Posted on 12/21/2009 8:18:00 PM PST by rabscuttle385
If you are under 30, you really need to read this column and pass it on to your friends. Your elected officials are dooming you to a new sort of bondage, a form of 21st Century slavery, if you will.
First, some background.
On October 16, 1854, Abraham Lincoln, then a former one-term Congressman, gave a three hour speech in Peoria, Illinois in which he decried the extension of slavery into the territories. The Republican Party was barely three months old. Lincoln warned that slavery was a “monstrous injustice” based on the raw principle of “self-interest” at odds with the “fundamental principles of civil liberty.”
Lincoln was moved to action by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, widely seen as a check on the growth of slavery in the territories.
At Peoria, Lincoln presented the economic, legal and moral case against slavery.
Today, we are faced with a similar and urgent crisis: a burgeoning debt at all levels of government that threatens our prosperity, our posterity, and our probity.
This week, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 218-214 to raise the debt limit to $12.4 trillion. Including all unfunded liabilities, such as Medicare and Social Security, federal obligations have reached $106 trillion.
Just the cost of paying back the borrowing from President Obama’s Stimulus plan, which I opposed, will cost you $280 per month for the rest of your life. Imagine buying and trashing an iPod every month for the rest of time – that’s the practical impact of just one of the many planned expansions of government from Obama, Reid, Pelosi and Boxer.
Meanwhile, garden variety federal spending – spending that grew too fast under our last president as well – is vaulting even higher, with Senator Boxer recently voting for a “routine” $1.1 trillion appropriations bill that spends 12 percent more than last year.
Paying for all of this federal spending will eventually force middle-class tax rates to double. For those in college that means you will likely have to postpone starting a family and buying a house, take longer to pay off your student loans, and have less savings for education, health care, and retirement.
This is intergenerational theft and it is immoral.
In fact, it has a certain parallel to slavery. In effect, your leaders are stealing from your future while you, those younger than you, and those yet born, don’t have a say in the process. It is, as Lincoln said, based on pure “self-interest.” Of the mounting debt and its impact on the 65 million Americans between the ages of 16 and 30 we can invoke Lincoln by saying that your, “sacred right of self government is grossly violated by it!”
In this, California is a harbinger, once again, for the nation. Our state debt and obligations are approaching half a trillion dollars. This has led to a plummeting credit rating that pumps up the cost of borrowing. This, in turn, diminishes the money available to fund schools, repair roads, and provide social services. That’s why, as a lawmaker, I have yet to vote for a general obligation bond that would be repaid by the taxpayers – our credit card has been maxed out since I arrived in Sacramento in 2004 and, no matter what the claimed urgency, I have resisted the temptation to add to debt that my 18 and 12-year-old daughters would have to repay for the next 30 years.
Our national debt also has profound and unsettling national security ramifications. Since Mr. Obama became president, the Peoples Republic of China has quietly sold their long-term U.S. government securities and shifted their entire $985 billion government debt portfolio to securities with six-month maturities. What might happen next spring when the Chinese simply let these securities mature and demand dollars for their debt?
Once upon a time, Americans were concerned for their children, for future generations. They saved and invested and built. Today, those in charge are taking the full inheritance from those whose turn at the helm is yet to come. In a sense, allowing their raw self-interest in massively borrowing for the present to bury the future. We are living better today at the expense of those who largely cannot vote. Why? Because we can.
The institution of slavery was also driven by self-interest. One man was able to live off the sweat of another man’s brow. Why? Because he could.
Perhaps America has become hardened to her children. Perhaps the generation in power today, a generation raised on self-interest, self-gratification, and self-actualization, cannot help but to steal from the future to bolster their present.
I can only hope that California’s youth will awake to the danger and reclaim their future before it is too late.
One last word. When Lincoln spoke at Peoria, the Republican Party was in its infancy. Today, the Republican Party is 155-years-old. In recent years we lost our way on the principle of fiscal discipline. Many current and former Party leaders either encouraged Big Government or idly stood by without thought of the economic, moral and future implications. This is why the Republican Party ranks lower in many eyes than an as yet unformed “Tea Party.” But, the debt crisis is too dire, and the stakes too high, to try to form a new party in the midst of this storm. Instead, those of us who care about America and its future must act now to fully reclaim the Republican Party and fashion it into a real alternative to the Big Government, Big Spending, Big Borrowing and Big Taxing ways of the Democratic Party. It is only by first being true to our principles that can we hope to successfully challenge Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and their allies.
Chuck DeVore is a California State Assemblyman and candidate for U.S. Senate in 2010. He retired from the Army National Guard at the rank of lieutenant colonel and served as a Reagan White House appointee in the Pentagon. He co-authored the novel China Attacks. He can be followed on Twitter @chuckdevore and his Facebook account is facebook.com/DeVoreForCalifornia.
Sorry, I can't let that go without saying that $300 billion max (Republicans) is a hell of a lot less than $1.4 Trillion (firt year Democrats). You can shoot me but I'll still say they're different.
They're different, all right...and Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin know it. I know it, You know it, the American people know it, and Bob Dole knows it.
rabscuttle385 adheres to this principle:
"Make the enemy (in rabs' case, the GOP) live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this. They can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."
-Saul Alinsky
Economic genocide, if you ask me...
The best way to crush a communist is with the front end of your F150!
Anyone who talks of small government and then acts like the left-wing statist enemy (i.e., the Democrats) becomes the enemy.
I wouldn't expect a partisan sheep like yourself to fully comprehend such a thing.
After all, your vested interest (in accordance with the quote on your FR home page) is merely to elect Republicans, which of course implies that you would probably vote for a Democrat with an "R" after its name over a conservative who had to switch to the "D" in order to get past a primary and on to the general election ballot, as was the case in the South Carolina U.S. Senate election in 2008.
You're FReaking hilarious rabs...why don't you say the guy's name?
It's Bob Conley.
Darling of Daniel McCarthy and Lew Rockwell, endorsed by Truther-sympathizer Chuck Baldwin.
Get rid of Lindsey by all means but replace him with an actual conservative. LOL.
Seems to me your position is self marginalizing, but at least you have the consolation of never having to compromise your lofty ideals by facing up to realpolitik.
Seems to me your position is self marginalizing, but at least you have the consolation of never having to compromise your lofty ideals by facing up to realpolitik.
You are using Alinsky's tactics against the GOP here at FR.
You're a fellow traveler with Ayers, Obama, Wright, Hillary and every other anti-Republican thug in the country.
The last time I called you what you are, my post was deleted, so there's no point in saying what so many of us have known for some time.
What are you babbling about now, Chunga?
I responded to your post, but I did not in any way claim to or admit to being a follower of Alinsky.
Now, if I in fact did, you are more than welcome to point me to the statement where I associated myself with the values and philosophy of Ayers, Obama, Wright, and Hillary.
Either put up or shut up.
The last time I called you what you are, my post was deleted, so there's no point in saying what so many of us have known for some time.
And what is that, Chunga?
Adherence to "realpolitik" (i.e., "practical politics," or politics based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations) at the expense of standing firm on those "certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency or simply to swell [a party's, or a faction's] numbers" is what has brought the United States to the pitiful state she finds herself in today.
Actually, come to think of it, being "pragmatic" in the way that you two would prefer--or as Chunga puts it on his FR home page, "Conservatives don't let Democrats win elections. They vote Republican."--isn't pragmatic at all, since it requires the adherence to the principle that it is always acceptable to vote for a candidate that is Republican and always unacceptable to vote for a candidate that is not Republican.Now, we have already discussed the financial status of the Federal government over the bulk of Chunga's lifetime, and straight by the numbers, taken directly from U.S. government Web sites, it is indisputable that the size of the Federal government has NEVER decreased since the 1930s, irrespective of which party is in power. Furthermore, it is indisputable that Bush, who faced a Republican-controlled Congress for the bulk of his two terms in office as POTUS, created nearly $5 Trillion in on-balance-sheet Federal debt on top of the increase in revenues supposedly created by his 2003 tax cuts which was of course spent. (That's not counting the unfunded liabilities associated with his infamous Medicare Part D program.)
So, to be honest, it seems that the "pragmatic" (or rather, not-so-"pragmatic") strategy of simply voting Republican as a general rule or without question is not working.
Oh, and by the way, if it's Bob Conley vs. Lindsey Graham, I'll pick Bob Conley. No hesitation. No qualms. No regrets.
The sad thing about that is that most people under 30 voted for and/or supported 0. Those of us who are under 30 and have the ideology that you and I do are probably the exception and not the rule.
“The sad thing about that is that most people under 30 voted for and/or supported 0. Those of us who are under 30 and have the ideology that you and I do are probably the exception and not the rule. “
40 years of NEA indoctrination caused much of this.
If you stay here and the Socialists are not stopped in 2010 they will locate and Cannibalize every last real asset left. They are like a swarm of Locusts.
That’s true. They’ll pursue that process in earnest, until they find that we don’t have the facilities, trained tradesmen and tools for producing the many things that they need for sustaining big government. As it is now, our trading partners fear that we won’t begin producing enough useful things for real trade and are headed for default. And the last of the Ponzi schemes for bilking those trading partners out of money and products are fading. Their “investments” are simply piling up without hopes for returns in the near future.
Even the USSR had manufacturing facilities and tools for everything that it needed and only lacked the motivations (oligarchy, bad management). Our political, business and academic bosses have no real wealth (useful products made right here) to control. Because of that, their money and assets (vacant lands, do-nothing offices, depreciating items, etc.) will be worthless.
...like some salad dressing with that lettuce? ...perhaps find a way to cut some steel with those bills? Oh, yeah. The scrap steel was all shipped out to trading partners. Maybe dig some ore with that bread, and go from there.
IMO, survival until then will be difficult for many, but eventually, government offices will be very empty. The greatest resource will again be that of men of ingenuity.
I agree. Survival is the key. I have a plan in progress because I do not think the country is going to make it. A small self sufficient sailboat with 2 years supplies of basic items. At least I will be in good weather in the low lattitudes.
Thanks for the ping.
The problem is not Republicans or Democrats - it’s us! No politician wins election unless he promises to bring home the bacon. We all want to maintain our place at the trough and force the other guy to give up his.
How many people who call themselves conservative still want government schools, government loans, etc.? We say we want spending cut, but that is not true. If the Americans really wanted smaller government, we would have it.
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