Friday, February 6, 2009

Americans Are Unfit for Self-Government

President Andrew Jackson suggested that when expedience became the basis on which the Constitution was interpreted, then Americans would no longer be fit for self governance. That day passed a century ago.

I have watched the City of New York, once a great industrial, artistic, cultural, and port center deteriorate and all of its vibrancy wither. It has become a cash cow for real estate and Wall Street interests. All of its innovative callings have fled. This was done in accordance with mandates of the City's democratic vote: urban renewal, taxes, corruption, city projects, expressways, rent control, and mismanagement.

I have watched the nation raise taxes on its citizens so that Americans are no longer free, but are wage slaves to the government, paying half or more of their incomes to corrupt, morally depraved programs like Social Security and the Department of Education.

I have watched Americans accept the debasement of their currency without effort to understand the relationships among banking, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve Bank and diminishing American expectations.

I have watched Americans allow their educational system become a plaything for extremist cranks who indoctrinate, brainwash and defraud, but do not educate.

I have watched Americans passively accept waste and failed bureaucracies: the Department of Labor; the Department of Energy; the Department of Education; the Department of Health Education and Welfare. The taxes extracted to subsidize these are paid without protest by brainwashed fools, made dull witted by the American educational system.

I have watched American culture deteriorate to the point where the flagrant stupidity that passes as entertainment and the ignorance that passes as news shocks and disorients the observer, and makes me wonder about the possibility of some widespread mental contagion.

Because Americans are unfit for self government, they have allowed a succession of special interests, Wall Street, education, employers' associations, labor unions and health care lobbies to dictate spending and taxation levels, government programs and tax systems, silently and smugly accepting the abuses of corrupt lobbies.

If future generations might look back and recall the contribution of 20th century Americans to the course of history, they will remark that this was a people that was given a great nation, and through cupidity and stupidity proved that republicanism does not work.

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