Years ago I
discontinued my blog for a number of reasons: first among them being some of my
international readership. I was surprised at how well my ideas and writings
were starting to take off internationally, but nervous about large readerships
from countries known to be current political enemies of my native country. This
made me nervous because, though my intentions are pure, I know how
words-particularly passionate ones-can be used for bad intentions.
I was also
disappointed in a lot of ways…
I felt I had a clear
message: one of individuality; opinion based on fact and a respect for
another's opinion where the facts are either unclear or support multiple
positions. I took no 'partisan' sides when it came to politics-pointing out the
good things politicians were doing, as often as the bad. Given our media
climate, this is difficult (to put it mildly), but I felt I tried. I tried to
also be clear that communication and understanding were keys to finding a
common middle ground for everyone (i.e. globally) to stand on and share in, but
as time went on, the world I around me, as well as the broader one
portrayed on TV, continued to disappoint me. Combined with a renewed focus on
my career, the decision to discontinue my public, but often personal, writings was an
easy one.
The time since I
last wrote with any regularity was well spent: I created and implemented a 2
year plan to relocate to pursue my radio career again; purchased and read
several more philosophical, political and economic works; and, of course, paid
close attention to what was going on locally, nationally, and internationally
in politics and economics. I was never silent, and interacted and discussed
many things and topics with people, blogging regularly at times on several
active local news sites and even appearing on a local radio show or 2. And, despite the long term financial obligation of a career move, I managed to visit a couple of theme parks.
That 2 year plan
took me 3 years, however, and the path was, as expected, not as easy as I would
have liked, but I got to where I wanted to be. I relocated where many other,
even more profitable, opportunities are available to me and when the time
came for me to make a decision, I chose the best available to me. So far,
though it's not in the radio industry, it has served me well and I have few
regrets. I'm not giving up on my ambitions in radio-I came too close once, and
I intend to get there, and finish, again-but that is put on hold for now.
My new career change
will hopefully afford me the time to write again. How much time, I am unsure (I
intended this blog to be published shortly after the elections), but I intend
to return to sharing my ideas as often as I can through my blog…
Obama's re-election
was disappointing, but not surprising to me given his primary competition. I
would like to hope that the nation's economy will survive another 4 years of
this president, but I have my doubts. My preference, as it specifically relates
to taxes, has been and always will be a radical shift in the overall approach
to taxation in our country. An approach that would cause chaos in the short term
(less than 18 months), but predictable and controllable in most ways.
Unfortunately, not enough people can balance their check book, much less know how taxes effect
economics or the finer points of the cost government operates at to society.
For those who don't
know, a simple way of looking at it is like this: for every job created in government, 1.2 jobs are lost in the private sector. The ratio for
dollars spent (gov't vs. private sector) is similar and varies depending who
you go too to get your data, but they all agree that it's more expensive for
society, currently, to invest in government, instead of the private sector.
Government is
supposed to know this, and react accordingly, but it doesn't (for a lot of
reasons). To be 'profitable' to society, all Government has to do-from an
economic standpoint-is not spend more than it takes in. This doesn't mean that
Government still cannot provide all of, or most of, the services so many of us
expect it too today, but no one has ever queried 'how' this should be done (at
least not publicly or that I've heard of within Congressional sessions).
Today, around the world, the common solution seems to be to 'throw bodies and
money' at the problems, with out care or direction. This creates unnecessary
bureaucracy, which clogs the system, increases operating costs, and worsens
performance; which also leads to loopholes for manipulation by the wealthiest
of us, creating unnecessary and unwarranted class warfare in Democratic
societies, and a global mistrust of governments in general due to their obvious
failures against their ever increasing tax burdens and costs…
All of the
aforementioned I say because Barack Obama, to me, represents the culmination in
America of a well crafted and designed plan to gut capitalism and limit the
idea of 'free enterprise' to owning barely profitable retail outlets, local
distribution networks, or small manufacturing plants. It's a plan that I could
see forming during the later years of Clinton's administration, all through
Bush's administration (despite 9/11), and clearly through Obama's presidency.
Upon more research and thought, it occurred to me that it can all be traced to
the implementation of the 16th and 17th amendments in 1913 to our Constitution:
reactions to perceived losses of power of 'workers', to those who were in
charge.
Perpetuated by a
willing 'public' education system, and our media (until the internet)-our 4th
branch of government-the idea that 'the man' didn't care about you has
prospered and grown. But instead of creating 'social progress', it has created
segregation and class warfare around the world: intentionally pitting the
employed, against the employer, instead of creating a sense of unity and self
worth and respect between them. Along the way it has egregiously dismantled the
thing that defined American's as
Americans: our Bill of Rights.
I've hinted at,
implied of, and spoken directly to the Bill of Rights as it relates to defining
what being an American is many times, in many ways, and on many platforms
(including my blog). In school, I was taught something different about the Bill of Rights
than what their writers intended. The Bill of Rights was glossed over, and it
was pointed out often that many parts of it had been disputed in many ways
since their adoption. What I wasn't taught was that they are 'all or
nothing', because that is what the founders wanted; I wasn't taught that by
accepting the differences in all of us
that our Bill of Rights exposes, and respecting those differences even though
we disagree (because we have the right
to disagree in our country), that this would bring us strength of cultural
unity. I wasn't taught that our Founders believed that this is what would
evolve America into the greatest nation on earth-not it's economic power. All
of this I had to learn on my own, by finally questioning what people were
saying when they said "the Founders meant" this or that when
something didn't fully make sense to me. I've studied the Federalist and Anti
Federalist papers; I've read many of the supporting works and papers by Adams,
Franklin, Jay and Paine. I'm no expert, but I know much better than 90% of us
do (and 99% of politicians it seems) what "The Founders" really meant
with our Bill of Rights, and the size and structure they intended our Federal
Government to be, and why it was structured the way it was. I say was because the 16th and 17th amendments are
the only 2 which fundamentally changed the powers and structure of our Federal
Government. It wasn't until 1913 that anyone ever considered the idea of taxing
incomes as being 'ok' in America-after all, it was for that reason that we faught Revolutionary War; it was also at that
time which the Democratic Republic that Franklin is credited with warning us to
keep, was all but destroyed and the 10th Amendment-our protection for our
Individual Rights-has been under attack ever since.
When the framers of
our government added the Bill of Rights, it was the greatest compromise among
men ever created. For the first time ever a group of men with wildly different
backgrounds and interests agreed that they would no longer care, or cast dispersion's on another simply because they were protestant instead of Catholic; no longer
were we going to tell each other how to live by taking from you before you
actually have it (taxing incomes); no longer were we going to allow government
to be the only ones empowered with self protection; no longer were we going to
let others speak for us, no longer were we going to stay silent: we could all speak our minds, even if we disagreed, we could all still have our say. No longer were we going to be guilty before we are presumed innocent...What we
have lost-or maybe never learned-was the respect we should have for each other
when we exercise our rights. For the better, and worse, of us, the Bill of
Rights is an all or nothing proposition: our disagreements regarding them, the
Founders hoped, would lead to social evolution through mutual understanding of
each other's differences. Sadly, we now know that 220 years later, that hope
was sadly misplaced.
We American's were
given a great gift in our Bill of Rights and not only have we disrespected that
gift, by re-electing Barack Obama (or any partisan official) we are also proving that we were aren't ready for them.
