What Happened to America?

"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases." Thomas Jefferson

If they were still alive, the Founding Fathers would be greatly dismayed by the America that exists today. It is undeniable that all men are created equal, but the Founders would probably say that - beyond creation - it is the individual who determines his direction and success, not the government.

Their disappointments would include:

• Government attempts to disarm the populace, one of the reasons the patriots initially exchanged fire with the British;
• Promoting social dependency on the government by advocating welfare;
• Encouraging the long-term dependence on unemployment benefits;
• Taxing any segment of the American population to the extent that they would pay over half of their income to the government, thus effectively making that segment work for the government instead of themselves;
• Involving American military forces in some way in almost every conflict in the world. We are even arming terrorists who want to kill us;
• Telling the people what kind of food they can or cannot eat, including forcing them to consume food and water treated with dangerous chemicals and additives;
• Government efforts to remove God and religion from society;
• Professional politicians who spend decades in Congress, who are corrupted by the internal system they have created, and whose decisions are not based on what is best for America but based on their next election. In the Founders’ day, there were no “professional” politicians; there were instead citizens of accomplishment who offered their services for a few years, then returned to the private world;
• Intruding in private business and preventing businesses from thriving by regulating them or taxing them to the point where they either go out of business or move their operations to other countries;
• Creating systems of surveillance of private citizens (the Internet, cell phones, cameras, or even thousands of overhead drones) that violate our rights to privacy and independence;
• The risk that government might consider taking control or even seizing investments of citizens (401Ks, for example);
• Government creating false statistics on such things as unemployment to promote the illusion that the economy is stable;
• A national debt that is unsustainable;
• Failure to balance the annual budget;
• Creating a government bureaucracy that includes “czars” whose primary jobs are to interfere with and control the American populace;
• Attempts by some in the media, the government, and even professors in college to rewrite or even eliminate the Constitution;
• The use of executive orders by the chief executive to work around Congress when they do not agree with him, effectively creating the beginning of the same kind of dictatorship the Founders rejected.

One additional thing the Founders would not have been able to understand was how the American people could have elected and reelected a man of such little substance as Barack Obama. To have a president with a shadowy past who spends millions to hide that past (like his college records) is unbelievable enough.

But this president is a man who has never run a business, never served in the military, had only brief time as a legislator, and who was raised and mentored by communists and socialists. Such a man could not possibly understand the spirit of the Founding Fathers, the innate love of individual liberty, or the traditional hometown love of flag and country.

We know this because Obama said, “…generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.”

That’s the point, Barry. The purpose of the Constitution was to keep government OUT of our lives, not promote its involvement IN our lives. It’s not the government’s job to “redistribute” our income, determine what is “fair” or “not fair,” or to minimize the need for the individual to work, sweat, and toil to achieve success.

What happened to America? Very simply, when we chose Barack Obama as president, we took the wrong fork in the road. When we did it a second time, we began what may be our final decline as the greatest nation of liberty in the world.

Real American patriots will not let this happen. We have been wounded, but we are not dead. We have been knocked down, but we shall rise in defiance of the assaults on our liberty. The Republic lives, and we will ensure that it thrives once again.

Get ready for the 2014 and 2016 elections, choose qualified and inspirational candidates who can defeat the Progressive Socialists of the Democratic Party in local, state, and federal races. Most of all, seek the leader who must become president in 2016; the person who will lead the return to traditional American values and the preeminence of the Constitution in our daily lives.

These two elections will be our last chance to save America…

Charles M. Grist

Author of the award-winning book My Last War: A Vietnam Veteran’s Tour in Iraq