The Real Choice
Considering The Upcoming Presidential Election
I'm not nearly knowledgeable or thoroughly informed enough on financial matters to speak to the logistics of monetary policy - the conclusions I own and share about these things I draw from knowing that I am approaching the various arguments without bias and that I resist permitting the complexity of a problem dissuade me from a reasonable reliance on the practical sense and moral propriety to direct me toward a solution.
I don't study international fiscal policy - but I know history and I know what manner of conduct I believe to be morally sound. I think it's foolish for us to either imagine that no matter what our choices our government and lifestyle will magically endure, or to just not even ever consider such a question. No nation has ever just gone on and on simply by virtue of it's current existence - they have all been overtaken by another nation or have crumbled from within . . . to just assume that regardless of our choices and actions America will always be here and always be as it is, as I said, is just foolish. So, warnings of an imminent financial-based destruction or alteration of what America is and has been may very well be accurate.
That's why, I think, this election is so strikingly critical. Things have been moving in this direction for some time, in simplest terms, since FDR . . . but they are so laid bare now, the two ideas and directions these two men represent is so undeniably stark, that how we choose to vote as a people is even more consequential than whatever policies either of these men pursue. The country was founded and operated for some time on the idea that free men are most free and most productive with less government and that care for the poor is best manifest by the charitable spirit of private citizens - in the last half a century that idea has shifted toward more and more government and a bureaucratic collecting and dispensing to those in need.
The result is that now half the nation survives off government taking money from the other half of the nation and giving it to them - that simply can't possibly remain a functional reality. It's not a matter of who's nice and who cares, it's a matter of who has an understanding of how things work and who's being honest about it. When mom & dad tell you to save your allowance instead of buying some cheap treat for yourself every week, it's easy to count them to be mean - but when we grow-up we know better. The Democrats want to make this election about rich vs poor, about Romney being privileged and out of touch with the middle class, about themselves being the good guys providing free stuff and thinking like us on abortion and homosexuality and keeping arrogant Christians out of any decision making, etc - but the real issue here, the real choice we have to make, is what is the role of government in our daily lives.
Are there enough people left who still understand that America is an experiment in freedom, who recognize that to be free necessitates personal responsibility, who don't look to politicians for their well being but understand that government provides a necessary order but is not designed or well suited to be our mom & dad telling us how large a soda we are allowed to drink with our lunch? Or have enough people been seduced by the jargon of contemporary liberalism encouraging us to favor the state assuming the responsibility for our needs and supplying our routine of comfort and security? In the last 50 years or so we've been moving more and more to this point - I'm not a Republican and I'm not a delighted fan of Romney, but this election seems to be screaming at me that, for now anyway, history has come down to this; are there more who will vote for freedom and the American experiment or are there more who will vote for free supplies and are unconcerned about what America was established to be?
