ARTICLES: July 18, 2004 | |
"Can We Turn Back The Clock?" By Ron Ewart, President | |
Time always runs forward. It has no backward component, unless somehow we invent time travel. What has taken place IS and no matter how hard we try, history will record it for all to see. If we have made a mistake, in some cases we can reverse it. In others, reversal is simply impossible and all we can do is pay for the mistake and then apologize for it. But what if governments make mistakes? They very rarely pay for it because their money is our money. And they vary rarely apologize for it, because they don't have to. They just promote the perpetrator, or they appropriate more of our money to pay for the mistake, while we stand in docile anquish at their audacity. Now that we have been fully immersed in socialism and radical environmentalism for five score and seven, is there any hope of undoing what has been done, when so many of American citizens have forsaken freedom and liberty in exchange for the phantom veil of security and comfort? How can we turn back the clock to a time when Americans were self-reliant instead of dependent, when they were responsible for their actions instead of being excused for them because they are victims of all of societies ills, when the rule of law meant something, when they were individuals with individual rights, not part of a collective where only the collective has rights, when they looked to themselves to get them out of a scrape, instead of holding their outstretched hands to a nanny government for rescue and salvation? How can we unravel the tangled web of razor wire that is our legal and unjust justice system? How do you convince lawmakers that what they are doing is sapping the very strength and vitality out of our people by being everything for them and regulating every aspect of their lives? How do you round up and send 13,000,000 illegal aliens back across the border they chose to violate, because our government and special interests created a magnet for them to come here in the first place? How do we stop the hemorrhaging of our tax dollars to an ever-rising crisis that is illegal immigration? How do you tell a person that the handouts they are receiving from government are coming from someone else's sweat, labor and earnings and that what they are excepting is morally wrong, even though several generations in their extended family have been receiving those handouts? There are those in our society that need our help, but should that help come from government? Should it not be the outpouring of compassion through those entities that are best able to administer it, in the private sector? Unfortunately, there are way too many people in America that are getting government help that shouldn't be and the cost to our treasury and to the recipients independence and pride, is astronomical. Finally, how do you undo the power that our government has amassed by violating the constitutional limits on its powers for a hundred years, while WE THE PEOPLE looked the other way? There are two unchangeable axioms that are as inviolate as the Sun coming up in the morning. 1) Those receiving something, (like handouts from government) resist giving it up and will fight tooth and nail to preserve it. It doesn't matter to them the source of the handouts, and 2) power grows exponentially beyond its limits, unless there is a corresponding power to inhibit it. It took 156 years from 1620 to 1776 for the colonials to have enough of England and King George III to jump-start their clock forward to freedom and liberty and they paid an incalculable price. The greatest price and the greatest sacrifice of all, the giving of one's life for liberty. Will it take another 156 years for Americans to finally see the light and commit themselves to the fight for freedom? Perhaps in 2050 we will be closer to an answer. But all the talk, all the rhetoric, all the articles in the world will not turn back the clock to America's finer yesteryear. Either the believers and fighters in the defense of freedom and liberty, coalesce as one on a grand scale, or the hands of the American clock will click ever onward towards abject socialism, radical environmentalism and the one world order. The clock's inertia is almost 100 years old. The Pendulum of our clock swings ever wider towards enslavement, as freedom smiles from a distance and then fades into a dim memory of all things past. The only human characteristics that will set things right and return this once-great land to its former greatness, is vehemence, determination, boldness and the willingness to risk all by the multitudes who seek freedom, so that future generations will be and remain free. Nothing less will turn back the clock of time, or jump it forward to a brighter future in the brilliant light of freedom and liberty, from which the pursuit of all happiness springs. NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF RURAL LANDOWNERS | |