“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Do you want to know the one question no one really wants to hear the answer to? Too bad, I’m going to tell you anyway. The one question people may ask, but nobody wants to know the answer to is, “Who is to blame for all the problems in this country?“ The reason I say no one wants to hear the answer to that is because the answer is like holding a great big mirror up and telling them to gaze deeply into it – those gazing into it are the problem.

People will say that the Republicans, or the Democrats, are the problem; but aren’t they just other people with different ideas as to what purpose their government should serve? People love to point fingers at others, but they hate having to turn their gaze inward and ask themselves if they may be part of the problem as well.

People also like to blame government; but isn’t government merely a bunch of other people who have been given the power to make, and enforce, law? I don’t mean to be insulting, well maybe I do just a teeny bit, but humans as a species have a lot of problems. Greed, lust, envy, jealousy, and laziness, both of the mind and the body, are just a few of them. If you truly want to know what the problem in this country is, you need to cast aside those things and take a logical approach to finding the answer.

The most fatal flaw in any society is ignorance. I don’t want to make this about guns, or gun control, but if you know what a gun is you are probably not going to pick it up and randomly point it at someone else and pull the trigger, right? That’s because you know what a gun is, and what it can do. However, put a loaded gun onto a table and let a room full of very young children into the room and eventually one of them will pick that gun up and hurting, or killing, someone else with it. Why, does the nature of the gun change when it’s around children? No, it is the ignorance of the children regarding what a gun is, and what it can do, that is different.

Ignorance is the source of most of the problems in this country today, and when you couple ignorance with greed, lust, envy, jealousy, then combine that with a system which has the power to write laws, you’ve created the perfect recipe for disaster; which is what our country is today; an unmitigated disaster.

Do you want to know what people need to worry about? People need to worry about themselves. That’s it; they don’t need to worry about what their neighbor is doing, what their friends are doing, or what I’m doing for that matter. Each person, each individual is responsible for themselves; and themselves only.

A great many people, especially those on the left, like to blame others for the conditions people find themselves in; and they want to use the power of government to equalize things by balancing the playing field. If they understood what rightful liberty was, they would not seek to do that. Now whether they are ignorant as to what rightful liberty is, or they don’t care, is another story altogether. The problem is that people are not seeking rightful liberty; they are seeking to use government, by electing people who think like they do, to pass laws that everyone must obey.

I hear all this talk about equal rights, but I rarely hear anyone talking about equal responsibility. As human beings, barring any serious birth defects, we are all born into this world equal; and when one says equal rights the only thing that means is that we are all equally free to seek out life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the dictates of our heart command us. I am no more responsible for the condition you may find yourself in than you are responsible for the condition I may find myself in; each of us is responsible only for ourselves. The moment you put government into that and it becomes a tool which can be used to benefit some at the expense of others, you are denying the principles of equal rights and rightful liberty.

When government begins doing things it is not supposed to do, people like to point their fingers at the party those doing these things belong to. That is the wrong way of looking at things. First of all it was voters who put those people into office by voting for them; so they share a big portion of the blame. Secondly, why would people support a system that makes it so bloody easy for those the people elect to overstep their power without the threat of punishment for doing so?

If you ask me, that is absolutely ridiculous; to have a system in which you put people into positions of power without the means of punishing them when they abuse that power; especially considering this system is supposed to be based upon consent of the governed. What are you going to do if this government passes laws you do not consent to, vote them out of office? How’s that worked out for you so far? Has voting anyone out of office ever restored any of the freedom government has stolen from you; repealed any law you disagreed with?

Do you know what an oxymoron is? An oxymoron is a combination of words that are contradictory. We used to jokingly say that military intelligence is an oxymoron; for those in the military don’t have any intelligence. If you’re in the military and you’re reading this, don’t get all bent out of shape; I served for 3 enlistments too. But you see what I mean about oxymorons, right?

Do you want to know what the biggest oxymoron is? Good government is the biggest oxymoron there is; for no government is good. In his 1775 pamphlet Common Sense, Thomas Paine writes, “Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.“

Then, in 1849 a man you may have heard of, Henry David Thoreau, wrote the following, “I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe- “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”

One final quote and then I’ll get back to what’s on my mind. When Thomas Jefferson was elected as the 3rd President, he told the American people, “Still one thing more, fellow-citizens – a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”

Now tell me, would you vote for a candidate who campaigned upon the promise of doing absolutely nothing, other than leaving you alone to live your lives free of interference and aid? I would, not that it would do any good today with all the laws on the books telling me what I can and cannot do; it’s too late in the game to go back to a government whose sole purpose is to preserve the liberty of the governed.

The problem in this country is that I, and the few I call friends, can see that; while the overwhelming majority of people in this country can’t see it. People are still fighting amongst one another for control of a system that has gone so far beyond what systems of government should be doing, that there is no hope of repairing the damage it has done to their rights and liberty.

As long as people keep voting, keep putting their faith, hope, and trust in this system, and more importantly, keep obeying the laws these criminals enact, nothing is going to get any better in this country; it’s only going to get worse.

 

And the reason that is true is because the people who vote, who fight for control of this system do not know the purpose government should serve; they are ignorant. Instead of being a system that secures to all the governed their rights and liberty, it has become a system which is fought over so that half the people can control the rights of the other half; with the power up for grabs every 2 years.

One thing is certain though; it is a government by consent; only those consenting to it are not free men, they are slaves; and as Spooner said so many years ago, “A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.”

Well I do not consent, nor do those I call friends; and we’re getting awful tired of you deciding how we shall be permitted to live our lives. Eventually we’ll reach a snapping point, and when that happens there is something you should know; there is nothing more dangerous in the world than an individual with nothing left to lose.

January 3, 2021

~ The Author ~
Neal Ross, Student of history, politics, patriot and staunch supporter of the 2nd Amendment. Send all comments to: bonsai@syix.com.

If you liked Neal’s latest column, maybe you’ll like his latest booklet: The Civil War: (The Truth You Have Not Been Told). Life continues to expand for this prolific writer and guardian of TRUE American history.