THE LOVE OF MONEY IS THE ROOT OF AMERICAN TYRANNY
THE LOVE OF MONEY IS THE ROOT OF AMERICAN TYRANNY
By Dr. Patrick Jonston
May 17, 2007
NewsWithViews.com
At the infancy of our nation, a history Professor at the University of Edinburgh named Alexander Tyler had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic two millennia earlier:
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public Treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”
That dire prediction strikes at the very heart of our present national crisis. When one observes the evolution of what used to be the party of fiscal responsibility – the Republican Party – we must wonder whether we are in the final days of our democracy and soon to witness the birth of a popular dictatorship. I know it’s hard to imagine, but only because of our pride and myopic naiveté.
Consider the billions of dollars of “pork” spending on bridges to sparsely populated islands, cowgirl museums, farm subsidies, corporate airline bailouts, honey bee research, Medicare drug entitlement programs, et cetera ad nauseum. The wasted billions have been proposed not by the socialist and Marxist element of the Democratic Party, but by a Republican-dominated Congress and signed by a Republican President, with record deficits of over 400 billion dollars to boot![1] Non-military spending has increased dramatically under the present Republican administration, at twice the rate as under Clinton.[2],[3] This May, Congress added billions of dollars of non-military spending to the Iraqi war budget.[4] Even with the tax cuts under President Bush, tax rates and spending are still astronomical compared to decades ago. The Republican majority has exploited the public treasury for so much pork that authentic conservatives have been wondering, “With Republicans like these, who needs Democrats?” These are ominous symptoms of a malady that, if left unchecked, will ultimately result in a tyrannical American dictatorship.
In my state of Ohio, departing Governor Bob Taft and a Republican-dominated Ohio statehouse actually raised taxes! Republican voters in Ohio stayed away from the booths during the last election and, consequently, the Democrats swept into the Governor’s office; this may be a foreshadowing of what is to happen in D.C. in 2008. Just as social conservatives feel betrayed by decades of legal abortion under Republican leadership, fiscal conservatives feel like they’ve been kissed on the cheek on the campaign trail yet sold down the river for thirty pieces of lobbyists’ silver.
We are defying history and fooling ourselves, however, to think that fiscal responsibility will be resurrected under Democratic leadership. Of all the Republican candidates for President, only Texas Congressman Ron Paul assures an end to the fiscally insane status quo, and he does not have the support of the Republican Party at large because of his resistance to decades of pork-laden Republican budgets. The most likely candidates for the Presidency will not abide by their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution,[5] but will spend, spend, borrow and spend some more of the taxpayers’ billions, the primary difference being that the Republicans will spend with deficits whereas the Democrats will spend and raise taxes.
I am convinced that to secure liberty for our posterity, we must return to fiscally conservative Republican values: we must restrain the government to its constitutionally justified obligations and we must dramatically lower our tax burden. Above all, we must adhere to the Biblical admonitions against theft and covetousness, for these standards alone restore economic and fiscal sanity.[6] Charitable spending must be voluntary. Away with government exploitation of the taxpayers’ property on objects not constitutionally justified! The expenditure of your money by politicians on things not necessary for infrastructure and defense denies you the freedom to do as you wish with your own money. If they want to give their money to the National Institutes of Health to study the sexual habits of prostitutes, they can do so with their own money, not yours.
If public school bureaucrats want to spend $9,200 annually to send their kid to a public school in Zanesville, Ohio, as opposed to half that much for an intellectually superior private school, they can do so with their money, not yours. The Bible says that your wealth is a gift from God to you and that others have no right to it.[7] It is just as wrong for one man to break into your home and rob you of your hard-earned wealth to give it to the poor as it is for your representatives to do it. We are practical slaves who must work for the government from January 1 to April 30 upon pain of heavy fines and prison; this is an immoral level of taxation, and it is only going to worsen so long as we can vote ourselves handouts from the treasury.[8] The ever-expanding bureaucracies comprise a hard-to-beat voting block for every levy and every pork bill. The state must be weaned of its addiction to our wealth and its expenditure of the taxpayers’ property to expand their power, to increase their chances for re-election, and to salve their selfish consciences.
Chains on our grandchildren may be the price for our government handouts. How are we going to resurrect the dying Social Security scam from the bankruptcy that is predicted by 2042?[9] Borrow more money that our grand and great-grandchildren must repay with interest? Print more money and devalue our currency and thereby our savings? Postpone the age when we can receive benefits until the age of 90? Legalize euthanasia? (A likely option in our post-Roe-v.-Wade culture and given our cowardly reluctance to disregard unconstitutional opinions from the activist judiciary.) Or are we just going to take 100% of everyone’s income and redistribute it, like the USSR did? Do you realize how close we are to that kind of tyranny? What do you think is going to happen when hand-out addicted citizenry, who have invested a large portion of their earnings into “Social Security” over the course of their lifetimes, are let down by a fat, overfed bureaucracy who can’t keep the promises made by the previous generation of near-sighted politicians?
Will our love of money birth an anarchy that will make tyranny appear to be the lesser of two evils? Are we not becoming a nation of government dependents accustomed to state’s nipple, long weaned of the adventure of liberty? When the fear-mongers of terrorism shout louder than the lovers of freedom and righteousness, a nation full of emasculated sucklers will cry for government-insured cribs to keep them safe.
We must abandon lesser remedies and do something radical now. We must have God-fearing statesmen who will obey their oaths to keep and uphold the Constitution. We must have statesmen who will adhere to divine mandates against state-sponsored theft and who will put up strong resistance to the growing call from lobbyists and constituents for more perks from the taxpayer’s treasury. We must stop aborting the liberties of tomorrow for the lusts of today. In order to defy the historical trend of democracies, we must have the blessing of God, which He gives to those who conform their lives to His principles.
Footnotes:
1, "Runaway spending, left unchecked, Washington's overspending could drown America in taxes and debt." By the Heritage Foundation, June 3, 2006.
2, Citizens Against Government Waste, 2006 Pig Book.
3, "Bush celebrates fourth largest deficit in history"
4, "Congress adds billions of non-military spending to Iraqi war budget," LA Times, May 1, 2007.
5, Article X of the U.S. Constitution says whatever is not explicitly granted to the Federal government in the Constitution belongs to the states, or the people.
6, Exodus 20:15, 17
7, Ecclesiastes 2:24, 6:1-2
8, "America celebrates tax freedom day," By the Tax Foundation
9, CEA Memo on Social Security, by White House
© 2007 Patrick Johnston - All Rights Reserved
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Johnston and his wife Elizabeth reside in Zanesville, Ohio, with their six young home-schooled children. Patrick is a family practice physician and founder of the Association of Pro-life Physicians, which is dedicated to restoring a remnant of physicians in our communities who are convinced that life begins at conception and who will not commit nor refer for abortions (ProLifePhysicians.org).
He founded the Alliance to Reform Education Funding to fight public school levies and promote Christian home-schooling (StopSchoolLevies.org). He founded the Coalition for Justice for All to pursue justice for Ohio's pre-born and to provide photo-documentary evidence on-line at StopColumbusKilling.net of the abortionists and their accomplices at the abortion clinics of Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Johnston is committed to revival in the church, and the restoration of Biblical law and constitutional government in America.
E-mail: docjohnston@adelphia.net
By Dr. Patrick Jonston
May 17, 2007
NewsWithViews.com
At the infancy of our nation, a history Professor at the University of Edinburgh named Alexander Tyler had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic two millennia earlier:
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public Treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”
That dire prediction strikes at the very heart of our present national crisis. When one observes the evolution of what used to be the party of fiscal responsibility – the Republican Party – we must wonder whether we are in the final days of our democracy and soon to witness the birth of a popular dictatorship. I know it’s hard to imagine, but only because of our pride and myopic naiveté.
Consider the billions of dollars of “pork” spending on bridges to sparsely populated islands, cowgirl museums, farm subsidies, corporate airline bailouts, honey bee research, Medicare drug entitlement programs, et cetera ad nauseum. The wasted billions have been proposed not by the socialist and Marxist element of the Democratic Party, but by a Republican-dominated Congress and signed by a Republican President, with record deficits of over 400 billion dollars to boot![1] Non-military spending has increased dramatically under the present Republican administration, at twice the rate as under Clinton.[2],[3] This May, Congress added billions of dollars of non-military spending to the Iraqi war budget.[4] Even with the tax cuts under President Bush, tax rates and spending are still astronomical compared to decades ago. The Republican majority has exploited the public treasury for so much pork that authentic conservatives have been wondering, “With Republicans like these, who needs Democrats?” These are ominous symptoms of a malady that, if left unchecked, will ultimately result in a tyrannical American dictatorship.
In my state of Ohio, departing Governor Bob Taft and a Republican-dominated Ohio statehouse actually raised taxes! Republican voters in Ohio stayed away from the booths during the last election and, consequently, the Democrats swept into the Governor’s office; this may be a foreshadowing of what is to happen in D.C. in 2008. Just as social conservatives feel betrayed by decades of legal abortion under Republican leadership, fiscal conservatives feel like they’ve been kissed on the cheek on the campaign trail yet sold down the river for thirty pieces of lobbyists’ silver.
We are defying history and fooling ourselves, however, to think that fiscal responsibility will be resurrected under Democratic leadership. Of all the Republican candidates for President, only Texas Congressman Ron Paul assures an end to the fiscally insane status quo, and he does not have the support of the Republican Party at large because of his resistance to decades of pork-laden Republican budgets. The most likely candidates for the Presidency will not abide by their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution,[5] but will spend, spend, borrow and spend some more of the taxpayers’ billions, the primary difference being that the Republicans will spend with deficits whereas the Democrats will spend and raise taxes.
I am convinced that to secure liberty for our posterity, we must return to fiscally conservative Republican values: we must restrain the government to its constitutionally justified obligations and we must dramatically lower our tax burden. Above all, we must adhere to the Biblical admonitions against theft and covetousness, for these standards alone restore economic and fiscal sanity.[6] Charitable spending must be voluntary. Away with government exploitation of the taxpayers’ property on objects not constitutionally justified! The expenditure of your money by politicians on things not necessary for infrastructure and defense denies you the freedom to do as you wish with your own money. If they want to give their money to the National Institutes of Health to study the sexual habits of prostitutes, they can do so with their own money, not yours.
If public school bureaucrats want to spend $9,200 annually to send their kid to a public school in Zanesville, Ohio, as opposed to half that much for an intellectually superior private school, they can do so with their money, not yours. The Bible says that your wealth is a gift from God to you and that others have no right to it.[7] It is just as wrong for one man to break into your home and rob you of your hard-earned wealth to give it to the poor as it is for your representatives to do it. We are practical slaves who must work for the government from January 1 to April 30 upon pain of heavy fines and prison; this is an immoral level of taxation, and it is only going to worsen so long as we can vote ourselves handouts from the treasury.[8] The ever-expanding bureaucracies comprise a hard-to-beat voting block for every levy and every pork bill. The state must be weaned of its addiction to our wealth and its expenditure of the taxpayers’ property to expand their power, to increase their chances for re-election, and to salve their selfish consciences.
Chains on our grandchildren may be the price for our government handouts. How are we going to resurrect the dying Social Security scam from the bankruptcy that is predicted by 2042?[9] Borrow more money that our grand and great-grandchildren must repay with interest? Print more money and devalue our currency and thereby our savings? Postpone the age when we can receive benefits until the age of 90? Legalize euthanasia? (A likely option in our post-Roe-v.-Wade culture and given our cowardly reluctance to disregard unconstitutional opinions from the activist judiciary.) Or are we just going to take 100% of everyone’s income and redistribute it, like the USSR did? Do you realize how close we are to that kind of tyranny? What do you think is going to happen when hand-out addicted citizenry, who have invested a large portion of their earnings into “Social Security” over the course of their lifetimes, are let down by a fat, overfed bureaucracy who can’t keep the promises made by the previous generation of near-sighted politicians?
Will our love of money birth an anarchy that will make tyranny appear to be the lesser of two evils? Are we not becoming a nation of government dependents accustomed to state’s nipple, long weaned of the adventure of liberty? When the fear-mongers of terrorism shout louder than the lovers of freedom and righteousness, a nation full of emasculated sucklers will cry for government-insured cribs to keep them safe.
We must abandon lesser remedies and do something radical now. We must have God-fearing statesmen who will obey their oaths to keep and uphold the Constitution. We must have statesmen who will adhere to divine mandates against state-sponsored theft and who will put up strong resistance to the growing call from lobbyists and constituents for more perks from the taxpayer’s treasury. We must stop aborting the liberties of tomorrow for the lusts of today. In order to defy the historical trend of democracies, we must have the blessing of God, which He gives to those who conform their lives to His principles.
Footnotes:
1, "Runaway spending, left unchecked, Washington's overspending could drown America in taxes and debt." By the Heritage Foundation, June 3, 2006.
2, Citizens Against Government Waste, 2006 Pig Book.
3, "Bush celebrates fourth largest deficit in history"
4, "Congress adds billions of non-military spending to Iraqi war budget," LA Times, May 1, 2007.
5, Article X of the U.S. Constitution says whatever is not explicitly granted to the Federal government in the Constitution belongs to the states, or the people.
6, Exodus 20:15, 17
7, Ecclesiastes 2:24, 6:1-2
8, "America celebrates tax freedom day," By the Tax Foundation
9, CEA Memo on Social Security, by White House
© 2007 Patrick Johnston - All Rights Reserved
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Johnston and his wife Elizabeth reside in Zanesville, Ohio, with their six young home-schooled children. Patrick is a family practice physician and founder of the Association of Pro-life Physicians, which is dedicated to restoring a remnant of physicians in our communities who are convinced that life begins at conception and who will not commit nor refer for abortions (ProLifePhysicians.org).
He founded the Alliance to Reform Education Funding to fight public school levies and promote Christian home-schooling (StopSchoolLevies.org). He founded the Coalition for Justice for All to pursue justice for Ohio's pre-born and to provide photo-documentary evidence on-line at StopColumbusKilling.net of the abortionists and their accomplices at the abortion clinics of Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Johnston is committed to revival in the church, and the restoration of Biblical law and constitutional government in America.
E-mail: docjohnston@adelphia.net
posted by shummer60 at Thursday, May 17, 2007
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