He showed them a clip of something you’ve probably seen: the National Debt Clock in New York City. On Monday, the National Debt Clock said our national debt was more than $14.4 trillion, and it said each family’s share of this monstrous total was $122,303.
Steve tried to explain the situation this way to his kids:
“Who would you vote for? Someone who promises to give you lollipops every day at school, even though he can’t afford them? Or someone who says he needs to take your desks away because we can’t afford to pay for them?”
His eight-year-old piped up, “I vote for the lollipops guy!”
And of course, that is the problem. Ever since Franklin Delano Roosevelt made the redistribution of wealth the official policy of the United States, a majority of our citizens have been voting for “the lollipops guy” a majority of the time. We’ve reached the shocking situation in which more of our citizens receive something from government than contribute to paying the bills.
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“How do we fix it?” Steve’s children asked. Here’s what he said:
“As a good person, you need to keep your promises. So if someone earned lollipops this year, they should get them. But if you don’t have the money to buy lollipops in the future, you have to stop promising to give away lollipops.”
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Just promise to stop giving away lollipops.
But of course, the Harry Reids, Nancy Pelosis and Barack Obamas of the world will never agree. More to the point, they will never voluntarily relinquish the power, perks and prestige that pandering to greedy constituents has given them. They know that if they have to start taking away lollipops, their popularity will plunge faster than Congress’s credibility.
We made a huge start toward turning things around last year. The big spenders in Washington (and in many of our State governments) are still in shock over the number of Tea Party types who got elected in November 2012 — and not just the Young Turks in the House, or the lions of liberty like Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Mike Hill in the Senate.
No, the changes at the State level are even more stunning — and may be more significant. Several States are now openly defying the dictates from Washington. They’re suing to stop Obamacare, demanding that they be allowed to combat the flood of illegal aliens pouring into their State. They’re challenging teachers’ unions and other public workers groups. They’re trimming payrolls, cutting pensions, ending featherbedding and demanding that people do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.
Ladies and gentlemen, the revolution has begun!
We may not all agree on the best strategies and tactics that should be employed. That’s fine with me. This is not a one-size-fits-all movement. There’s plenty of room for plenty of approaches. I, for one, would like to see more attention paid and more resources devoted to the nullification movement. Imagine what would happen if more State governments told Washington: “We don’t like that law. And we’re not going to let you enforce it here.”
This is not the only strategy Constitutionalists can adopt to combat the overweening reach and power (and taxation) of our Federal government. How about getting Congress to demand appellate jurisdiction over what cases the courts can rule on? You hear a lot about the checks and balances the Founding Fathers built into the Construction. But you don’t hear much about the power they gave the legislature to check an out-of-control judiciary. But it’s there, folks. And I, for one, would love to see it used.
We don’t all have to support the same solution. Just as competition makes products better, it will make causes better, too. I’m not going to tell you which ones I think are most worthy of your support and which ones aren’t. (At least not very often.)
The critical thing is that you do something. Become a puller at the oars and not just a passenger in the boat. Want to do something right now? Send a friend this column and urge him or her to subscribe to Personal Liberty Digest™. That will certainly help get him informed, educated and alarmed.
Remember the lesson of Seymour Durst. He’s the gentleman who created the first National Debt Clock. When he mounted it at the northwest corner of Sixth Avenue and 42nd Street on Feb. 20, 1989, the number was less than $3 trillion. The original clock didn’t even have space on it to hold one more digit; it had to be rebuilt when our debt hit $10 trillion.
Now, the debt is over $14.4 trillion and rising so rapidly that the last numbers on the clock revolve so fast, they’re just a blur.
This week, Congress faced the most important choice this country will make this year: whether to stop the madness or to continue to pile debt on the backs of our children and our children’s children?
Unfortunately, Congress decided to go the route of the lollipops guy.
Until next time, keep some powder dry.
Chip Wood was the first news editor of The Review of the News and also wrote for American Opinion, our two predecessor publications. He is now the geopolitical editor of Personal Liberty Digest, where his Straight Talk column appears weekly. This article first appeared in PersonalLiberty.com and has been reprinted with permission.
