Ignorance breeds poverty

[Sandra]

There can be no change in American government without a fundamental rethinking of how the nation is governed

Ignorance breeds poverty

Klaus Rohrich  Tuesday, November 29, 2011
 
I recently spent a week in the Heartland deer hunting with friends.  It’s something that I’ve done off and on for a number of years, albeit the last time I went was back in 2006.  What struck me as particularly shocking on this visit was the abject poverty to which many Americans have sunk, living in conditions of squalor that are more in keeping with the Third World.  It isn’t localized to any one specific area, either.  One finds it in places as diverse as Vermont, Upstate New York, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and a plethora of other states.

But what was more shocking than the poverty was the ignorance and stoic resignation of many Americans with whom I spoke.  Recently Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh wrote in these pages that she was “...amazed [at] how blind Americans are, how naïve, ignorant, credulous, and unable to discern fact from fiction, reality from fantasy.”  Dr. Paugh didn’t go far enough by half in her condemnation of Americans’ collective ignorance.  It explains why the nation keeps electing the same toxic policy makers who perpetuate the same toxic policies designed to enrich themselves at the expense of the taxpayer.

Whether it’s dealing with illegal immigration, raiding of the US Treasury through crony capitalism, the huge debt crisis that’s swamping the nation or the fact that so many Americans are out of work, the answers offered by Washington’s elite are always (and eerily) the same: let’s spend more, raise taxes on ‘the rich,’ let’s hire more teachers, let’s institute more government controls with all the costly bureaucracy that accompanies such policies.  Most importantly, let’s not rock the boat in Washington.

This collective American ignorance is how Barack Obama managed to get elected on the simple promise of ‘hope and change.’  It’s what swept Democrats into control of both Houses of Congress in 2008 and sadly, put Republicans in control of the House of Representatives in 2010.  Question is: has anything changed?  More importantly, will anything change?

The political class in America has devised the perfect scam to maintain homeostasis in government.  They blame each other for the nation’s woes and alternate being in power.  But in the end nothing changes, as both sides of the political spectrum find it in their own best interest to maintain the status quo.

During a recent radio interview, convicted felon and former Republican lobbyist, Jack Abramoff pointed out that while he certainly was guilty of the crimes for which he served three and a half years as a guest of the federal government, his conviction for conspiracy and mail fraud resulted in zero changes in the way lobbyists work in Washington, because those in the system did not want things to change.  There’s just too much money, too much influence and too much power at stake.

Periodically some earth shattering policies are implemented as a sop to the most ignorant Americans, those who have been convinced that the American Dream is beyond their reach, so why bother trying.  It’s how the Bush prescription drug benefits plan came to be; it’s how Obamacare came to be; it’s how extending unemployment benefits for two years came to be.  What’s so remarkable is that so many Americans are buying into the Big Lie.  Witness the huge lineups for “free money” outside Detroit’s City Hall in October of 2009, where those who were questioned about the origin of that free money didn’t have a clue.  Some even believed it was Obama’s own money they were getting.

Colluding with the corrupt politicians are corrupt media types whose own dystopian fantasies enable governments to pull the wool over its citizens’ eyes.  The idea that the way to alleviate America’s fiscal problems is to confiscate money from those who have it is ludicrous in the extreme.  It’s one of those concepts much of the mainstream media tends to support.  But anyone interested in finding out whether or not such a scheme could work can do some simple arithmetic to determine that if the government confiscated all the money held by all the millionaires, there wouldn’t be enough to make a substantial difference.  As Margaret Thatcher famously said, “the only thing wrong with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.”

Thank God for the Internet, which has helped more and more people take a close second look at what their government is doing.  But sadly, not enough are interested or even care enough to take that close second look.  It’s the reason that nothing changes.  Perhaps all those additional teachers Obama wants to hire is part of the Master Plan, given how so many people who are a product of the American educational system appear to be logically challenged.

There can be no change in American government without a fundamental rethinking of how the nation is governed.  America’s political class must realize that they are elected by the people, and govern through the consent of the people.  As such, there needs to be a complete house cleaning at all levels of government.  The current roster of legislators needs to be replaced and those replacements need to have their terms in office limited to no more than two.  While chances of that happening are slightly less than the chances of winning the Powerball Lottery, it’s still within the realm of possibility if enough of the citizenry takes an active interest.

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