THE FOURTH OF JULY AND OTHER LIES

By: Roderick Beaman

Today, we are being treated to the spectacle of the usual political dignitaries making their appearances at the usual festivities across the country. We have Pres. Bush giving an address to troops in Dayton, Ohio and Sandra Day O'Connor giving a speech in Philadelphia. They are, of course, paying tribute to the blessings of freedom in this great nation and how we have prospered because of it. The problem is that they are paying homage to a nation that hasn't existed for at least 170 years.

Just try to exercise your freedom by something as basic as opening a business in your home. In less than a week, someone from your local zoning or planning board will drop by to see what you are doing and to tell you that you can't. Try starting your own school for your children, shooting off fireworks in a lot of states, buying weapons and the list goes on. You can't travel anywhere without interfacing with some arrogant representative of Big Brother. That's just for starters.

Then take a look at your paycheck stub and add up the withholdings. The total percentage will astound you. Your employer matches your Social Security 'contribution' so that also has to be added to the amount withheld. Ditto for your Medicare 'contribution'. And depending on where you live, there are 'contributions' for disability insurance and additional charges (let's just accept that they aren't , by any means, contributions and call them a nicer name than extortion) for unemployment and others. Your employer matches them, all with funds that would otherwise be yours. You do the totals.

I used to live in The People's Republic of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and out of curiosity I once added up all of the withholdings. It was eye opening. What do you want from a state that sends a mental midget like Patrick Kennedy to Congress? All that money goes to finance the supposedly benevolent plutocracy that is bent on repression and the assaults upon our rights that are the zeitgeist.

It's hard to know exactly when the erosion of our freedom began. We started out with a constitution that hamstrung the feds but obviously not nearly enough. There have been a number of quantum jumps between which the forces of freedom have tried to rally a reversal but never successfully. In the nineteenth century we had Lincoln and more recently we have had the abuses perpetrated under Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson and FDR but no president in the twentieth century has been exempt, including Ronald Reagan, who initially indicated that he knew better. The best evidence that he caved in came with his use of The Laffer Curve to help finance the federal monster. That ushered in the age of the neo-cons with his invitations to the FDR, Truman and JFK Democrats to come over to the Republicans. We should have known right then that there would never be a return to constitutionally limited government. Reagan's ascendancy took sixteen years against an establishment hell bent against him and he wound up accomplishing nothing domestically, on balance. Does anyone think that there's another someone more committed than Reagan in the wings who could actually be elected in our lifetimes? We likely need another Attila The Hun.

Our current crop of political leaders offer little hope of change anytime soon. Based upon The Constitution, they are either criminals or illiterates. I think the former. And the level of information of our citizens gives little grounds for hope. Study after study have shown an abysmal lack of knowledge of our founding documents by even college students today. Our young don't recognize passages from The Declaration of Independence or Constitution let alone exhibit any understanding of them. Of course, this is a result of the education in our government sponsored schools which likely don't want our students to know them anyway. A well informed citizenry could be dangerous because if they were, they'd likely want most of our leaders hanged from a nearby tree. As enticing as that would be, I really wouldn't want to defile anything so noble as a tree with most of them.

It should tell you something when the Republicans campaign on the platform that they want to save Social Security or Medicare. It seems to me that most of the time the Democrats are constantly on the prowl to attack our economic liberties and the Republicans respond a few years later to attack our political liberties.

I recently sent letters to my state and federal senators and representatives requesting that they introduce legislation requiring that students in our schools be required to pass a comprehensive test on the Declaration and Constitution for graduation. My state senator, Republican James King, replied with a letter thanking me for my concern about the state education budget and that he was doing his best to address it. Another score for literacy.

That gives you an idea of what we are up against.

"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."