"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds ye; and may posterity forget that ye were our country men."
Samuel Adams
Speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776
Even a casual reflection on the writings of the Founding Fathers leaves one in awe of the willingness to sacrifice their all, so that they could live as free men. “[W]e mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” was the concluding exclamation point to the solemn Declaration of Independence, withholding nothing of themselves in the war they knew was to come.
Although others enjoyed greater historical notoriety, Samuel Adams earned the title of Father of the Revolution. No less that Thomas Jefferson offered Adams the high tribute as the Patriarch of Liberty. Samuel Adams was blessed with a unique gift to inspire and motivate with his firebrand rhetoric. No one exceeded his ability to capture and articulate the desire and purpose for independence. And he fully understood that foundational gift of liberty which his generation was establishing for all successive generations of Americans to follow. “Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free,” he said, “ but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.”
In the 234 years since Adams made his stirring speech at the Philadelphia State House, some of the individual liberty that he and his founding brothers envisioned has eroded. Over time, the “wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned,” as Jefferson saw as “the sum of good government,” has morphed into something foreign to the Founders design. That government today consumes 25% of the nation’s total economic production, and that’s not enough to satisfy the appetite for more spending. The January, 2010 Long-Term Fiscal Outlook by the GAO projects that federal spending will consume an increasingly greater portion of the total production reaching 40% of GDP within 30 years.
The Founders understood that government excess transferred to a subservient citizenry was the greatest threat to individual liberty. Whether through excessive taxation or burdensome regulation, when government takes too much “from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned,” that worker no longer is working for himself, but for the state. Discretionary choice and personal freedom evaporate as the individual’s every dollar is pre-committed.
The same is true for government. For example, the government’s own accountants (page 6) project that by 2020, “roughly 93 cents of every dollar of federal revenue will be spent on the major entitlements and net interest cost” on the debt. Any erosion of individual liberty moves a nation down the road to tyranny, as Friedrich Hayek would argue in The Road to Serfdom nearly two centuries later.
Federal debt obligations held by the public will exceed $13 trillion within days, with additional annual deficits of a trillion dollars or more anticipated for years to come. State and local government debt piles on $3 trillion more and it will get worse. Health care costs mandated to the states by Washington will increasingly compound the problem. By 2020, the GAO predicts(page 9) that combined federal, state, and local government annual budget deficits will be greater than 10 percent of GDP in a freefall (see chart below). Just 12 years later, the combined deficits will surpass 20% of GDP. All of which causes the GAO to reach the rather obvious conclusion that America “faces an unsustainable growth in debt.”
Notably the GAO projections assume historical average rates of government spending and revenue. However, spending is increasing dramatically faster than historical average, and the Democrats have drawn their tax raising sabers with over half a trillion tax increases imbedded in ObamaCare alone and noise from the Obama Administration of a brand new VAT, value-added-tax, being implemented. The result: more government coercion, less individual liberty.
Unfunded liabilities, promises made by our government through entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, total in excess of $100 trillion according to a 2009 analysis by former US Treasury economist, Bruce Bartlitt. The newly passed PPACA, ObamaCare, will significantly increase unfunded liabilities, particularly through the new long term care entitlement, the CLASS Act, which by the government’s own estimates could be insolvent in less than fifteen years after the program begins.
Government debt was anathema to the Founders. They saw it as immoral and an unjust impingement on individual liberty. As Jefferson explained in a letter to James Madison in 1789:
"The earth belongs to each of these generations, during its course, fully, and in their own right. The 2d. generation receives it clear of the debts and encumbrances of the 1st. The 3d of the 2d. and so on. For if the 1st. could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not the living generation. Then no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence."
An exploding debt and entitlement culture may be the largest and most threatening to individual freedom, but by no means are they alone. From the serious to the ridiculous, the “central planners” in the current administration are whacking away at liberty like never before.
Most Americans revere the Constitution as the closest thing to a sacred document as exists in politics. Barack Obama, however, has disdain for it as a “charter of negative liberties” that is too restrictive and prescribes “what the federal government can’t do.” Well, yes, precisely. The Founders understood that government was the greatest threat to individual liberty.
Obama laments that the Constitution gets in the way of his top priority, “redistributed change,” and that previous Presidents and Supreme Courts, “didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution.” The President already has placed one associate justice on the Supreme Court who agrees with his ideology, and he’s nominated his second.
When the economy got shaky, the new President moved swiftly to seize the once private American auto industry, fire management and put his own puppets in charge. The interests of secured creditors were confiscated and gifted to labor unions and government. “Never let a crisis go to waste,” said Rahm Emanuel, Chief-of-Staff to the President.
Empowered by TARP, the government took control of much of the financial industry, and the Democrat Congress and the Administration are busy finalizing more regulation to control the nation’s money. Proof that this legislation is really an assault on the private sector, not real “financial reform,” is the refusal by the Democrats to include reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the effort. The two GSEs (Government Sponsored Enterprises) hold or guarantee half of all mortgages in the nation, about $5.5 trillion. Their underwriting criteria and programs and failed public policy like the Community Reinvestment Act were at the heart of the sub-prime mortgage market collapse that precipitated the current recession.
ObamaCare will not only exacerbate our debt, but is a giant step toward “single payer” government controlled socialized medicine, which is an admitted objective of the President. Ultimately, patient freedom to choose and physician freedom administer care will disappear, replaced by a centrally planned government controlled, mandated, and rationed scheme.
Obama is using the oil spill in the gulf to push forward tighter controls on the energy industry and particularly to accomplish his “Cap-and-Tax” plan that is the central planners’ idea to seize by regulation what remains of the U.S. energy industry. If he can’t get the votes on Capitol Hill, he’s made it clear he’ll just do it by fiat with EPA regulations.
When Arizona took action to protect the lives and property of her citizens, the President said it was “irresponsible” and racially motivated. He prefers ignoring the assault on the right of American citizens to peacefully enjoy their freedom, and instead grant amnesty to 12 million or so illegal immigrants currently estimated to be in the U.S.
A couple hundred thousand American troops are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq against an enemy sworn to destroy all of our freedoms. Countless more are engaged around the world along with an ever growing private sector, and federal, state, and local law enforcement. But, our leaders have decided America no longer fights wars; we have “overseas contingency operations.” Our Secretary of Homeland Security, Attorney General, and even the President, himself, repeatedly perform verbal contortions to avoid saying why and who we fight; Radical Islam. Our government prosecutes Navy Seals and CIA agents, but we go to great lengths to extend civilian courtesies and protections to 9-11 killers. The Department of Justice recruits attorneys who voluntarily advocated for and defended captured terrorists. And, the citizens are left to wonder which side of Freedom our leaders are on?
The one thing that is still mostly free – the internet – the government wants to seize andregulate like a “public utility.”
And, then there is the pure silly, crazy stuff. Congress is busy holding hearings on “potty parity” – a plan to eliminate the toilet “gender discrimination” and mandate that public facilities have two female toilets for each male toilet. The FDA is going after salt in our food. Monitor and regulate the fruits and vegetables our kids eat. And, require the BMI, body mass index (fat), to be measured and recorded, from age 2-18 for all children.
Soon you will need to set another plate at your table for “Big Brother.”
No politician would ever admit they were after your freedom – but they are. Actions do speak louder than words. Republicans have done their share over time, but the ferocity of the assault on individual freedom by Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and this Democrat majority are like comparing a crack addict to the sailor who has one too many beers on shore leave.
In 1961 Ronald Reagan, long before he was president or governor, issued the following warning:
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
From his eternal resting place, The Gipper might be saying, “Well, I told you so!” Every generation of Americans since the very first has been able to positively affirm to the next that they had done what was required of them to protect and defend freedom as they had enjoyed it. What a tragedy it would be, and what an insult to our ancestors who sacrificed so very greatly, if this was the first generation unable to make that affirmation.
