Dear Mr. President, Have You Been to Our America?
Dear Mr. President,
A while back presidential candidate John Edwards spoke about two Americas and I think he may have been right. Apparently, your America is a dreadful, dismal place in inevitable decline, and is to blame for every wrong that has happened around the world. It’s full of racist, sexist, bigots and homophobes on one side and scores of victims of every affliction known to man on the other; helpless, hapless souls who are locked in poverty because of evil greedy people hoarding ill-gotten gains.
Apparently Mr. President, you have never been to our America. I’d like to tell you about it:
Our America is what Thomas Sowell called “the greatest, freest and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.” In little more than 200 years our America rose to become the lone super power in the world, not because of our government, but because of the LIMITS on our government. We say that not to boast, but in a humble, fervent awe of the blessing we’ve been given and a desire that all people can one day receive the bounties of liberty.
In our America, the constitution is a sacred contract that has out lasted all others for good reason.
It is not a living document open to the whims of whoever is currently in office. Should you wish to change it, there is a process to do so, and it doesn’t involve a judge with an agenda.
Our America values life and holds it sacred.
We can debate the philosophical question of when life begins, but we prefer to error on the side of caution. We cannot understand, nor can we tolerate the barbaric practice of partial birth abortions.
In our America, We the People rule Washington; not the other way around.
We’ve grown tired of self-serving bureaucrats telling us what we can and can’t drive, where we can and can’t live, and what we can and cannot think. We’re sick of the tax code, endless regulations, and earmarks being used to pick winners and losers and control peoples’ lives.
In our America, we can add and subtract. We have sense enough to know you can’t possibly balance a trillion dollar deficit on the backs of 5% of Americans. We already pay too many taxes. We pay Federal Income Tax, Corporate Income Tax, Capital Gains Tax, State Income Tax, Local Income Tax, Property Tax, Sales Tax, Federal Unemployment Tax, Gasoline Tax, Inheritance Tax, Medicare Tax, Social Security Tax, State Unemployment Tax, Workers’ Compensation and on and on.
We’ve had enough.
And by the way, in our America, tax cheats are prosecuted, not given high level government positions.
In our America, socialism is no virtue and freedom is no vice.
The era of Reaganism is far from dead. Trickle down economics works every time it is tried. Judging from Cuba and Venezuela, so does trickle up poverty but given the results, we’re just not interested in that.
We believe global warming is an overblown excuse for a global socialism we want no part of.
In our America, a government sponsored crisis is not an opportunity for a big government power grab. We expect officials to admit their mistakes and fix the bad policy that contributed to this mess; then deregulate, quit spending, get the hell out of the way, and let us go to work.
We don’t care about good intentions, we care about results. Government doesn’t create jobs; it steals them from the private sector. Government spending and ’stimulus’ is nothing but a shell game. Every dollar that flows through Washington has been ripped from the hands of the people who earned it and more accurately, from those yet to be born.
In our America, we let failed companies fail so resources and workers can be put to use where the market has determined they are more needed. Sometimes budgets and jobs have to be cut. We’d prefer those cuts be the bloated inefficient government bureaucrats and many in the halls of congress.
Our America is overwhelmingly made up of hardworking responsible citizens who live within their means and save for the rainy days that always come. We don’t believe in paying the mortgages of those who were reckless. Doing so only encourages the bad behavior. There’s nothing wrong with renting, and learning a valuable lesson in the process.
In our America, we love people and want the best for them.
We believe every person has unlimited potential and promise. We believe that all are created equal. But, no government can guarantee equality of outcome. For to do so, they must enslave fellow citizens. We didn’t fight so long and so hard for so many years to rid ourselves of slavery only to return to it. This is not a plantation and we will not submit to government masters.
In our America, achievement isn’t something to be punished and poverty isn’t something to be encouraged. We don’t demonize profitable business. We don’t hate the rich. We think Bill Gates has every right to do whatever he wants with every dime he’s made. He earned it by providing valuable goods an services that have improved all our lives. We’d like to keep that motivation in place for the next Bill Gates.
In our America, whether you do it yourself or by proxy via elected officials, stealing is wrong. It’s wrong to take hard earned dollars from a person to whom it belongs in order to give it to someone to whom it does not belong. The moment people get the idea it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend is the end of an economy.
In our America, we won’t let anyone starve, but judging from the waistline’s of our poor and the cell phones strapped to their hips, most are doing just fine thank you. Everyone has set backs and obstacles in life, some more than others. But, we’ve grown tired of subsidizing professional couch potatoes who achieve little more in life than producing more professional coach potatoes. The welfare state has destroyed far more families than it has helped. We expect everyone to make the best of the free education their neighbors paid for and do everything possible to make themselves useful.
That being said, we fully recognize there are people truly in need and hard times do come. In our America, our citizens are the most charitable people on earth and will bend over backwards to help a neighbor in need. We prefer to do so by choosing among the thousands of effective private organizations and skip the bloated bureaucracy. After all, government coercion robs the giver of a cheerful heart, and the receiver of thankful humbleness.
In our America, we’re tired of propping up failing schools with crappy teacher’s unions more concerned about guaranteed employment than about educating kids. We’ve tripled the spending, after adjusting for inflation, in the public school systems in the last 35 years and have gotten nothing but liberal indoctrination for it. There are plenty of perfectly good private schools around the corner that do a better job with less money and we don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t give parents the tax dollars and let them decide.
It is a free country after all.
In our America, our constitution guarantees freedom of religion not freedom from it. Most of us believe in God and basic Judeo Christian values. We don’t believe truth is a relative thing. We welcome people of every faith and even those without one. Most of us don’t celebrate Kwanzaa. We have no problem with those who do, but please don’t force it on the rest of us.
In our America, if you question someone’s policies who happens to be a minority, it does not make you a racist. If you see differences between the genders, it does not make you sexist. If you accept other’s freedom to do so, but don’t celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe. Political correctness stifles honest communication.
In our America, if you spill hot coffee in your lap or fail to get 100% perfect results from any given medical procedure, you don’t have the right to become independently wealthy at the expense of others. Accidents sometimes happen. Try to be more careful, appreciate the medical miracles while they last, and quit driving up the costs for everyone else.
In our America, we have the best health care system on the planet. We’d like to keep it that way. We believe that free markets, the Walmarts of the world, will do far more to drive down costs for average Americans that any government ever could. Frankly, from the looks of public housing and public education, we’re just not interested in public healthcare.
In our America, we celebrate and welcome LEGAL immigration. Nothing shows the amazing blessing of free market capitalism more than immigrants arriving on our shores with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and within a generation becoming millionaires. That being said we have no tolerance for those that jump the line and break the law. We live in a dangerous world and demand safe, secure borders.
In our America, we don’t exploit people and groups for political gain. we don’t see Asian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, African-Americans or any other chopped up hyphenated group; we’re all just plain old Americans. Period. Racism is relegated to a tiny fraction of mistaken backward people. We’re not interested in the color of your skin, we’re interested in the content of your character and the results of your actions. We believe, as Martin Luther King Jr. did, that the color of your skin shouldn’t put you at a disadvantage, nor does it entitle you to special favors or perks.
In our America, we detest violence and war. We do everything we can to avoid it. We do however understand the best way to prevent war is to prepare for it. We’d rather be respected by tin-horn dictators and sudo democracy the world over than be loved by them. We take tremendous pride in our military that has helped set and keep hundreds of millions of people free in the last 100 years. While we’ve made mistakes, no country in history has used such an overwhelmingly dominant force for liberation rather than conquest. Some day, when that force is gone, the world will morn.
In our America, the 1st amendment is written in stone and we’ve had enough of judges trying to reinterpret it. It is clear the 16th and 17th were a mistake, and the 10th has been for far too long completely ignored. And you can be damn sure we believe in the 2nd.
Never has the phrase of Fredrick Douglas been more true: “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by those whom they oppress” and we’ve just about had enough.
In our America, we’re no where close to giving up or giving in. But let there be no doubt, we believe in these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. …For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of the Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
I feel bad for your America, I really do. It’s a sorry, pitiful place. Despite what you may believe, your America is a small minority populated with guilt ridden power hungry political elitists and unfortunate souls who have been told they are hapless victims in a land filled with opportunity.
But the good news is, we welcome with open arms the people that leave your America and join us in ours. Our America survived the disasterous policies of FDR, Johnson and Carter; and by the grace of God we’ll make it through this. It will be “morning again” in America someday. America will be once again that shining city on the hill, a beacon of light and freedom in a world of oppressive darkness.
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