I BELIEVE – ONE AMERICAN TALE

UPDATED 3/8/2024

Some of what I say here is condensed and perhaps a bit oversimplified, but the truth is that each of these topics could spawn a whole epistle of its own, so I will attempt to capsulize each.  This post will evolve as I add to it, more or less defining who I have become as a person over the years, and where my own life walk has taken me.

THE NATION

First of all, and primarily, I believe in Liberty.  My personal liberty to live free, to provide for myself, my loved ones and family, and our futures in any way that contributes to the happiness and accumulation of private property that comes with such security.  For purposes of everything I post here, I want to define "property" as not only those things I may have surrounded myself with over the years, and possessions I own, but my freedom itself.  All of the fruits of my own labor are my property.  I believe in freedom from interference by the government as long as my endeavors do not infringe upon or directly harm the health, happiness, or well-being of others.  I recognize that true equality is something that does not exist unless one is talking about equality of all before the law.  Human beings have different aptitudes, abilities, intelligence, work ethics, ambitions, and motivations, and one person may very well outperform another for any reason or combination of reasons above.  The person who does so should not be penalized for doing so, and the person who does not do so is not "owed" any portion of the first person's labor except where that person decides to give it freely.

As I consider myself to be a Constitutional Conservative, I believe that our nation was founded by people who fought a bloody and costly revolution to escape from the overbearing, smothering government that drove them from their original homeland.  The Constitution that our Founding Fathers authored was a Constitution like nothing that had ever come before it in history.  It was a Constitution that came very close to not being ratified by some of the States at the time because they had such a gut-wrenching distrust of a proposed Federal government that if left unchecked, could easily become as overreaching as what they had just shed blood to escape from.  It was a Constitution that by design specified certain limited (enumerated) powers given to not only each branch of that government as a check against the others, but to the entire government itself.  Those specific powers that were not granted to this new Federal government were carefully and purposefully reserved to the States.  This is important.  The purpose of this was to keep daily decision-making about matters of common concern, interest, and importance to individuals, along with the regulations and laws they would live under as close to the local level of control as possible.

I believe in the rule of law, and a society that conducts itself and bases those laws on a governing set of morals.  When we are un-moored from that moral foundation and when "anything goes", without the principles of a civil society there is and can only be anarchy.  Our Founders knew this.  Whether a person receives these guiding principles through their faith directly, or through another source, these "moral laws" (as e.e. cummings once said), "must needs" exist.  Although our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and a belief in God-given "unalienable" rights, (in other words, rights that are not and cannot be conferred by man or government upon man, but rights that are born to us as free individuals), not all of the founders were Christians.  In truth, there were non-believers in that group, but they all agreed upon one thing:  Without the underpinnings of a moral compass and that belief in those unalienable rights, our survival as a nation of free people was doomed.

CLIMATE CHANGE

I believe that from the beginnings of its existence, the Earth has had cycles of heat and cold, and fluctuations in its ozone layer caused by a variety of factors.  Ice ages have been followed by temperate ages, to be again followed by ice ages, etc.  I believe that this theory is supported by a huge and growing portion of the scientific community, which has been dismissed as "deniers" by the Global Warming community.  I believe that the current man-made Global Warming theory supporters have used warming trends, where they have occurred, to promote and validate their own self-interested political and environmental agendas and wealth.  I also believe that based on several major recent studies, the Earth may actually be currently entering a cooling trend as evidenced over the past 20 years.  Given the study of its history, Earth is certainly overdue to enter another ice age as our sun becomes more distant from us.

I believe that alternative sources of energy are the future for our growing planet.  I believe that the best path to transition to these sources lies with the careful development and refinement of delivering these energy sources in an efficient and affordable manner while we slowly transition over to them from our current dependence on fossil fuels.  I also believe that most of these new sources are still in the “birthing” stage, i.e.  not ready or economically feasible at this point to completely drop our dependence on fossil fuels, but with time most or maybe all of them very well might be.  I believe that there will most likely always be a need and use for petroleum-based products in our society and that oil is plentiful for the next several hundred years if we wish to take it prudently from our own domestic sources in order to control its production, rather than binding our economy, security and future to Middle Eastern cultures and tyrants that hold our worst interests and our complete destruction as a society as their goals.  I believe that the best path forward in this regard is through private sector money, research, and development, funded by individuals, groups, and corporations of interested investors. Any grants or "subsidies" for such research should be voted on and controlled by local governments or national referendum depending on their circumstances, not by the Federal government using taxpayer funds to distribute subsidies as they see fit to their own interest groups or political donors, thus leading to excessive Crony Corporatism.

FREE MARKETS

I believe in individual private sector free-market capitalism.  This is what our country was founded upon in order to escape the tyranny of the overburden of government, excessive taxes, and regulation.  It is based on the concept of individual freedom and liberty.  Freedom to identify and provide a product or service that people will gladly pay for if it can be presented in an affordable manner, in the open exchange of ideas in an open and thriving marketplace.  Prudent regulations, when required, should be approved only by a vote of Congress and not by any agency of largely anonymous government-appointed bureaucrats that have the authority to issue thousands of regulations based on their own interest or agenda, without the approval of Congress.  Free-market Capitalism also includes the ability to accumulate private property and have it secured from confiscation by an overbearing government without permission in order to re-distribute it and give it to others who did not work for or earn it.  This free-market capitalism is the only system that has ever worked in the history of man, and individual freedom is the reason why.

I believe that greed, although it is a basic human trait and not necessarily an evil thing when measured, is a bad thing when it is out of control, or when it becomes the instigator of the suffering of others. At that point, I believe that the responsible individuals should be stopped and if applicable prosecuted and punished.

I believe that the free market is most capable of doing this "policing" of itself to the greatest and most efficient degree, and indeed it has done so in the past based on the current number of instigators who have been arrested, dealt with, and sentenced to prison in many cases.  Although we will never be free from the risk of such behavior it is the best risk and compromises available without smothering regulation intrusions on our freedoms.  I further believe that the government is the least capable of policing itself in this regard and that it will avoid doing so at all possible costs as a self-preservation mechanism.  A government that is mandated to control its own growth and power grabs is a government that will resort to virtually anything to thwart that effort.  History proves it again.....and again.  Much of what non-elected regulators of agencies created by that very government and the politicians that are elected again and again currently get away with would certainly land them in orange jail jumpsuits for a very long time if they were in the private sector.  I believe that these 500 elected individuals to Congress,  (House Of Representatives and Senate) men and women no smarter than a great deal of the 300 million-plus citizens in general that they govern, thrive on their ability to be re-elected again and again without term limits, and consider themselves to a great degree to be above the laws that they insist that the rest of us adhere to under penalty of fine or imprisonment.  I believe in term limits.

I generally do not believe in subsidies being granted to companies or corporations by the Federal government as I have previously defined here.  I further believe that any "subsidies" are best when they are in the form of investment by the shareholders of such companies, or other individual private investors and donors if possible.  The money at risk for new exploration, development, and research should not be monies taken from the citizenry at large by confiscatory taxation without their consent to be then given to whomever the government favors at the moment for one reason or the other.  And that should those ventures fail; the citizenry should not be made to pay the price.  I believe that the failed "new energy" and other companies in the Obama and Biden administration's time in office are demonstrative of that fact like no other administration in history.  Donors to the Obama campaign received as a reward a ratio of $25,000 from taxpayers to $1.00 donated to the Obama campaign as a "subsidy" to spend billions on companies designed to produce "green" energy thereby "redistributing" American taxpayer money to these ventures without any input from those taxpayers.   The record shows that several of the very largest of these donor and friend companies have ultimately failed with no return of that taxpayer money, except to line the pockets of the donors.  This practice has been described originally by Mark Levin,  (who actually coined the term,  thank you Mark!) as "Crony Capitalism / Corporatism" at its ugliest.  No major advance made by civilization has ever been the product of a government.  They have been the product of the imagination and drive of the private sector and of individuals who are free to use human knowledge, motivation, and creativity to take us to a higher level.  These individuals and corporations have, in some infrequent cases, cooperated with the government but they do not have a history of existence and innovation at the behest of that government.  The Industrial Revolution was not a product of the government.  The invention of the automobile, the airplane, the computer, mobile devices and the discovery of penicillin were not the result of government.  They were all a result of the government staying out of the way.

IMMIGRATION

"A Nation Without Borders Will Cease to be a Nation" - (Various Attributions)

I believe in a controlled policy of LEGAL immigration to America. When immigrants are forced to naturally assimilate into the American culture and with following generations, contribute to the growth and well being of the nation as a whole, then we are on the path that we need to be on.

I believe that English should be the only standard recognized by our society. Cultural communities should rightfully be able to maintain their original languages and customs but residents of those communities should recognize that to be American means to be part of the larger culture that unites us.

Open borders advocates in America continually ignore the fact that no other nation in the world exists with open borders. Without controlled policy and assimilation, culture, laws and standards will disintegrate into an unrecognizable mass.

Throughout its history, America has been a country of immigrants. This fact is one that is often thrown in the face of those who oppose open borders and the current policies that have little to no control over who...or what kind of people are actually entering the country.  In the following encapsulation, taken from various sources and added to my own observations, I'm condensing a lot of time and detail into a brief synopsis of immigration to America over time.

The first immigrants arrived in North America from Asia. They were Native American ancestors who crossed a narrow spit of land connecting Asia to North America at least 20,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age. By the early 1600s, communities of European immigrants dotted the Eastern seaboard, including the Spanish in Florida, the British in New England and Virginia, the Dutch in New York, and the Swedes in Delaware. Some, including the Pilgrims and Puritans, came for religious freedom. Many sought greater economic opportunities. Still others, including hundreds of thousands of previously enslaved Africans in their own countries, were sold for profit to traders and arrived in America against their will. Although immigration policy, such as it was then, initially favored white Europeans, the first real movements to actually restrict new immigrants were a backlash against the numbers of German and Irish immigrants along with other nationalities and races. Over the years, movements to restrict particular nationalities were numerous, with the Immigration Act of 1924 establishing numerical limits through nationality quotas. The idea generally at the time was to slow things down to allow for those who had already arrived to assimilate into American culture. As a result of the numerical limitations of the 1924 law, illegal immigration to the United States increased. The U.S. Border Patrol was established to crack down on illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican and Canadian borders into the United States. The 1924 quota system, with several specific exceptions ended in 1965 with the Immigration and Nationality Act which replaced the quota system with a seven-category preference system emphasizing family reunification and skilled immigrants.

Since 1965 there have been several specific allowances for immigrants from certain countries, but the Border Patrol has largely kept somewhat of a control on the flow of immigration to ensure that those entering the U.S. were of the category established by the 1965 law and were doing so legally. For various reasons and under various administrations over the passing years, the situation at our borders has largely spiraled out of control.

When Donald Trump left office in 2020, operational control of our southern border had been largely restored. The wall was nearing completion. Court ordered deportations were finally being enforced. The Migrant Protection Protocols negotiated with Mexico had reduced the number of fraudulent asylum claims to a trickle. All that President Biden needed to do was to continue these policies. Instead, he reversed them on his first day in office, and the resulting numbers of illegally admitted immigrants has exceeded the size of Delaware, Vermont and South Dakota COMBINED. No civilization has survived a mass migration of this magnitude. Our schools, our health care systems and our culture have become overwhelmed. Without an Administration and Congress that has the spine to really address this problem, our nation will eventually become a borderless territory between Mexico and Canada.

So is there good news? Perhaps so on the horizon as this issue has come front and center to the coming November 2024 election. Only time will reveal the results.

To Be Continued.........