LETTER: We need to foster solutions in America

One can ignore reality, but one cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

In the beginning of our formation as the United States of America, we were without an income tax to finance the constitutional business of our government. How did we do it - by having excise taxes, tariffs, customs duties, and public land sales.

Financing our government has always been a major problem and has now turned into a looming catastrophe for future generations. We cannot tax, grow, or borrow our way out of our present situation with the promises of the federal government’s unfunded liabilities alone ranging close to $300 trillion.

The present value of our GDP does not support the future values needed to pay our true fiscal obligations. And, the present political trend embracing socialism is tantamount to a complete fiscal meltdown. It is a form of legal plunder as those politicians will continually ask for more, spend more, and borrow more.

The false promise of socialism claimed by the Progressives, that they can create a personal Utopia through wealth redistribution, has never worked and its absurdity is foreboding of national ruin. As Nobel economist Hayek often opined, “Social justice is an empty formula....”

As Richard Pipes wrote in “Communism, A History,” no clear distinction can be drawn between ‘socialism’ and ‘communism.’ That comment is certainly to be heeded by the country at large.

The historical outcome defining socialism is how the few have managed to plunder the many through the sophistry that persuades the victims that they are being robbed for their own benefit.

Venezuela, once the richest country in the Southern Hemisphere with oil and other natural resources, would be the latest example of a socialist country where authoritarian rule has turned it into a fiscal crisis with a collapsing economy, citizen anxiety, mob rule, and 2.3 million citizens fleeing to tense neighboring countries.

This present path in the U.S. leading to the government becoming the main pensioner and medical provider, in turn, further leads to the loss of personal and economic freedoms. It sounds much like the policies of those countries that we spent the 20th century freeing with our blood and treasure.

We are now faced with the fiscal problems that have destroyed all such nations where politicians entered their citizens into Faustian bargains. The myth of a U.S. democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished. It has failed at all government levels of our society, local, state and federal.

One must never underestimate a country’s inability to imagine its own destruction fostered by its political elite through their selfish quest for power with means that are morally unjustifiable, but best serve their desired outcomes. The unique origins of American Exceptionalism do not support these present political efforts to degrade the individual and put him under the care of the state.

We need to foster solutions that enhance the American experiment of democracy and capitalism rather than those causing our citizens to continue to suffer a humiliating loss of self-esteem through the present fostering of state dependency. Given the history of the world, the choice seems clear.

Richard L. Spencer, Ph.D.
LtCol USAF Ret.
Lewes