Selfishness has destroyed great nations, and may destroy ours

What destroys nations is selfishness and greed.  I'm not just talking about rich people, I'm referring to the nation in general.  When we, as a nation, put our own personal desires ahead of our nation, the entire nation fails.  It is such selfishness that even brought down the mighty Roman Empire.  

Consider that Roman slaves did most of the work, and that each citizen of Rome had at least one slave, but more than likely many slaves. The citizens of Rome took advantage of the slaves, who did all the work, to live luxurious lifestyles.  But once wars ended and slaves were gone, the citizens didn't know how to work.  So the nation collapsed.  

This wasn't the only reason, but it was one of many contributing factors into the collapse of Rome.  People, the rich and the poor, kept asking for more from the government, and the government kept giving them more.  They did, in essence, create a nation of entitlement programs.  The cost of these programs ultimately became so great the nation collapsed from within and without.  

Now we have an American nation that has, for the past 100 or so years, slowly become a nation of entitlements.  The poor keep asking for more from the rich in the form of entitlements, and they become so comfortable that they can never get off of welfare.  They become so comfortable that they have no incentive to ever get up and go to work.  

The rich, on the other hand, often champion for these same government programs because it will benefit them.  Obamacare, for instance, was championed for by hospitals and insurance companies because they thought that it would create more customers for them.  In the end, it has merely created one more entitlement program whose cost is higher premiums, fewer insured, fewer employed, and more regulations for both consumers and employers.  

Now, I am not opposed to helping the poor and the needy.  Few of us are opposed to helping the poor and the needy.  But this has gone beyond just helping the poor and the needy.  It become more of a "what have you done for me lately" government.  

The more power you give to the government, the more power it will take. This is a historical trend that has occurred in nearly every government ever created. It was this, in essence, that brought down both ancient Greece and the mighty Roman Empire. 

If you give the government the power to tax, it will tax more.  If you give the government the power to create entitlements, it will create to many.  If you give the government the power to make laws "for our own good," they will creating laws based on idealistic myths.  

Worse, once the government makes a law, it takes away one more freedom. Whenever the government makes a new entitlement, people will not want to give it back, and politicians will not vote to eliminate for fear of angering voters.  

I think the idealistic, progressive movement began with an effort to benefit the underclass.  They had many victories, creating laws giving women the right to vote, and laws protecting workers.  But then they started to go too far, which is what government is known to do.  This is one of the reasons why the founders championed that government was a necessary evil.  

Government is necessary in order to create a safe environment for the people to thrive, although too much government, most often created for selfish gain, creates an evil empire that cannot thrive.  

A think a good quote to sum this up comes from Benjamin Franklin.  He said: "I am for doing good to the poor... I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it..."

It's time we, as Americans, stop thinking as individuals who want to make laws for our own personal gain.  Instead, we must start working together as one to protect and preserve the liberties our Constitution was created to protect.  

Fewer workers are supporting more takers, a system bound to fail

There's a nice article over at cnsnews.com Terence Jeffrey called "86M Full-Time Private-Sector Workers Sustain 148M Benefit Takers."  I think that title pretty much says it all.

Basically, the article notes that there are 86 million workers paying the bill so that 148 million non-workers or part-time workers can take entitlements from the government.  

The direction we are headed in right now is in the direction of more takers, meaning that fewer people will be working and more will be taking.  As this happens, the taxes of those who work will have to rise in order to support such a system.  

Sometimes it appears that the goal of progressive leaders
is to take from the haves and give to the have nots
in order so that everyone has equal pay. 

As you might imagine, this type of system is not sustainable.  At some point in the future it's going to collapse.  Only Congress continues to kick the can down the road, because they don't want to be the bad guys to tell the takers that they need to quit taking.  So nothing ever gets done; nothing ever gets fixed.  

Of course then we have Obama come in and he gives every poor a free phone, and subsidized healthcare, and this exacerbates an already inflamed problem.  

In a way, I think it needed to get worse so that people wake up and smell the fumes of an eroding system.  For years people knew this was going on, but they chose to look the other way.  

This is why the tea party exists.  This is why it's so important to remember what this country was built on, and to get back to the basic principles of independence and personal accountability that this country was formed on.  

Surely you can call me a doom and gloomer for being a realist and stating the truth here, but so be it.  If America is ever going to rise to the heights it was during the 1980s and 1990s and early 2000s, we are going to have to upset some people with truths.