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Happy Independence Day

07-01-2009

Happy Idependence Day! Be proud and happy to be American, even in these difficult times for our nation. Your attentiveness on this patriotic day shows that you wish for a better America and still believe it is possible. Perhaps you are like me, and you wish to leave for your children an America as full of optimism, prosperity, and opportunity as the one you grew up in.

Unfortunately, today we see an America that is on the wrong path - one that is selling our rights and our nation's economic strengths like remnants at a fire sale. Our elected officials do not realize that government cannot tax, spend, and regulate a nation into prosperity. Members of both parties have acted as if big government can be a good things, as long as it is on their side. These days, however, more and more Americans are realizing that the trouble with America is the size of government, no matter who is in charge. Big government intrudes into aspects of our lives we should be free and obliged to manage ourselves; it hollows people out, steals their ambition and pride, and dilutes the value and dignity of human life itself. We are all a commodity to be managed for some greater good that only the ruling class can understand, that is buried somehwere in the thousand-page spending bills that no one reads, that will somehow be stitched together if we would just shut up and accept that Washington knows best.

But every day the headlines remind us of the error of this mindset. Government today is like a wildfire out of control. Debt skyrockets into numbers we can no longer comprehend. Unemployment tops historic levels in our workers\rquote paradise. Our federal legislators vote like meth addicts, beyond reason, frenzied, unable to see the destructiveness of their own habits, robbing your wallet and your children's children's wallets to buy off constituencies, to get reelected one more time, to tell the non-learjet crowd to live by some high-brow blueprint rather than through the collective exercising of our individual liberties and ambitions. Government wrongly assumes that making everyone pay for the its mistakes is preferable to letting individuals make their own mistakes and learn from them, and become better people.

And so today, with this wildfire raging and our eyes to the 2010 elections, it is time to join forces and erect a firewall between our lives and government intrusion. We must draw a line and defend it. For the sake of America, we must say "no more." For the sake of America , it stops here.

And make no mistake, when we unite to say "no more," the ruling class will plead, then beg, then flatter, then curse, then finally foam at the mouth and call us every name in the book, just like a child being locked in his room until he behaves, or like a meth addict being made to dry out. But it must be done. What we do this generation will save the next from servitude - we must stand ground then roll back government intrusion. What we do or do not do will be remembered tomorrow.

But we must not only stop spending, we must nurture growth, opportunity, and personal responsibility. Even as the firewall begins to take effect, we must survey the landscape and assess the damage. We must reclaim what we have lost, both economically and culturally. As a nation we need to build and sell things so that America can stand on its own feet, create wealth and jobs, pay off debts, and not be dependent on the other nations for the fundamental goods and resources we need for our security and existence. Right now we let too many countries ship food in uninspected, undercut our farmers and manufacturers by forgoing health and safety standards, employ slave labor, and pollute to a degree to which we ourselves forbid. In effect, we are putting a tariff on our own goods and services and driving ourselves out of business.

But more importantly, as government is rolled back, we need to move into the space freedom creates and take control of our lives, our beliefs, and our government at a local level. If we do not re-learn to watchdog local government, it will become every bit as feudal and paternal as Washington. If we do not re-learn how to build strong families, the welfare state will fill the vacuum of missing parents. If we do not seize every opportunity to teach children to be free, hard-working, independent and creative, the government will be at the ready to jump back in with its low expectations and mis-named doctrines of tolerance, ready to create another generation that wants something for nothing, that has no pride – even if it has a pride month – that wants someone else to pay for its mistakes.

So today, as we celebrate the Declaration of Independence, let us commit ourselves to re-gaining the freedom and responsibility to live, prosper, and run our lives according to our own judgment and the rules for personal and collective prosperity as outlined in the Constitution. Let us be brave and happy. Let us give ourselves the audacity to say no to the big government programs with good-sounding names but invariably bad results. Let us be brave enough to make ourselves the object of scorn, then contempt, then of utter frustration to politicians and pundits who want to tell us what to do. But more importantly, let us give ourselves the dignity to say yes to the power and right to live our lives freely and responsibly, as defined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Let us say yes to the noble, simple rules our forefathers set forth for living our lives, rules that have proven wildly successful every time they have been tried.

Paul Hawkins