It's Labor Day. Shouldn't we have miles of workers shouldering hammers and sickles marching past the White House, and the Comrade saluting them? Oh, wait. That wasn't the USA. That's May Day in the Soviet. Sorry about that....
Just thinking about work. Why is it hard to find work? It's not like there's nothing that needs to be done. So why isn't there any work?
Picture this: half a continent, a land mass that's roughly 3,000 miles east-to-west and about 2,000 miles north-to-south. Indigenous tribes live here with varying levels of technological development. Mostly they're hunter-gatherers with some agriculture. Very little and pretty shallow mining. Not too many roads, and those only local, unpaved. No communications beyond the tribe, really.
Can we call this "wilderness" just for the sake of convenience?
Then 600 years later, this wilderness transformed into the most developed and technologically advanced society in the world. Along the way, spinning off ideas and technologies that have pretty much become the standard of everyday life all over the world.
And why did people come here? To experience the ancient forests? For the thrill of traveling steerage in an old wooden ship across the North Atlantic? There wasn't anything here. Lots of potential -- maybe, no one really knew for sure -- but not even a decent harbor.
What drew most people here was the promise of freedom. That was the beacon. All that wilderness served as a magnet for people who weren't happy with the place they were born for one reason or another. Facing an indifferent wilderness was preferable to all the political bullshit and the social and economic regulation they left behind. The absolute need to clear forests -- with only a saw and an ax -- just to build a house and to plant enough food to get through the winter (fingers crossed) seemed much better than what they knew about the Old World.
Despite all the hardships, they could be free here. They gladly faced living under pine boughs and eating squirrels for the first couple of seasons, no roads, only the haphazard chance of trade, no communications... But they knew they if they were left alone they could fix these kinds of problems, and they did.
Now large voting segments of the population whine about losing their $90,000 yearly pensions when they retire at age 50. They think it's inhumane not to have "free" medical care available every time their kids fall off a swing. Somebody (else) needs to give them a job.
Hey, folks, what are we missing here? I mean, what have we lost along the road to prosperity?
We don't need Uncle Sam to fix our problems. We never did. The Founders understood this. Uncle Sam can't do a damn thing but pass laws and bully people. Now, however, seems many people are convinced that the Comrade, or someone, has some kind of magic wand.... We need him, or someone, to "save" us from... what? The fat cats aren't giving me enough money? Having to spend eight hours a day answering someone else's telephones? Really, what a nightmare!
Oh well. I was just thinking about the monumental labor that's already been applied to this wilderness. From that perspective, whatever stupid little problems we're confronting now are, genuinely, stupid and little.
All we need is freedom. Get rid of the crushing taxes and unintelligible tangle of useless regulations, the anal-compulsive nanny staters trying to herd us toward some kind of moronic and frankly, totally gutless, emotional dependency. The big issue now seems to be how to divvy up the spoils an out-of-control state believes it has some "right" to seize from the people who created it.
No. No. Governments have no "rights." Governments have only powers, and these powers are only lent to them by people with rights. We also have the right to take that power away when it begins to destroy us.
Only people have rights. We're the ultimate the authority, not the pompous, power-hungry thugs in DC.
We can fix whatever's ailing America as long as we're free. We always have. But we've got to be free, and we have the final say about that.
Save the Republic.
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