The Dangers of Fear and Apathy

I have always been fascinated by how people react politically in society. As the saying goes, people tend to vote with their wallets. In other words, they vote for whoever they think is going to make them "better off" financially. I am not saying this is a bad thing. After all, I believe in personal responsibility. I believe people need to do what is best for themselves. After all, you can not help others if you do not take care of yourself first. But short term financial gain should always be viewed with it's long term consequences.

The federal government is spending over a trillion dollars to artificially prop up housing prices (and silly me, I thought affordable housing was a good thing), so that Americans can continue their debt-driven consumerism. As I have stated often, debt is slavery. We are allowing our government to enslave our children and grand children so we can continue to live beyond our means today.

Our economy has collapsed because a housing-based debt bubble has burst. Rather than recognize the errors of our ways--namely, basing our economy on consumer debt rather than American worker productivity--our government is trying to re-inflate the bubble by keeping interest rates artificially low and dumping tons of tax-payer money into failed institutions and poorly run companies.

More importantly, by looking to the government to "save" us from bad economic times (and terrorists), we become blindly willing to hand over our liberty for some kind of ill-perceived "security".

I know this may be melodramatic, especially to those who know my almost paranoid distrust of the Bush/Obama big government mob-rule mentality, but I can't help but look back at history's lessons from pre-WWII Germany.

The German people did not allow Hitler to come to power because the general population was somehow "evil". Hitler came to power because people wanted a government solution to the economic devastation their country had endured for over a decade. Hitler seemed like just the charismatic leader the country "needed".

Martin Niemoller, a German pastor and ardent anti-communist, originally supported Hitler's rise to power, seeing him as being good for setting Germany's economy straight. Although Hitler was anti-communist, he was a nationalist, and soon consolidated all economic power under the government's control. (He even had the power to fire CEO's of private auto makers! Unthinkable, I know.)

When Hitler expanded the government's power beyond the economy, it was too late for Niemoller and his fellow clergymen to do anything about it. Hitler's power was irreversible by that point. Martin Niemoller was imprisoned and remained so until freed by allied forces in 1945.

Niemoller became a prolific speaker after the war and is credited with a poem that I remember seeing displayed at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC a few years ago:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.

The lesson is simple. We need to stop seeing ourselves as special interest groups that can be politically divided and start seeing each other as individuals. It is not us (as groups) versus each other. It is us (as individuals) against them.

More government spending not only exasperates this current economic situation, it means more taxing, more debt creation, more slavery of the citizenry for generations to come, and ultimately, more power for the government. We can solve our economic crises, but more power to the government means less power to the individual. That is the wrong answer to our problems.

As Bush used the fear of terrorism to rescind our personal liberties, Obama now uses our fear of economic security to deplete our economic liberties.

Our country doesn't need a "leader" (German word is "fuhrer") to get us out of this economic mess. Our country needs a free market and a government that respects individual liberty above all else. We the People are the solution. The government needs to get out of the way.

Do not let the powers that be use fear and apathy against you. Freedom requires personal responsibility. Be wary of where you seek help, because the best answer is yourself.