Five Unthinkable Options (Part 1 of 5)
By: J.J. Jackson
The scene is from The Simpsons Movie. Russ Cargill, the movie’s villain, stands before President Schwarzenegger with five plain brown file folders each containing government solutions to the pollution in Springfield . Cargill proclaims, “Well, I've narrowed your choices down to five unthinkable options. Each will cause untold misery ...” Humorously the President, as I think so many presidents have done throughout history, calls out, “I pick number three!” Cargill, perhaps stunned, but perhaps not, asks, “You don't wanna read them first?” To which President Schwarzenegger scoffs, “I was elected to leeead, not to reeead. Number three!”
As much as those on the left wants to paint me as such I am no villain. I am just a man who comes before you each week to give you my opinion on matters of great importance to the well-being of our Republic and who has a healthy dose of the facts as well as history on my side. But I do have to say that I am sorry to have to come before you with what are indeed five unthinkable options.
Oh, they are not unthinkable because they cannot be thought of. In fact they all have been thought of. They are just unthinkable because once thought of they are quickly discarded by minds that do not want to accept the truth. That truth is that the way our federal government spends money, and likewise what it spends money on, is ruining America and heading us down a road to oblivion.
I am a big boy. I can fight for myself. My children however are another story. I see what our Congress and a long line of Presidents have done when it comes to spending and year in and year out toss away more money than is collected. The numbers are staggering. The United States is not millions of dollars in debt. It is not even billions of dollars in debt. Oh no, we are far past those milestones on the road to oblivion. The United States is trillions of dollars in debt as it has spent and spent and spent some more only afterwards to maybe ask a question or two. You know, simple questions like is this or that expenditure a good and wise usage of tax payer dollars and is it even allowed under the federal constitution; things like that.
Then once those questions are asked after the fact the inevitable kabuki dance begins. First those who support the spending try to just ignore the question. Then when that fails and people keep demanding answers step two is implemented which is to justify the spending under some obscure and wholly inconceivable interpretation of the Constitution. This tactic includes inserting words that do not exist into the text, redefining words that do exist and ignoring actual documentation by the founding fathers themselves that further explains the words they penned, voted on and later approved. If that fails it is on to step three where they again try to ignore the question. When that fails they pull out a line that goes something like, “The power of Congress to do [insert expenditure here] is unquestioned,” and then again return to ignoring the question. And finally when that fails to silence critics of their plans they resort to their final excuse which is to play on your heart strings and talk about all the pain and suffering that would ensue if all this spending that should never have been implemented in the first place were to be ended. Then if absolutely necessary they go back to step one and start all over again, never actually settling anything, admit they are wrong or solving the problem of all this gosh darn spending! Meanwhile they are heaping more such programs and spending upon us to boot!
I do, despite the angry emails from progressives and liberals that I get every week, care about my children. Not just my children either but all children of all Americans. And as much as these angry liberals hate it, and tell me so every time I dare speak the truth of the matter, when I compare what we are doing to millions of our children by burdening them with huge debts to cover today’s wants and desires to slavery, there really is no other comparison that comes even close. We are enslaving our children, just as the ancestors of modern day liberals in the past enslaved blacks, to work for them. We are forcing our children to give up the right to their persons and their productivity to make the lives better of liberals who just want and want and want more right now.
It is sick.
And this is why I come before you with, what will be when it is all said and done, the five unthinkable options which I will be spelling out over the course of five weeks and doing so in terms of hard numbers so that there can be no question about each one. I am going to talk a lot about spending and taxes and I am going to use a lot of big numbers that most people cannot get their arms around because they are so inconceivable to ordinary Americans. I know that a lot of people’s eyes start to glaze over when these sorts of topics come up. But I really do not know any way to make it any clearer and discuss the problems that we have and that I think a majority of Americans intuitively understand. I do not think a majority of Americans understand what must be done in order to make things right however.
I see polls that show overwhelming majorities of Americans think that the government should tax and spend less while providing fewer services. But I know from my conversations with many of you that the common belief is that we can solve the problems of deficit spending by cutting spending from the programs that you do currently draw from. I talk to seniors who rail against Medicaid and Food Stamps and other programs that are designed to give the poor more of a benefit than they pay for in taxes. But these seniors do not want their Medicare and Social Security touched. They actually think that the problem can be solved by pairing back these selected programs and leaving their entitlements intact.
On the other end of the spectrum I talk to people of lower incomes who think that the problem can be solved by cutting military spending; one of the few things that government actual does which is Constitutional by the way. Some of them also think that we should cut spending on programs that benefit senior citizens to solve the budget crunch and save their own piece of the government pie. Again, they think that by doing this while preserving their own space in the cookie jar for their only grubby hands can save this Republic.
The more I talk to people the more I know that most people are so wrong about this and have too many misconceptions about the federal budget, where money is actually spent and what our revenues actually are each year that it is necessary to crunch the numbers and lay them out. When I do this with people who I talk to individually they get a really shocked look on their faces because so much of what they think they know about where government spends money is wrong.
What I am going to do is spell out what needs to be done in order to not just stop the rate at which we are adding to the federal deficit and further enslaving all of our children, but also what is fiscally sound and morally responsible in order to actually pay down that debt. Each option to be presented one by one over the following weeks, I am sad to say, will cause untold misery. But it is a misery that so many Americans have inflicted upon themselves and the rest of us by simply not educating themselves.
Some of these options are also completely and fiscally unsound. But they are still options that must be looked at in order to help understand the ones that are in fact reasonable courses of action to take
And to conclude this introduction to what you will be reading about in this space for what is now the next four weeks, I present you with the first of the five unthinkable options. That first option is to just ignore everything. Ignore the deficits. Ignore the spending. Ignore the Constitution. Ignore the cries of our children who are being crushed under the debt we are piling up. Just ignore everything and put on your binders and keep on moving forward towards the cliff as that whip cracks us in the rear waiting for the day we eventually run off it and take everyone, including our children, with us.
That is the first of these options in the simplest terms I can state. And the misery that will be caused if you do choose this, the first of the five unthinkable options, will be the destruction of the United States of America and a resignation that our children should suffer for the selfish actions you choose not to end.
Next week, unthinkable option number two; tax the evil rich.
“As quickly as you start spending federal money in large amounts, it looks like free money.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
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J.J. Jackson is a libertarian conservative author from Pittsburgh, PA who has been writing and promoting individual liberty since 1993 and is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. He is the Pittsburgh Conservative Examiner for Examiner.com. He is also the owner of The Right Things - Conservative T-shirts & Gifts. His weekly commentary along with exclusives not available anywhere else can be found at http://www.libertyreborn.com
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