Silken Slippers and Hobnail Boots Surviving the Decline and Fall

PART VI: SUMMARY

  The United States is the oldest democratic republic in history, a mature, deteriorating nation, losing out to hungrier, more aggressive, business-friendly countries. In 1933 Franklin Roosevelt started us on the path to the stagnant, big-government welfare state we have become, with some prior help from Herbert Hoover, saying it was just a temporary walk in the park. Instead of letting market forces take the economy out of the Great Depression, Roosevelt started unprecedented programs, spending taxpayers’ money for business and personal welfare, buying and destroying agricultural products to force prices higher, choosing winners (labor unions and other large political donors, Marxists and other welfare-state liberals) and losers (businesses and successful individuals). He prolonged the depression for years and started the big-government trend that has been promoted ever since by politicians of both political parties.

  No longer do most individuals and businesses store nuts for the inevitable winters. Now solving personal and business problems is up to “the government.” Roosevelt started it, Lyndon Johnson bloated it and cast it in concrete, the baby boomers have lived it and now they manage the government, the military-industrial complex and the other big-corporation allies of big government. Labor unions and politicians have driven our labor costs up and our prosperity is being lost to hungrier, hustling, lower-wage countries, the typical pattern of mature nations that are past the top of the watershed.

  Some of the convictions in the articles are:

  * That the proper and constitutional role of government is not to control our lives but to enable our people to be as productive and prosperous as possible, to provide for the common defense and to support the rule of law as specified in the Constitution, as legally amended.

  * That the proper and constitutional role of government is not to steal assets from one group to give to another – to penalize success and reward failure, to reward political friends and punish enemies. Obama and the liberals work to create a dependent, submissive electorate to increase their political power and to force the public to live the way the liberals want them to.

  * That personal and direct responsibility is the appropriate way for personal and business decisions and problems to be anticipated and handled, when possible, not by big government and high taxes. When other aid is needed, it should be local or state -- as close as possible to the situation and facts.

  * That the appropriate role of government in foreign relations should be merely to encourage free trade and harmonious relations between peoples, not to be the world’s unpaid and unappreciated police agency, and not to try to replicate the United States around the world. Our current systems, methods, practices and mores are neither admirable nor sustainable.

  * That domestic and world charity should be mostly voluntary through charitable giving, not taken from taxpayers without their permission and given to others favored by the politicians.

  * That the United States has a military-industrial-political complex that promotes an enormous offensive military force and mission. It should be changed to a small, effective defensive force and mission, eliminating most foreign and many domestic military bases, and mothballing large numbers of. ships, tanks, artillery and manned aircraft and reducing personnel accordingly, but maintaining a strong nuclear submarine fleet.