by Jack Lee
America is now standing alone as the last great superpower and as such, no single nation could defeat us on the battlefield, nor could the sum of our enemies. But, not all wars for survival are fought on the battlefields.
Some of the greatest struggles in world history started with internal strife and social division with various sub-cultures that were competing internally for autonomy and dominance. This scenario has been the beginning of the end for many great civilizations and we see an extreme example of this in Iraq right now and to a lesser degree in America, but even here it is still a serious problem that must be addressed.
The glue that bonds our society has been a shared vision about democracy, coupled to an understanding and a respect for our heritage. This has allowed the assimilation of many creeds, cultures and ethnicities that enhanced our culture through diversity. However, this is coming under attack by multi-culturalism that embraces sub-cultures with competing values, competing goals and even competing languages over our own heritage, traditions and values and some of those sub-groups are at odds with a democratic state and are deliberately antagonistic.
We built this nation on Christian values (like it or not…its true!) as defined in our inalienable rights and at that time in our heristory it was believed there should be only 3 basic obligations of the federal government. The protection of life, liberty and property.
This was our foundation and the begining of American culture and it worked well. We have departed from that legacy and expanded government far beyond its original design. In good govenment the laws are universially ethical, simple and reasonable and somewhere there is a point of balance where freedom and will laws compete, but if neither dominates to the exclusion of the other we consider this acceptable.
If the growth of government exceeds this delicate balance, then it will consume more of our taxes and the burden on our society will grow exponentiall. If this process is done incrementally, most of us simply adapt without questioning those growing burdens too much. ..this is sort of the frog in the pot concept and the water is getting hotter and hotter.
Were fighting incremental additions to government that push us ever closer to socialism. Too many people in our society seem to think socialism is the answer to all our problems. Ironically, they are our liberals. And I say ironically because socialism is hardly liberal, in fact its very rigid and controlling as it places a great obligation on society to support its consumption of our resources. There is a big push for socialized medicine as reflected in SB 840 and I recognize we have room for improvement in our health care system, but socialized med is not the answer and I absolutely oppose it.
So, we have to be constantly aware of the path we are taking, because authority given to government is almost never returned. Therefore, our best defense against big government is vigilance as informed voters and its up to us to restrain government and holding them accountable and on course.
Our state with all our resources and assets has a terrible time getting results. Our schools are another example of wasted money. Were spending more education than anywhere else, but were still failing on many levels. Were 49th out of 50 states in read and writing. We deserve better, weve been and we can be better!
Our prisons are overflowing because we have too many criminals.thats a bi-product of many other failures from families to border control, to the war on drugs to welfare and more. And we just cant continue to fail because the consequences are too great.
We have all the right stuff for success, we just need to manage our resources better.
Speaking of better management, weve come to rely more and more on bond debt to solve fiscal shortfalls and thats just buck passing. Its a burden on our future generations and we simply can not continue down this path because it is a path to higher taxes. Weve always feared there would come a point of diminishing returns between the tax takers and the tax payers and here we are. It is said as California goes so goes the nation, but were becoming an example this nation doesnt need to follow and that has to change.
Were becoming a nanny state and a nanny state is not economical viable as has been reflected by our conintued state budget crisis. Nanny states are not business friendly and it causes our people to be overly dependant on government for almost everything.
Just as sure as our drift towards socialism is impacting your quality of life, your freedom and your wallet, so is the new political correctness that comes with the new left that is pushing it all on us. In the 16th century the word that paralyzed thinking and stopped discussions was .heretic. Today discussions are stopped and thinking is paralyzed by fear of being called a “racist”. This is a hint that weve gone too far to placate the far left and the illegal immigration they embrace.
Now lets talk about laws.its said you can tell a weakening society by how many laws it passes to control its citizens. Im sorry I couldnt find how many laws we have passed in California in the past few years, but I can tell you its too many. My law library for California Codes consists of about 100 books and each are the size of collegiate dictionary. I know the tax code covers 17,000 pages and requires over 700 different forms and that causes us to spend about 5.1 billion dollars annually just pay our taxes. Too many laws folks.and some of those laws have created criminals where none existed a few years ago.
For example, if you happen to have you bought or sold an unregistered firearm in the last 15 year, or if keep a firearm in your house without a trigger lockthen CONGRATULATIONS youre now a criminal!
Virginia made it a crime to carry a gun even with a permit and look what happened 12 months later at Va Tech? Just think, if only one person with a concealed weapons permit had access to a firearm, that death toll might not have been so high, but then who knows, because this was not an option.Virginia Tech made their campus a gun free zone.
These are examples of abuses to your 2nd Amendment rights, but, there are many more examples of government encroachment that slip by without even a thought. Maybe its time to give it a thought?
VOTE SMART – BE INFORMED – WE THE PEOPLE ARE DEPENDING ON YOU!