Have the Romans Returned?
I was lying awake in bed thinking about what to blog this week when my wife's alarm clock went off.
My first thought was that it couldn't really be that time yet, but her clock is one of those atomic ones that periodically gets the national time signal beamed to it from Ft. Collins, Co. It absolutely IS that time, to the millionth of a second. Hmm, the whole country at once? Yep, pretty handy, but who pays for that?
As a matter of fact, who pays for those weird projects like monitoring cow gasses (farts?), or subsidising nude photography touring exhibits (arts?), or the hundreds of other "pork barrel" projects like the recent multi-million dollar "bridge to nowhere" (for sleds and carts?) ? That would be all the rest of us.
In addition to supporting an oversized government, many of us live in houses larger than we really need. Most of the commuting traffic on our freeways has only one person in the car. We buy so much stuff looking for happiness that we can't manage it without extra storage. And in our quest to buy our way to happiness, we look to the government to provide extra services to manage some of the pressures which we have created for ourselves.
We have developed a huge appetite for those government services. With nearly two million civilian employees, not counting the Postal Service, the Federal Government is the United States' largest employer, and is still growing as services are added. But this is nothing new.
Two thousand years ago, the Roman empire was tottering from government over-growth. They financed the Empire by expanding and taking over surrounding countries until the Empire got too big to effectively manage and could not keep up with the demands for services to the wealthy class of citizens. Incidently, the Roman government tried the "coin-sandwich with base metals" trick two thousand years ago, and it failed as well. Except for the 1965- 69 half dollars at 40% silver, no silver has been used in US coins since 1964. Nor has there been any gold in the US "gold" one dollar coin for years.
Unfortunately, governments always perpetuate themselves, which helps them get used to spending money they don't have. When they can't take in enough money, governments just conveniently find a "commom enemy" to rally the people, and then print more money.
The really big problem is that as the US Government grows, it gets more powerful and pervasive. It's not a real benevolent organization now, and some of our leaders are now aligning with wealthy international "New World Order" proponents, and are pushing the World Bank agenda. Read that as "Really Big Brother," with a virtual symphony of accompanying undertones.
Think it couldn't happen here? Almost all of our money is now in the form of electronic ledger entries, all of our phone calls are logged, and government agencies regularly monitor Internet traffic and email. Internet programs can give you a street level view of about anyplace on Earth. You and I can be tracked to within ten feet of our location any place on the planet with current GPS technology.
This fiscal irresponsibility has to stop, on both a personal level, and a national level. We will never find peace, happiness, and security by spending more. We must change our focus from wants to needs; from more services to more accountability. Like Rome, America will never be conquered; it will collapse from within. And maybe with only a whimper.
Remember the words of Gerald Ford: "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have."
What really worries me is that Big Brother may be controlling our snooze alarms. He may not want us to wake up today.
My first thought was that it couldn't really be that time yet, but her clock is one of those atomic ones that periodically gets the national time signal beamed to it from Ft. Collins, Co. It absolutely IS that time, to the millionth of a second. Hmm, the whole country at once? Yep, pretty handy, but who pays for that?
As a matter of fact, who pays for those weird projects like monitoring cow gasses (farts?), or subsidising nude photography touring exhibits (arts?), or the hundreds of other "pork barrel" projects like the recent multi-million dollar "bridge to nowhere" (for sleds and carts?) ? That would be all the rest of us.
In addition to supporting an oversized government, many of us live in houses larger than we really need. Most of the commuting traffic on our freeways has only one person in the car. We buy so much stuff looking for happiness that we can't manage it without extra storage. And in our quest to buy our way to happiness, we look to the government to provide extra services to manage some of the pressures which we have created for ourselves.
We have developed a huge appetite for those government services. With nearly two million civilian employees, not counting the Postal Service, the Federal Government is the United States' largest employer, and is still growing as services are added. But this is nothing new.
Two thousand years ago, the Roman empire was tottering from government over-growth. They financed the Empire by expanding and taking over surrounding countries until the Empire got too big to effectively manage and could not keep up with the demands for services to the wealthy class of citizens. Incidently, the Roman government tried the "coin-sandwich with base metals" trick two thousand years ago, and it failed as well. Except for the 1965- 69 half dollars at 40% silver, no silver has been used in US coins since 1964. Nor has there been any gold in the US "gold" one dollar coin for years.
Unfortunately, governments always perpetuate themselves, which helps them get used to spending money they don't have. When they can't take in enough money, governments just conveniently find a "commom enemy" to rally the people, and then print more money.
The really big problem is that as the US Government grows, it gets more powerful and pervasive. It's not a real benevolent organization now, and some of our leaders are now aligning with wealthy international "New World Order" proponents, and are pushing the World Bank agenda. Read that as "Really Big Brother," with a virtual symphony of accompanying undertones.
Think it couldn't happen here? Almost all of our money is now in the form of electronic ledger entries, all of our phone calls are logged, and government agencies regularly monitor Internet traffic and email. Internet programs can give you a street level view of about anyplace on Earth. You and I can be tracked to within ten feet of our location any place on the planet with current GPS technology.
This fiscal irresponsibility has to stop, on both a personal level, and a national level. We will never find peace, happiness, and security by spending more. We must change our focus from wants to needs; from more services to more accountability. Like Rome, America will never be conquered; it will collapse from within. And maybe with only a whimper.
Remember the words of Gerald Ford: "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have."
What really worries me is that Big Brother may be controlling our snooze alarms. He may not want us to wake up today.
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