Being part of Generation X means a life of having watched the sources of production and industry in America sold off, mortgaged away or both. We have borrowed to pay first for a vision of a great society, and then for bread and circuses. One president sends free money and the next offers free medicine. It’s all a hoax. None of it is free. We all have to pay whether we benefit or not, and we finance it by borrowing the wealth of the world against the taxes of our children.
We can’t even say we are putting off payment. In 2009, our federal government spent $383 billion on interest.
Our leaders cannot bring themselves to let go of the 20th century. Many think that 90 percent tax rates for top income earners are a good thing because such rates existed in the Eisenhower administration, though that was a time when America was the only industrial center left on earth. Many think that tax cuts equal Reaganomics, though President Ronald Reagan was merely following President John Kennedy the best an actor could.
Worst of all, they see an us-versus-them dynamic between the public and private sector. The voters are neither heeded nor respected as the Legislature attacks the initiative process with one bill after another. County authorities use their power to execute one attack after another on our property rights, as they spend one decade advocating for wetlands, the next for trees, and the next advocating for prairie on the same slice of ground.
Together they raise one tax after another.
The worst crime of all happens in our Congress. We have been so rich for so long that we assume our wealth is boundless, when it is not. They want to be like President Franklin Roosevelt so bad they don’t realize we don’t have a nation full of gold to confiscate, or the bulk of earth’s industrial production anymore.
We are the largest debtor nation on earth, not the largest creditor nation anymore.
The world looks for alternatives to our U.S. dollar. We promise the world that we deal fair, because the word of America is not as good as gold anymore.
Many of our leaders simply take it for granted that America is in decline, and are content.
But America is not in decline. America is a big nation, and big problems are normal. A stumble in the road is not the decline of our people.
We are still the wealthiest nation on earth because of our hard-working nature and superior creativity. We are still the mightiest military because of our superior ingenuity and the mettle of the average American.
Our economic system has not failed because a few thieves got the keys to the store, and our two-party system hasn’t failed because we elected a pack of deaf people again. Our dollar will remain the world reserve currency if we elect a Congress that starts balancing budgets, and the world will follow us because no nation on earth can lead the way America leads.
Election season is upon us. The most important thing I’ve learned as an activist is that protests, boycotts, sit-ins, and rallies have their place, but if we truly want payment for the promise of hope and change sold to us in 2008, we must turn that energy to supporting candidates who are not only dedicated to preserving our American liberal freedom, forms of government, and national sovereignty, but will also insist on balanced budgets at all levels of government. This may not allow us to fulfill the dreams of the 20th century, but it will ensure that the American Dream will always be there.
Justin Kover is legislative representative for the Olympia Patient Resource Center and a member of the Olympian’s Board of Contributors. He can be reached at justinkover@hotmail.com.
