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You may be a patriot at heart, but I don't think you have appreciated what is happening to the United States, how quickly it is happening now, and what the consequences are going to be.

By way of analogoy, I think you are at risk of suffering some of the same delusions that keep liberals making the same mistakes. Liberals identify what they perceive to be problems and then propose what they see as solutions. Poverty is a lack of money. Solution-give poor people more money. Walla, now the beneficiaries of this largesse are not in poverty. And the cycle repeats endlessly. Clearly the problem of poverty has not been solved, but liberals feel like they did something and their guilt is assuaged. Now they feel they have accomplished something by replacing the guilt with a feeling of pride and accomplishment.

How is this analogous to you and FreeRepublic? You see the problems and wrong-headedness of Democrats and Liberals. Walla, defeat the Democrats and the problem is solved. But unfortunately, it is not that simple. Democratic politicians don't give a rat's behind about poor people. Democratic politicians are interested in getting elected and they do this by pandering to the poor and to the liberals that want to help the poor. To an extent there have always been Republican politicians interested in only getting elected as well, but what separated Republicans as a whole in the past, was a concern to do the right thing for the country even if it was not politically popular with the people. What truly separated Ronald Reagan was that he was willing to attempt to change the hearts and minds of the people to the right thing and was very able in convincing the people what the right thing actually was. By the same token, even if he was not able to change the hearts and minds of the people, to the extent that he could, he was still willing to attempt to do what he was convinced was right even if nobody else agreed and most opposed him.

After the collapse of the Republican leadership in the House and Trent Lott's shameful surrender in the Senate, Republican politicians have become considerably more concerned about their own re-election than they are about doing the right thing for the country. CFR and prescription drugs for seniors lead the list, but there are a slew of items on the list. Bush and the recent Republican Congresses have expanded government spending and government growth at levels that make Clinton and the Democrats envious. The sad truth is that Republicans were more effective in defeating socialistic programs and government growth as the minority party than they have been since they became the majority in 1994. Conservatives rejoiced in November 1994, but the reality is that things are much worse now. The Republican Revolution turned out not to reverse or restrain government growth, but instead proved to only be a change of engineers who were driving the train. We are still on the wrong track and headed in the same wrong direction.

When an entire country is going in the wrong direction, there are only two ways that it is going to change. From the top down by leadership provided by someone like Ronald Reagan, or from the bottom up- a grass roots effort led by someone like FreeRepublic and Jim Robinson.

I had visions of Rush Limbaugh running for President. No one is more like Reagan in his thinking and talents than Rush. It is terribly unfortunate that Rush lacked Reagan's strength of character. Now I am looking for Rush's replacement as the next Reagan for the top down approach. But if Jim Robinson can see the light, FreeRepublic can be the catalyst that makes Republicans recognize that it is doing what is right that matters and that we either must enlighten more Americans to win elections or elect leaders that can. It is not winning that matters. It is doing what is right that is important.

The United States is important, but not because it is our country or our homeland. In truth, there is nothing sacred about this or any other country. What has made the United States special, what has made "our" country special and sacred is the freedom that was guaranteed to us through the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Freedom itself is what is sacred. And the tragic truth is that our freedom has been eroding for over a century, and it has been eroding on a rapidly progressive basis since 1935. Socialism is on the verge of destroying the United States politically and economically. If we don't end socialism in this country before 2016, the United States is going to go bankrupt. The status quo is both unacceptable and not economically viable.

History teaches us that unsustainable trends end. The United States is in an unsustainable trend. There are three ways the trend can change. The status quo ends in bankruptcy with fragmentation through secessions with disintegration likely before the 2016 election. We can return to limited to government under the Constitution with the abolition of socialism in this country through elections based on a grass roots effort or via a top down method by electing another Ronald Reagan. You are not going to like the third choice so I won't discuss it. One of these is inevitable. I suggest that Jim Robinson and the members of FreeRepublic give some thought and comment to this analysis. You may disagree completely or you might only question my timing. If I prove to be wrong, it will only be about the methods of change or the timing. The status quo is not viable. The United States as it presently exists is coming to an end, and that end is less than two decades in the future and possibly not much more than one. Denying this possibility is irrational, if not frankly delusional. Delaying or avoiding this discussion is irresponsible.

Columbus took a chance and broke new ground. But Columbus was not an adventurer or just a sailor willing to gamble. Columbus was the premier cartographer of his time. Ship Captains were willing to trade their own private self-discovered valuable navigation information with Columbus in exchange for Columbus's navigation charts which were the most current and best of their time. I don't know whether Columbus believed the world to be a globe or not, but it is fairly simple and common to pick up a large sheet by the edges and hold them together for moving to another location. How difficult is it to grasp the concept that two locations at the opposite edges of a chart can actually be adjoining when you hold the two edges of the chart together?

Now it is time for FreeRepublic and Jim Robinson to "take a chance" and examine the potential of joining the edges to chart a new course for the United States. The United States and freedom are in serious decline. Many Americans might have difficulty in seeing that the end of the United States is actually in sight. Some will not believe that we have only three elections (2004, 2008 and 2012) in which to solve America's two major problems. Nations do not generally survive the complete collapse of their currencies or their credit. We in the United States face both and it is unlikely that we will remain solvent and credit worthy until 2020. If we don't fix our financial problems before 2016, I don't believe there will be a Presidential election in 2016 because the United States will become the "untied states" through a rapid series of secessions by individual and clusters of states.

There is an alternative solution. Instead of changing nations, we change the attitudes of politicians and political parties, particularly the platform and leadership of the Republican Party.

Americans For A Free Republic have some ideas that should appeal to the members of this forum. Here are few excerpts from their mission statement linked above:

Gold Money and Equal Tax Rates!
Creating a Viable Challenge to the Demopublicans

The two levers of power that have allowed Gargantua to grow into such a hideous beast were given to it in 1913 with the enactment of the Federal Reserve and the progressive income tax. These two institutions destroyed the idea of "limited government" that the Founders had given us in 1787.

These two institutions were the death knell of a free and prosperous republic. With the ability to print money and confiscate our incomes, the Federal Government was thus able to grow exponentially over the past century -- well beyond the strictly constrained power that the Founding Fathers intended it to be.

Its power has been greatly exacerbated along the way by the merging of our two parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, into carbon copies of each other. These two supposedly separate institutions have become nothing but two divisions of the same party -- the Demopublican Party. They never oppose each other on fundamental goals, only on specific details on how to implement the same goal. And their common goal is to expand the power of the Federal Government via more and more taxation, spending, pork and privileges.