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Is It Too Late To
'Downsize' Our Government?
Thursday, August 4, 2005
By Gordon Bishop
In less than 229 years after the American Revolution, our government is headed for bankruptcy in this decade.
To prevent such an unprecedented fiscal disaster in our nation's relatively short history, our elected government must begin immediately "downsizing" to save this once-great Constitutional Republic.
Our government is in big financial trouble because our elected officials have violated our U.S. Constitution over and over again with illegal entitlements that never existed in our Constitution.
When my maternal grandmother arrived in America at Ellis Island in the 1890s, there was no federal income tax (which is illegal because it was never ratified by the states in 1913), no federal entitlements such as Medicare, Medicaid, welfare stamps, public housing subsidies, Social Security, subsidized prescription drugs for senior citizens... in short, there was no giant "welfare state" wrapping its bloated arms around workers and taxpayers by taxing them more than the serfs and peasants during the "Dark Ages" of humanity.
Yes, the serfs and peasants were able to keep more than half of what they produced on their farms, unlike today's working class.
What happened to America in the 20 th Century?
Liberalism. Socialism. Marxism. Communism.
In short, massive, dictatorial centralized government.
Yes, today, we the people, are at the mercy of Big Government - Big Brother budget breakers for tax-and-spend socialist programs to take care of their "victims" (all of us) from the cradle-to-the-grave. Do we really need such coddling costing us trillions of dollars a year?
Along the way, America lost its identity, its individualism and its respect for the Constitution, beginning with President Franklin Roosevelt's socialist "New Deal" program during the Depression of the 1930s.
It took a monster named Adolph Hitler and World War II to pull America out of the Depression. Yes, wars can do that because wars bring people together. It's either do, or die.
America survived. And so did Europe and rest of the developed world.
But socialism, like a deadly cancer, continues spreading across the land, all but destroying the U.S.Constitution and are freedoms in its evil path.
What's left of the Constitution is what's left of America: The world's wealthiest and most powerful nation now fighting to survive, economically, politically and spiritually.
Oppressive government taxes, rules and regulations have impacted all of us by forcing two-income families to pay off government debts, coupled with a national divorce rate of 50 percent or more, and a 75 percent illegitimate birth rate in Urban America.
Government give-aways have launched a free-ride mentality for healthy humans who would rather take the easy way out than to study hard and work hard to become successful.
And what happens to those who follow the rules and have a strong work ethic? Government imposes heavy taxes on them. Government punishes success, and rewards failure.
I was born in 1938 and have witnessed the self-destruction of the proud moral and ethical American who believes in individual responsibility and accountability.
We've become a society of givers and takers - and the takers now outnumber the givers 9 to 1.
We've become a society obsessed with gambling, drinking, drugs, pedophiles, sex offenders - and money, greed and power. Life has become, "What's in it for me." The "Me" Generation likes Big Government because they like what Big Government gives them. Yet, they still complain they aren't getting enough.
The Clinton family is a classic example of the excesses in our society. Bill and Hillary are the worst "role models" for individuals and what a family should be. For them, it's all about Bill and all about Hillary.
Despite the Clintons' selfish behaviors, Freedom remains a wonderful thing. But not if you abuse your freedoms with the above obsessions and behavioral patterns of the Clinton couple.
Liberalism and socialism are gradually undoing the "American Dream" because of the excessive taxation and bureaucratic waste in Big Government.
Do will still have time to downsize government?
Yes, if Congress, the White House and the U.S. Supreme Court stop offering handouts to those who don't need it, and start shrinking government by 50 percent over the next five years.
It can be done. I grew up in the 1940s and '50s before there were 30, 40 or 50 inefficient super-bureaucracies and sub-bureaucracies at the federal and state levels of government.
The biggest employer in America is the federal government.
The biggest employer in New Jersey, where I've lived for nearly 68 years, is our state government.
Enough said.
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