As I sit here pondering the New Year I have paused to wonder. What Made America Great? Was it the freedon we fought for from the English oppressors? Was it the industrialisation from the late 1800s to the present? Was it the Representative Republic form of government? Was it our Constritution? Was it our belief in Capitalism and free markets? Was it our immigration policy, "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free"?
I guess I would say "all of the above" however we are in danger of losing our greatness. The world no longer looks at the US as the saviour of the world and rarely looks at us as their protector either. We have lost the moral high ground by our stance supporting oppresiver dictators and arming factions of rebels that may not have had our interests at heart. We have allowed companies and banks to become "too big to fail" and as a result the fear of failure driving business decisions has been lost. We have eroded our currency by allowing the Federal Reserve to print money and we have skewed the banking business with money too cheap and regulations too much. We have allowed our politicians to become permanent "carreer" bureaucrats instead of the citizen legislators that the founders envisioned. We have allowed a class of low-information voters to skew our recent elections in the direction of an entitlement society instead of the free society we started with.
I believe that the tide has turned though. With the re-election of Barack Obama we have seen the direction toward a socialist state ever closer and we will begin to turn the tide. We have seen recently that with fewer and fewer people pulling the wagon and more and more people riding in the wagon that the direction we are going in is unsustainable.
As we move into a new era of government let us see that the people we elect to do the peoples business actually DO the peoples business and not the moochers business and not the cronies business. Let us return to the free markets and capitalism that gave everyone an equal chance and not an equal result. An economy where there is inequality but where everyone thought that they had a chance to be on the top of that graph. Where politicians worked part time and returned to their lives at home and where taxes were fair and low.
We still have the largest economy in the world by far. We are still the largest manufacturer in the world and we still produce the lions share of the world's food. Let's not forget that.
I guess I would say "all of the above" however we are in danger of losing our greatness. The world no longer looks at the US as the saviour of the world and rarely looks at us as their protector either. We have lost the moral high ground by our stance supporting oppresiver dictators and arming factions of rebels that may not have had our interests at heart. We have allowed companies and banks to become "too big to fail" and as a result the fear of failure driving business decisions has been lost. We have eroded our currency by allowing the Federal Reserve to print money and we have skewed the banking business with money too cheap and regulations too much. We have allowed our politicians to become permanent "carreer" bureaucrats instead of the citizen legislators that the founders envisioned. We have allowed a class of low-information voters to skew our recent elections in the direction of an entitlement society instead of the free society we started with.
I believe that the tide has turned though. With the re-election of Barack Obama we have seen the direction toward a socialist state ever closer and we will begin to turn the tide. We have seen recently that with fewer and fewer people pulling the wagon and more and more people riding in the wagon that the direction we are going in is unsustainable.
As we move into a new era of government let us see that the people we elect to do the peoples business actually DO the peoples business and not the moochers business and not the cronies business. Let us return to the free markets and capitalism that gave everyone an equal chance and not an equal result. An economy where there is inequality but where everyone thought that they had a chance to be on the top of that graph. Where politicians worked part time and returned to their lives at home and where taxes were fair and low.
We still have the largest economy in the world by far. We are still the largest manufacturer in the world and we still produce the lions share of the world's food. Let's not forget that.
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