© June 30, 2010, All Rights Reserved.
“A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks”. Thomas Jefferson
Those who believe that ‘Government’ is a catchall solution for individual or communal problems are sadly mistaken, as there is not one instance where federal, state, or municipal involvement has produced satisfactory results that were efficient, effective, and profitable. Failure, however, can indeed be an option for the world’s communist, socialist, and fascist ideologies reek with the very stench of such abject failure. It is very easy today for the disillusioned to seek the comforts of federal excuse for deferring to others has become a panacea for individual apathy. Like Homer Simpson in that politically illuminating The Simpson’s episode where he runs for garbage commissioner, we have allowed ourselves to fall for the expectations of “Can’t someone else do it?”
What befalls us if someone else does provide us with solutions to our daily difficulties? Do we learn to fish as Confucius professed, or do we become trapped into an endless cycle of begging for our daily fillets? And what of Christ’s own chastisement of the unprofitable servant who preferred to protect the status quo instead of risking his master’s investment for profitable gain?1 If the human individual loses their unique individuality, then what is left is not necessarily human in nature – but animal; a domesticated beast quite interchangeable with any other creature of burden.
We can see this devotion to non-existence erupt all around us, such as the recent G-20 summit when protesters rallied against capitalism. What these malcontents fail to realize, however, is that it is not free market enterprise that leads to the world’s calamities, but free will greed. Contrary to popular – read that, ignorant – opinion, capitalism is what provides aid through personal and corporate contributions to the Red Cross, United Way, and even the various United Nations’ relief agencies. No government, obviously, can succeed without the implementation of taxes and herein lays the problem: governments do not produce, they consume.
Almost everyone would agree that it is far less expensive to purchase an automobile from a private seller than it is through a dealer. As many people, perhaps, would say that it is more convenient to print baseball or concert tickets from the Internet than it would be to drive across town and purchase the same tickets from a store. How, then, could almost half of the United States still believe that anything obtained through the government ‘middleman’ is more convenient than acquiring the same product or service directly from the manufacturer or provider?
One only has to reflect upon the failings of Progressive government or enterprise to understand the liabilities of bureaucracy. Did unionized labor prevent General Motors from bankruptcy or you from forking over several years’ salary for a new SUV? Did government-mandated “mortgages for everyone!” save you from foreclosure? Has national security prevented twelve million illegal aliens from sapping your community’s precious resources? No, they have not – and I do not even have to come up with the statistics to prove it either. No one has to prove the obvious.
Progressives have always tried to manipulate the facts for their own benefit. Progressive Extraordinaire, Woodrow Wilson, had his Committee on Public Information influence public opinion through the newspapers and movies during the buildup for war against Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany.2 As Assistant Secretary of the Navy, future Progressive President Franklin Delano Roosevelt “loved every minute” of his tour of the Great War.3 This leaves one wondering why it took former Navy official FDR six years – during a period of highly anticipated conflict – to prepare the United States for WWII unless he intentionally wanted the military – specifically his Navy – to suffer. It is also worth noting that it was President Roosevelt – not the “tyrannical” J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI – who herded Americans of Japanese descent into concentration camps a la the more infamous Progressives Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.
After 1945, when America emerged as the free world’s benefactor, Government-based disasters took on epic proportions. The very agency charged with keeping our nation free – the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – was left to the comical exploits of “fun-loving”, “well-to-do liberal Democrats” who viewed themselves as “a kind of elite within the elite.”4 The more effective Soviet KGB thought that they were rank amateurs.5 I view the Agency as the biggest bureaucratic mess in the history of the United States. Do not worry, though. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is rapidly moving up from second place.
The Bureau, which once ‘innocently’ sent a representative to speak at a hostile gathering of terrorist thugs in Detroit (Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, etc.) in 1993,6 was also the very agency charged with bringing the CIA under control.7 Talk about the blind leading the blind, we now have the moronic leading the moronic. God help us all.
It is not that America does not produce exceptionally qualified and gifted individuals, but that Progressive political correctness focuses on where people were educated and not how they learn. This preference for institution over individual recently led to one of the worst attacks against the CIA ever.8 Not that the Agency has ever been known as a hallmark of intelligence (pun intended), but its creation under the cloud of Progressive Liberalism has ensured that the CIA had been infiltrated to the highest levels by actual communist spies. Whereas the buzzword today has been “too big to fail”, the CIA has become representative of a government option that is far too big to succeed.
Our nation was founded upon the precept that the only good government was the simplest one. This is why our Constitution was written in terms so easy to understand that even illiterate ‘country folk’ could understand their intent without question. There is no need for an attorney to understand, for example, the right to freely express one’s opinion or to engage within one’s particular religious practice without government interference. Progressives complicate matters so much, however, that it takes months to pass new legislation if not simply read what is being introduced. Just the other day we have had four justices of the Supreme Court – honorable and learned men and women – who could not fathom our inalienable right to keep and bear firearms even though the most simple-minded of their country can read these words plainly.
Why Progressives cannot decipher the obvious is because they subconsciously seek the power to persuade. Progressives are the very sort of people who launch wars against inanimate objects.9 Whereas I see an idiot with an M-80, for instance, they see a nation being assailed by a firecracker and so must therefore legislate the “inanimate object” out of existence. This is how the Progressives wage war against firearms – they learn of one person blowing his head off while drunkenly playing Russian roulette and Lo and Behold, they must pass legislation to keep those “dangerous guns” out of the hands of more honorable, common sense folk such as us. Listen, a politician with a pen is far more dangerous than your neighbor with an AK-47 is.
Ask yourself this, for a moment. How valid are your thoughts? I mean, are they your thoughts, or do they belong to someone else? Do you require a federal bureaucracy to tell you what to eat for dinner, what sports your children are permitted to play in, or what movie you will take your date to see? When you sit down on your sofa at night and reach for the remote, are you going to select what to watch or will the government? Do you decide when to mow your lawn or what color of a bathing suit you like to wear or do you prefer to wait until some bureaucrat from the government makes this decision for you?
Most importantly, are you an American individual or are you simply part of a larger group, say, of African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Christians, Jews, or Muslims? Do you prefer to be known by a name, or will a mere number do? Are you a human person subject to all the inalienable rights that God has bestowed upon every living human person, or are satisfied being whatever the government lets you be and do whatever the government lets you do?
Government is not an option for us, for we will always need ‘someone’ in charge of our military, our national security, and our interstate highway system. But the bull stops there. Do not ever allow a mere politician or even justices decide that you are far too stupid or incompetent to possess these rights. Just because Billy Bubba down the road shoots himself in the foot, do not allow any politician to eliminate your right to arm and defend yourself as you see fit. Just because Bimbo Bobbi wants to save the trees by driving a roller skate, do not permit the government from denying you an opportunity to drive a larger and safer SUV. Most importantly, just because Mikhail Moneybags likes to bilk the public out of billions, do not ever permit any politician or activist to convince you that the American free market capital system is outdate or flawed. No parasite can ever become larger or greater than the host can.
We live within the greatest, most productive nation on the planet. Our greatness comes not from Washington, but from the hearts and minds of a free population of individuals who exercise both common sense and personal responsibility. The only limits on our expression come from those imposed upon us by our Creator. If we allow elected or appointed leaders to trash this notion of all men being created equal, then we suffer ourselves to the failures of the rest of the planet – nations such as Saudi Arabia where freedom of religion is not existent; or of the Netherlands where free speech is unheard of; or of Venezuela where individual commerce is now a thing of the past.
Americans do not follow the failed policies of the world; we reinvent the rules of human stewardship. We are uniquely individualistic because we are unique individuals. The last thing that we need is to have some moron try to institutionalize us. Only Progressives thrive within institutions. The rest of us are doing just fine being who we are…thank you very much.
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R.J. Godlewski (GOD LESS KEY) is an independent counterterrorism consultant, the director of the private International Nuclear Emergency Response Team [INERT], and the author of several novels, commentaries, and professional articles. He is also the author and architect of the Web-based Independent Counterterrorist training program. He is currently working on his B.A. in Intelligence Studies at American Military University with a concentration in Middle East terrorism. He currently holds an undergraduate certificate in Explosive Ordnance Disposal and is a full member of the National Military Intelligence Association, the Golden Key International Honour Society, and is a veteran of both the United States Navy and Navy Reserve. He can be reached at rjgodlewsk(at)rjgodlewski.com.
NOTES
1. Luke 19:12:27 New American Bible
2. Knott, Stephen F. 1996. Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency, Oxford University Press. 153.
3. Ward, Geoffrey C. 1989. FDR’s Western Front Idyll, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Autumn 1989 (Pgs.116-125), Pg. 116-125.
4. Thomas, Evan. 2006. The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Years of the CIA, Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, Pg. 99.
5. Cherkashin, Victor and Gregory Feifer. 2005. Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer: The True Story of the Man Who Recruited Robert Hanssen & Aldrich Ames, Basic Books. Pg. 66.
6. Emerson, Steven. 2002. American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Amongst Us, The Free Press. Pg. 7.
7. Baer, Robert. 2002. See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism, Three Rivers Press. Pgs, 230-234.
8. Baer, Robert. “A Dagger to the CIA”, GQ Magazine Online: Politics. April, 2010. http://www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/201004/dagger-to-the-cia. See posted comment by “Bulldog861974”.
9. Fester, Uncle. 2002. Home Workshop Explosives, Festering Publications. Pg. 3.
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