In this first of a (probably) four-part series of podcasts, Samurai Appliance Repair Man and Mrs. Samurai discuss why homeschooling is superior to public schools (or “government indoctrination camps,” as the Samurai refers to them) providing kids with a true education– which the government schools fail to provide– and a better socialization experience. They also discuss their 12+ years experience in homeschooling their three kids.
Click the play button in the player below to listen:
What is Smart Grid?
Smart Grid is a planned enhancement to the existing power distribution grid that will, in theory, have the capability of meeting growing electricity demand by more efficient distribution without having to build new power plants. One of the ways this lofty goal will be accomplished is by using two-way technology. Where the current power grid is one-way– power flows out from the power plant, through the grid, to the end user with no feedback or communication with the power plant– the Smart Grid will be two-way, meaning it will send back information to the power plant (and government regulators) on how the electricity is being used, in what types of machines, by whom, and for how long. It’s this “two-way” bidness that makes Big Brother smile and should make you cringe.
Who Likes It?
Government
Government, especially the Ameedican gubmint, has a long history of using technology to spy on its citizens, especially in recent years (e.g., Patriot Act, Project ECHELON, Total Information Awareness initiative, etc.).
Government likes Smart Grid because it gives them what governments always want: control; specifically, more control over the sheeple. Smart Grid gives them this through its two-way technology, which allows them to monitor not only how much electricity you’re using but how you’re using it and for what types of appliances.
For example, they can look at your total power usage and, say, 60% of it is accounted for from Smart Grid-enabled appliances. That leaves 40% of your usage unaccounted for. So, gubmint, which embodies the unfortunate combination of Rambo and the Keystone Cops, automatically assumes you must be doing something illegal, like running an indoor pot garden using high-energy grow lights. Next thing you know, DEA is raiding your house at 2am, shoots your dog and ransacks your home only to find that all you have is a tanning bed.
This power monitoring is effectively a form of surveillance over you for gubmint bureaucrats. You think gubmint will use this information wisely? Well, you must absolutely love the way they handled New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina, the bankster bailouts, the Patriot Act (which was only supposed to be used for terrorists) being used against pot smokers, standing in long lines at airports while waiting to be fondled and groped by TSA thugs, and having 3-D, full-detailed pornographic electronic images taken of your wife and daughter.
When will the sheeple finally wake up and realize this is just another scam, another power-grab by a perverted gang of criminals calling themselves “your government” to exert more control over your life and keep you enslaved like a good little serf? To the criminal cabal in Washington, Smart Grid is yet another way to exert neo-feudalism, keep you on the plantation, invade your privacy and ration your electricity use. Think I’m exaggerating? It’s stated right inside DOE’s happy talk Smart Grid propaganda brochure on pages 17 and 18. You can download the entire puff-piece here.
Utility Companies
If you haven’t figured it out already, we blew right past socialism and have arrived at full-on fascism in Amerika today. A quick refresher for the Illiterati: “Socialism” is where all the losses and the gains are socialized; everyone, including big corporations, are all floundering in the same sewer together. “Fascism,” on the other hand, is where the losses are socialized but the profits or gains are privatized. The most recent and brazen example of this was the banker bailout– they gambled with huge amounts of money and, as long as it worked out in their favor, they kept all the profits; but when they lost big bucks, we the tax-paying suckers, had to bail them out. So, in a fascist system, when the special corporate interests make money, they keep it and the sheeple get nothing; when they “lose” money, the sheeple pay for it and they don’t really lose at all. It’s a game of “heads they win; tails we lose.”
The utility companies claim that Smart Grid will let them have more “granular” control over power production and have more awareness of power failures. Currently, when power goes out in an area, the only way the power company knows about it is when someone phones it in. The two-way nature of Smart Grid enables them to know automatically when part of their grid goes down. But this comes at a huge price for us. And, besides, is it really such a burden to call in a power outage? Our power goes out regularly and we just call in the outage to the power company’s toll-free automated power outage line and they dispatch a crew to fix it. What’s the big deal?
The real reason power companies like Smart Grid is because it will enable them to create artificial scarcity scenarios and thus increase rates. It doesn’t take much grey matter to foresee a situation where the power company is low on power during a peak demand period and they have a choice: supply power to Joe Sixpack at (relatively) low rates or to a commercial or industrial customer who pays sometimes two or three times the residential rate. Hmm, decisions, decisions.
Smart Grid represents yet another merger of government and corporate interests. They’re in bed together and each stands to benefit in specific ways from Smart Grid which boils down to this: more control and surveillance over we the sheeple, higher electricity costs, and less electricity available when we want it, even if we’re willing to pay for it.
Environmental Groups
The “Warmistas” or Green Nazis, the tools of the global elite, are all ga-ga over Smart Grid because they’ve been conned into thinking that it’s good for the earth, man. These are the same gullible, useful idiots of the global elite who’ve bought into the whole man-made global warming scam, which was proven to be a scam (and a conspiracy) when a decade’s worth of emails and falsified data were leaked by investigators on the inside. But, hey, don’t take my word for it– read the Climategate Files for yourself.
Conclusion
Smart Grid is touted as a way to extend the capabilities of an aging and ailing power grid system, to deliver power to meet ever-growing demand without building additional power generating plants. If that right there doesn’t scream “rationing” to you, then you’re either stone deaf or dumb as a rock.
So what’s the answer to meeting increased power demand? Simple: build more frikkin’ power plants! “Oh, no!” come the shrill cries from the green weenies, “that’ll increase pollution and *gasp* global warming!”
Stop falling for that bovine excrement. Now that global warming has been proven to be a Big Lie we can take that card off the table. As for other types of pollution, such as sulfur and nitrogen oxides which cause smog and acid rain deposition, these are real concerns. But they can effectively be dealt with using modern air pollution control technologies. These are engineering problems, and solutions for them have been around since before I was a graduate student in Environmental Systems Engineering at Clemson University in the mid-1980’s. Engineers solve these kinds of problems every single day.
The biggest impediment to building new power plants is the government red-tape and strangling regulations. No one in their right mind is going to invest capital into building a power plant, whether coal-fired using clean coal technology or nuclear, if they see no possibility of earning a return on that capital. Sorry, folks, that’s the way the real world works, no matter what Karl Marx (or his surrogates in American universities) tells you.
And now, brothers and sisters, let us conclude this screed with a haiku. Fire up a spliff and chant along with me now…
Emboldened by the stunning success of their Cash for Clunkers program at screwing lower income folks, the geniuses at the Feral Gubmint have a new program: Cash for Appliances. They’re plugging it in just in time for October, which got designated by someone as National Kitchen & Bath Month.
Just as the Cash for Clunkers program was a bailout for the auto industry, the Cash for Appliances program is a bailout for appliance manufacturers. Domestic appliance manufacturers, like Whirlpool (Benton Harbor, MI) and Frigidaire (Martinez, GA), have gotten slammed during this engineered economic collapse of Ameedica.
But there’s a slight difference.
Unlike the Detroit auto makers, Whirlpool and Frigidaire actually make decent stuff. Both companies have an enlightened policy of making technical information on their products readily and freely available to professional appliance servicers.
I especially like Whirlpool appliances because, with a few exceptions, their products are decent quality and servicer-friendly. In the past, Frigidaire had a horrible reputation for being nightmares to work on; but they’ve made big improvements in this regard.
Happy shopping!
CDC Warning: ***DO NOT DO THIS!!!***
The LSM (lame-stream media) is finally starting to catch on: there really IS a powerful grassroots Ron Paul movement. Check it out…
The Ron Paul Revolution: be a part of it!
From L to R: Congressman Ron Paul!, Mike Faiella, A Guy, Fr. Andrew Tregubov (my priest), Samurai Appliance Repair Man. Not shown: Mrs. Samurai— she’s taking the picture (click to enlarge).
Monday, December 3, 2007
BJ Bricker’s Restaurant, Claremont, NH
I just found out last Friday that I was going to this lunch. What a rare and unique opportunity to talk with an actual presidential candidate! And not just any candidate either; I was having lunch with the man who could very well become the next commander-in-chief.
As we were eating and making small talk, I waited for just the right moment to ask my question. Then, as the waitress was pouring more coffee for everyone, I got my chance.
“So, Dr. Paul,” I began in my best Perry Mason imitation, “I run an appliance repair website, Fixitnow.com, perhaps you’ve heard of it…?”
“No, never heard of it,” he answered.
“Oh well,” I replied, “your loss. Anyway, I get email from thousands of people everyday complaining about their broken appliances. What’s the gubmint gonna do about this?” I asked, indignantly.
“Do about what?” he asked back.
“‘About what?’ About all these broken appliances, that’s what!” I struggled to keep my voice down– I was *really* getting hot now. Was he dissin’ me?
Dr. Paul shot a puzzled glance to his campaign manager. I could tell by the expression on his face that he was thinking to himself, “Wow! This guy’s really good! How do I answer this?” Yep, I had him right where I wanted him.
But instead he said, “I don’t think the government has any business doing anything about yours or anyone else’s broken appliance appliances. Things break. If you get the government involved in it, they’ll just break more often, stay broken longer, and be more expensive to fix.”
“Yes, things break,” I replied with narrowing eyes, “and that’s exactly why we need gubmint to take over this vital issue because no one’s better at breaking things than the federal gubmint.” I paused for dramatic effect. Dr. Paul was looking at the other people seated at the table. “We need to create a new Department of Appliantology and elevate it to a cabinet-level position. Are you willing to create the new DOA for the Ameedican sheople, Dr. Paul?” I was smelling blood as I moved in for the kill.
“Department of Appliantology?” he was sounding a little irked now. “Are you on medication? I don’t even know what ‘appliantology’ is but I promise you this: your ‘Department of Appliantology’ truly is DOA. In fact, I’m going to hack back *all* the alphabet soup bureaucracy in Washington. If I’m elected, the IRS, DEA, BATF, CIA and many others are all going on the chopping block. The size and scope of the federal government will be slashed to a fraction of its present state.”
*SLAM* It was like someone cracking a two-by-four over my head at full swing. I literally jerked backwards and fell over in my chair onto the floor.
In an instant Dr. Paul, a gubmint-licensed physician, was kneeling beside me as I lay flat out on the floor. He checked my pulse and then turned to Mrs. Samurai.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Samurai, I should have seen it right away; it appears to be a case of cranial rectitis,” he said somberly. “I’ve been seeing it all over the country while campaigning.”
“Cranial rectitis?” Mrs. Samurai asked, her lips quivering slightly. “What is it, Doctor? Is there a cure? Can I get it from the toilet seat?”
“Cranial rectitis is where the victim’s head gets, well, let’s just say it’s not in the right place. The disease causes the victim to believe that he needs government in his life. The cure is to simply hear the message of liberty.”
Then he proceeded to explain that freedom is the birthright of every human being on the planet and that the only legitimate purpose of government is to secure and protect that natural freedom. He explained that the federal government today has become a predator and is herding us like cattle into a increasingly restrictive police state. They do this through the proven tactic of problem-reaction-solution: create or exaggerate a problem – whip up emotional reaction to the problem among the sheople – implement a government solution which always involves infringing on more personal freedoms.
As he spoke, I felt my head begin pulling out of my bottom. Slowly at first, then with increasing strength until it suddenly popped out like a cork shooting off a champagne bottle. I gulped in the air like a prisoner who just tunneled his way out of jail. I was cured; I was free man and I knew it!
Dr. Paul cured my cranial rectitis!
Popping sounds are going off all across the country. Catch the cure! Read more about the miracle cures of Dr. Ron Paul:
That’s right, I said “republic,” not “democracy” because we’re supposed to be a republic. But you never hear that term in the LSM (lame-stream media); no, they’re all ga-ga over the D-word. Yeah, if only everyone could vote, then the whole world will live as one.
You wanna know what democracy really is? It’s three wolves and a lamb trying to decide what to have for dinner so they take a vote. Hey, it was voted on by the majority so it must be OK to eat the loser, right? Yes, that would be right in a Democracy which is why democracy, as a concept, SUCKS.
By contrast, in a Republic, everyone is born with certain basic human rights (you know: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, remember those?) and the role of the government is to protect those rights, regardless of what the flatulent masses want or how they vote.
Notice the subtle but fundamental paradigm shift: in a Republic, the government does not, and cannot, grant rights; it protects God-given rights that every human being is endowed with simply by virtue of having a pulse. In a Democracy, the government grants those same rights; and it can also take them away because, hey, the majority voted for it so it must be OK. So, when you hear the talking heads and political predators talking about spreading “democracy” around the globe, the alarms bells in your head should be so loud that everyone around you hears it, too.
My friends, we are witnessing the death-throes of our Republic. This election is the dying gasp of our republic-turned-empire. If Ron Paul doesn’t win this election, it’s game over for freedom in Ameedica and we’ll have to change the last line of our national anthem to “the land of the freeloaders and the home of the depraved.” If Ron Paul wins, we at least have a fighting chance to restore some sanity to our broken and corrupt political process.
Watch this video and then vote for Ron Paul.
When was the last time you tried to hire a skilled and competent tradesman? Seems you either can’t get anyone to call you back or the ones that you can reach you wished you hadn’t. Why is that, Capt. Ron? As usual, the Samurai has the answer. Open your skull and let the light of wisdom shine inside that empty space betwixt your ears.
I’ve been saying for years that there are just too many over-indulged, pampered progeny going to college. The ample supply of easily-available, low-interest, government-backed student loans has spawned hordes of puffy little cherubs trotting off to college ostensibly for “higher learning” but who actually spend most of their time in laboratory studies of intemperance and concupiscence. This is when “college” becomes “collitch.”
As Charles Murray, at the American Enterprise Institute (a group usually too neo-connish for my tastes), correctly points out:
Government policy contributes to the problem by making college scholarships and loans too easy to get, but its role is ancillary. The demand for college is market-driven, because a college degree does, in fact, open up access to jobs that are closed to people without one. The fault lies in the false premium that our culture has put on a college degree.
For a few occupations, a college degree still certifies a qualification. For example, employers appropriately treat a bachelor’s degree in engineering as a requirement for hiring engineers. But a bachelor’s degree in a field such as sociology, psychology, economics, history or literature certifies nothing. It is a screening device for employers. The college you got into says a lot about your ability, and that you stuck it out for four years says something about your perseverance. But the degree itself does not qualify the graduate for anything. There are better, faster and more efficient ways for young people to acquire credentials to provide to employers.
The “over-educated idiot” is a cliché in our overindulged society. We all know people who went to collitch, graduated with a degree in something like African Percussion Interpretation but, hmmm, just can’t seem to find a job. Either that or they hate their job and feel stuck working for Da Man and so lash out by voting to take Da Man’s money through taxation, government-mandated minimum wage increases, or various other hare-brained wealth-redistribution schemes right out of Marx’s imbecilic Manifesto.
So why aren’t kids going into these trades? Simple: pretend you’re an overindulged 18 year-old snot-nosed punk with no clear vision of what you want to do with your life or what you would even study in collitch. In your 18-year old brain, your impression of working in the trades is to work for someone like Cheeky the Repairclown (or, worse yet, to end up like Cheeky!). And suppose that you had the choice of working for Cheeky or enjoying four years of drinking and carousing in collitch on someone else’s dime (i.e., low-interest, government-backed student loans, Mommy and Daddy, grants, etc.). Which would you choose?
Another problem is that parents have this goofy notion that their spawn has a “right” to go to collitch and, by God, to collitch they will go! Nevermind that the only thing this kid has any intention of studying is the bottom of his beer mug and his girlfriend’s chest.
The result is that the poor kid will struggle through collitch (in between parties) and then, if he’s lucky, end up in some miserable Dilbert job on a cubicle farm wishing he’d gone to work as an apprentice for Uncle Joe, a Master Electrician. He would have had his own Master Electrician license by now and been in a position to either buy Uncle Joe’s bidness or start his own. Guess that degree in Underwater Basketweaving wasn’t such a good investment afterall. Go figure.
But, despite not learning very much that matters during his collitch career, the kid will certainly pick up the usual collectivist claptrap from the last remaining Marxists on the planet, the collitch faculty, about how more gubmint is the answer to all our problems from global warming to jock itch. In most cases, collitch of today has devolved into nothing more than a factory cranking out swarms of government-loving, liberty-hating voters who don’t understand the free market and are actually scared to death of it. These are the people who will vote themselves, along with the rest of us, into slavery.
I have always maintained that these misguided souls would be much happier and wealthier learning a trade. Instead of all this spite, envy, and disgruntlement, these very same people could be living the good life as successful entrepreneurs running their own trade bidness and getting a taste of the Ameedican Dream.
What, exactly, is this Ameedican Dream of which I speak? It is running your own life the way you choose and controlling your own destiny. It’s having a work situation where the amount of moola you earn is dependent on your efforts and not on Da Man counting out the beans and saying, “You can have this many, the rest are mine.” In the Ameedican Dream, YOU Da Man! In today’s economy, the easiest way to get there is by running a bidness in one of the skilled trades.
According to my state-of-the-art prognostications, here are some of the trades I see as the most viable and valuable both now and in the forseeable future (in no particular order):
You may have noticed the conspicuous absence of appliance repair technician. I don’t consider appliance repair to be one of the long-term viable trades because the mega-trend for appliance repair techs has diminishing opportunities for an in-home service bidness; the shining exception will be servicing high-end appliances.
So, if you’re a collitch student majoring in Effing-Up, do the world and yourself a favor by dropping out and learning a trade instead. You’ll thank me in a few years.
There’s another Nanny-bill up for hearings in Concord. This is House Bill 1711 which, in keeping with the current fashion trend, is named after a little girl, Amilia’s Law. The bill seeks to require licensing for tradesmen who work with natural gas or propane. The language of the bill is broad enough to include any tradesman whose work involves gas in any way: plumbers, appliance repair techs, construction crewmen, excavators, and carpenters to name but a few.
The gist is that the Luhrmanns were having some remodeling done. As part of the demolition and cleanup, a carpenter accidentally cut a propane line while doing some demolition (it’s not even clear he was aware the line was cut because the gas was off at the time and the noisy, dirty nature of doing demolition work). Family comes up (from Massachusetts), turns on the gas and the furnace and BOOM. Everyone escaped except their little daughter. For more information read, “Parents call propane bill a lifesaver,” by Kathryn Marchocki, in the Thursday, Jan. 26, 2006 edition of the Union Leader [link].
The story is tragic but the solution is, yet again, moronic. Even if this bill were in force at the time of the accident, it would NOT have prevented this disaster! The carpenter doing the demolition would have had no reason to seek such training. And, as mentioned, it’s not even clear that he was aware that he had cut the gas tube.
The sponsor of the bill, Bonnie Mitchell, was on Against the Grain with Gardner Goldmith on WNTK Talk Radio, 99.7 FM, 1490 AM. I called in while she was on to speak with her.
Mitchell confirmed that this bill, opportunistically named Amillia’s Law, would not have even prevented the Luhrmann tragedy. Yet this bill is named after the Luhrmann’s daughter who was killed in a house fire caused by the cut gas line. Mitchell also stated that some members of the Legislature have been trying to pass this law since 1990 and that it’s been regularly defeated. So what’s really going on here is that some politicians in Concord are exploiting the Luhrmann’s tragedy to use it as an emotional vehicle to attempt to pass, yet again, a hugely unpopular and stupid bill.
So what’s really behind the push for this bill? Well, let’s see: what do bureaucrats and politicians love above all else? That’s right: Money! And, as you’d expect, this bill is all about increasing revenue for the state bank account– more money for them to spend on other feel-good programs. HB 1711 includes testing “fees” (read: taxes) for both Master and Journeyman gas fitters as well as annual licensing “fees” (taxes). The exact amount of the license tax is to be determined by the State Fire Marshal who, not surprisingly, supports this tax increase.
Anytime government messes with the free market, it produces “unintended consequences.” The unintended consequence of this bill will be to restrict the number of servicers that customers may call for gas service. It will also result in longer delays in getting service for simple things like converting an appliance from natural gas to propane. And these services will become more expensive and a lot less convenient.
And here’s another point: I carry one million dollars worth of liability insurance. If we have a clear and present danger from bad propane connections lurking in every household, then why hasn’t my insurance company required me to have a gas fitter’s certification as a condition of my insurance policy?
Hearings on House Bill 1711 are on Feb 9. You can read the text of the bill here.
If you live in New Hampshire, contact your representative and ask him or her to dump this bill. HB 1711 is bad for business, bad for consumers, and bad for New Hampshire.
It’s not a question of if, but when and how bad the next emergency will impact your life. Even the various tentacles of the federal gubmint are urging people to make preparations for at least a 72 hour emergency, but anyone with any common sense is preparing for a much more protracted scenario. When I talk about this with my family, we call this the Hard Day.
To help people prepare for the inevitable, I’ve started a new message board completely dedicated to helping everyone and anyone prepare for the coming Hard Day. It’s brand, spankin’ new so I only have a few things posted right now but it’s not about me– it’s about we the sheeple pooling our knowledge and resources to help each other survive and prosper during the Hard Day. In turn, we have a responsibility to help our neighbors and communities prepare. Don’t rely on the gubmint to do for you what you should do for yourself; remember Katrina.
The new message board is called Get Ready! It looks the same as the Samurai Appliance Repair Forum and runs the same software, so it’s already familiar to regular users of this site. So come on in and become a part of our preparedness community:
Awwite all you cool grasshoppers, go grab you a beer and the Samurai’ll tell you a story.
Once upon a time, in a place that was called the "land of the free," there was a big ol’ company called Dupont. Now, Dupont made a thang that we old timers held near and dear to our hearts and that was R-12, a refrigerant used in just about every type of refrigerator ever made, including beer coolers. But Dupont had a problem: their patent on R-12 was about to expire and everyone else and their momma was gonna start making it, too. Well, it don’t take a rocket scientist, like yours truly, to figger out that once this happened, the price of R-12 was gonna take a nose dive.
Now, Dupont, being a company with lots of money to throw around, paid off a bunch of fancy-pants scientists and engineers at these high-dollar universities to show that R-12 was reeeel bad and needed to be banned. So these fancy-pants university types cooked up some numbers showing how all them nasty little molecules in R-12 was eatin’ up the orzos in the atmosphere…er somethin’ like that.
Anyway, Dupont goes and presents all these high falootin’ studies to one of the fourth branches of the gubmint, the EPA. The EPA said, "Hmmm, we can’t be eatin’ up all them little orzos like that there. Gubmint has to do something about that!" So they came out with a big ol’ riot act of new regamalations where they said everyone what works on beer coolers has to have a new-fangled recovery unit to catch all them bad molecules.
Well, I didn’t know no better and besides, I didn’t wanna hurt them little orzos ‘cuz, heck, they ain’t never done nothin’ to me. So I lined up with all the other suckers, er, I mean, tradesmen and plunked down a bunch of money for a fancy new recovery unit.
Funny thang happened though. When the EPA got into the bidness of regamalating refrigerants, their prices all went sky high. So the cost to replace the compressor on your average beer fridge went from $150 to, oh, say $400, once you figger in the higher refrigerant cost and a refrigerant recovery charge. Well, at that price, people were just hauling their old fridges off to the landfill and buying new ones. Lots of good fridges piling up in landfills today. But, hey, the gubmint knows what’s best ‘cuz they here to help!
Meanwhile, Dupont is back in bidness, happily raking in the big bucks selling it’s new line of R-12 replacement refrigerants. Ain’t gubmint great? I think everybody awwta own one!
And so the gubmint and the big shot corporations who benefit from their regamalations all lived happily ever after.
The End
I can tell you that my recovery unit makes a reeel spiffy footstool in my workshop ‘cuz that’s all I ever use it for. Never even used it once. Wanna buy one cheap?
What is going on with you fruit cakes over in Portsmouth? This is what happens when you let collectivist-socialist-liberals run the nut house: government on acid. Y’all better get your sheist in one sock– you’re giving the rest of us Granite Staters a bad name!
Happy Dependence Day to all my fellow Ameedicans. I’ve re-named the 4th of July as Dependence Day in recognition of our complete and utter dependency on the government from the cradle to the grave. I present, for your reading pleasure on this auspicious occasion, an article from Harry Browne, former Presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party. Enjoy!
Uncelebrating the Fourth
by Harry Browne
Unfortunately, July 4th has become a day of deceit.
On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress formally declared its
independence from Great Britain. Thirteen years later, after a
difficult war to secure that independence, the new country was open
for business.It was truly unique — the first nation in all of history in which the
individual was considered more important than the government, and the
government was tied down by a written Constitution.It was the one nation where you could live your life secure in the
knowledge that no one would ask for your papers, where you weren’t
identified by a number, and where the government wouldn’t extort a
percentage of your income as the price of holding a job.And so each year July 4th has been a commemoration of the freest
country in history.False Celebration
But the America that’s celebrated no longer exists.
The holiday oratory deceitfully describes America as though it were
the unique land of liberty that once was. Politicians thank the
Almighty for conferring the blessings of liberty on a country that no
longer enjoys those blessings. The original freedom and security have
disappeared — even though the oratory lingers on.What made America unique is now gone, and we are much the same as
Germany, France, England, or Spain, with:– confiscatory taxes,
– a Constitution and Bill of Rights that are symbolic only — merely
documents used to justify governmental actions that are in fact
prohibited by those documents,– business regulated by the state in the most minute detail,
– no limits on what Congress or the President might decide to do.
Yes, there are some freedoms left, but nothing like the America that
was — and nothing that you can’t find in a few dozen other countries.The Empire
Gone, too, is the sense of peace and security that once reigned
throughout the land. America — bound by two huge oceans and two
friendly neighbors — was subject to none of the never-ending wars and
destruction that plagued Europe and Asia.Now, however, everyone’s business is America’s business. Our
Presidents consider themselves the rulers of the world — deciding who
may govern any country on earth and sending Americans to die enforcing
those decisions.Whereas America was once an inspiration to the entire world — its
very existence was proof that peace and liberty really were possible
— Americans now live in fear of the rest of the world and the rest of
the world lives in fear of America.The Future
Because the education of our children was turned over to government in
the 19th century, generations of Americans have been taught that
freedom means taxes, regulations, civic duty, and responsibility for
the whole world. They have no conception of the better life that could
exist in a society in which government doesn’t manage health care,
education, welfare, and business — and in which individuals are free
to plot their own destinies.Human beings are born with the desire to make their own decisions and
control their own lives. But in most countries government and social
pressures work to teach people to expect very little autonomy.Fortunately, in America a remnant has kept alive the ideas of liberty,
peace, and self-respect — passing the concepts on from generation to
generation. And so today millions of Americans know that the present
system isn’t the right system — that human beings aren’t born to
serve the state and police the world.Millions more would be receptive upon being shown that it’s possible
to have better lives than what they’re living now.Both groups need encouragement to quit supporting those who are taking
freedom away from them.You and I may not have the money and influence to change America by
ourselves, but we can keep spreading the word — describing a better
society in which individuals are truly free and government is in
chains (instead of the opposite).And someday we may reach the people who do have the money and
influence to persuade tens of millions of Americans to change our
country for the better.I don’t know that it’s going to happen, but I do know it’s possible. I
know that the urge to live one’s own life is as basic in human beings
as the will to live and the desire to procreate. If we keep plugging
away, we may eventually tap into that urge and rally the forces
necessary to restore the real America.And then the 4th of July will be worth celebrating again.
The URL of this article is:
http://www.HarryBrowne.org/articles/JulyFourth.htm
An excellent and very readable white paper on this timely topic. Learn how you and your children are being intellectually disarmed in public schools so that you’ll be easier to manipulate in the coming planned financial meltdown. (PDF format, Adobe Acrobat Reader required):
http://applianceguru.com/documents/Coming_Financial_Crash.pdf
