar with has been posted in the left side column.
When I was a young boy I was angry at everything. I remember it well. The universe was a malevolent place that we were all trapped in, forced to do time in, doomed to suffer for years in. I guess you could say, growing up was a process of being more and more aware of my surroundings. My first paycheck was my first real civics lesson. I found out what an Income Tax was, and what all the rest of those deductions on my check were. No classroom teacher was going to teach me "the cost" of living in a mixed economy, just the benefits of one. Reagan may have cut some of my taxes, but a dozen Presidents before him were busy raising them. From that point on I began to envision what I saw as the "ideal". A nation without a mixed economy. Remove socialism out of the American economy, and taxes are not needed. Most Americans would love to finance a war on terror, Gitmo, and a predominantly friendly police force and court system, Voluntarily. And could, if they were allowed to keep the full fruits of their labor, which would be a 40% increase in their pay if you include the total tax burden on the average American, local, state, and federal, income, consumption, fees, ect.
My mom told me, when I asked why I didn't recieve my full compensation for my labor on my first paycheck, "its to pay for the police, roads, and bridges". I thought that explaination sounded reasonable. But when I first moved away from home and found people living better than me, while I worked 60 or more hours a week, and they worked none, I began to question Moms Roads/Bridges/Police explaination. Now that I am 40, and due to a lack of the usual deductions most enjoy, I estimate I have paid a decades worth of my life, working to pay my taxes. In the end, what did I get? What has America gotten? For anyone still working, or still trying to keep a business afloat, you know the answer. The bubble of the "mixed economy". Capitalism, mixed with Socialism, officially at 60-40.
My conclusion on taxes is this, and it is a simple one. We don't argue for scraps. We don't call our politicians and ask them for a 61-39 mix of Capitalism & Socialism. We ask them for a refund, but not for our money, but for our time. "I want my ten years of living, back!".
But the stakes for America are more serious than this. Yes, we are half breed slaves, the lot of us, but our very existance is now being threatened. I spent six months of my life in a war torn muslim country in the early nineties. They do not just hate "the west". They are currently planning to destroy it. That includes America. Understand also, that includes you and me. This should cause people to stop and pay attention. National defense effects everyone, like taxation, but can end our prosperity overnite, unlike taxation. When I first saw the trade center towers under attack on TV, and heard that it may have been a terror attack, I thought of the murderous thugs who hated us in Somalia when I was there. Now I was not a fan of the Bush doctrine of war. Nor was I a fan of Gitmo. I was not a left wing Bush-hater. I just didn't like the "extras" the neo-conservatives brought to the table in reguards to national defense. Tribunals, trials, commissions, occupations, reparations, negotiations, and useless treaty expectations, with the worst kind of humans out there.
Whatever you want to call this war we are in, I think most people of reason will agree, it is a war. In places like Afganistan, and possibly Iraq still, to some measure, it very much is a war. There are troops beyond our shores fighting, to the death at times, to preserve this, the greatest nation on earth. I applaud them for that. But what do they think of us, putting on show trials for the captured worst of the worst? We all know these bearded thugs are guilty. Even the President says so. So then , why the trial? I think the purpose of terrorist on trial is obvious. It is a political football. These men should have been interrogated, then "tortured" for every last drop of information. Where could the military have done this? Gitmo. Why is this not being done? Because political victories for the left, and this administration, are more important, than the real victories.
How long can this last? I dont know. Not forever, certainly. The Gitmo guest list names keep turning up on battlefields with more blood on their hands. But I can tell you I do still long for the ideal. If we are going to have to fight an enemy, we should fight that enemy, and nothing more. We owe them nothing but a response in force to 9/11. I miss the war on terror, I miss Gitmo, they meant the government could actually do the only job it is truly chartered to do...protect the individual rights of the citizens who chartered this ngovernment hundreds of years ago.
Thats what our politicians need to know. That we ask for something called Individual Rights to be made concrete in our lives. That we are worth it. And that no matter the party, anything less than victory and individual liberty, is unacceptable.
No comments:
Post a Comment