Volume 4, Issue 36
Many people today feel a measure of uncertainty about our nation’s future. We may have difficulty expressing it, but many of us feel for the first time in the history of this great country that we may not be able to pass on to the next generation the same opportunities that were passed on to us. We fear that we may be losing control of our destiny, and that forces beyond our control are assaulting the culture of freedom we hold dear.
The great challenges facing the United States of America in 2016 began their development over forty years ago. Ronald Reagan, in a speech delivered October 27, 1964, stated, “We haven’t balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We’ve raised our debt limit three times in the last 12 months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of the nations of the world.” October of this year will be 52 years of government leaders kicking the can down the road, relying upon business as usual, and hoping for a different result. There may have been a time when leaders expected not just hope for a positive change. The public now suspects that these leaders neither hope nor expect a different outcome, and that their real intentions are to just remain in power.
Fifty-two years is long enough. It’s time for a new decision. It’s time for a new direction.
What is Business as Usual?
Business as usual means continuing to accumulate debt by running fiscal deficits each year to pay for programs that do not better our lives. We are living in denial. It is like being addicted to morphine. You take morphine to alleviate pain. A side effect of the morphine is migraine headaches. The only way to cure the headaches is to take more morphine. It provides temporary relief, but as time goes on, the headaches get worse until the drug provides no relief. The addicted individual goes through excruciating pain or succumbs to the tyranny of the drug. In a similar way, government programs based on borrowed money are unsustainable and cause other unintended consequences. Pouring more money into a failed non-performing program would qualify as Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.
This is not a matter of Republican vs. Democrat, liberals vs. conservatives, socialists vs. capitalists. Deficit spending and accumulated debt is unsustainable. It will destroy our society at some point in the future. The denial in which we live is that if we just spend and borrow more money, there is a point where the economy will sustain itself through productivity. This is like believing an individual will get healthy if they just take more drugs because the body’s inherent systems will adjust to the drug and at some point reach equilibrium with it. These theories are not just nonsense; they subject our children to a future of dependency, a lower standard of living, and less freedom.
As a world power, the United States government has made a decision under the leadership of President Barak Obama, that it is not our country’s obligation, not its responsibility, nor its vision to lead the world through constitutional principles to a free and open society. Had this been our county’s lack of commitment in 1939, Germany would have won World War II.
The United States is the only hope the world has for nations to achieve internal freedom to provide for the pursuit of happiness as their cultures dictate. At the fall of the Roman Empire, the world collapsed into chaos for over 100 years. The order it maintained became a system that kept rogues at bay. The Romans’ lack of attention to principles upon which their republic was founded partially led to their decline, and it certainly contributed to their inability to solve their problems. The United States finds itself at this same place in history today. There is no other country that believes in freedom to the extent of a foundational commitment that has the economic wherewithal to advance, facilitate, and support it on a worldwide basis.
Internally, the United States government has continued to pursue health care policies, educational policies, welfare policies, immigration policies, and economic policies that have not reached or attained their projected goals in performance or cost. Yet we continue business as usual as if somehow the destructive drug and business as usual will produce a healthy patient. It will not. And there is no evidence that it ever has. In 6,000 years of recorded history, socialism as a government structure has never worked. Never.
Morally, the United States has certainly moved toward less traditional values. The Supreme Court has ruled that gay marriage is an individual’s constitutional right. There has been little further definition on citizens’ responsibility to the government and the good of society. We hear the words of John F. Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Yet we do not consider them in our demands for more government services for which we cannot pay. We speak a lot about the limits of government. Yet very little discussion is held on what we need to do as citizens to support the government that maintains our principles. We continue to pursue the theory that there is very little citizen responsibility and that most are victims of an over-privileged wealthy class. We allow our children to drop out of high school and then demand that the government support them. We give very little back to our country in volunteer effort while we do not maintain standards of development educationally or morally for our children. We do not declare and teach that part of the definition of self-respect is responsibility. And business as usual continues the country on its slide to decline.
In 1964, Ronald Reagan stood for the principles of truth. In a sentence, limited government and balanced budgets are the means to release entrepreneurship, family owned businesses, and individuals to seek and provide innovative services that create new jobs and prosperity. His definition of the times was this, “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”
The Third Wave
A new organization and network is launching. It is called AmericasOne. Its purpose is to provide the tools, training, communication, and products necessary for individuals, particularly small business owners, to take charge of their own destiny and their children’s future through citizen engagement.
It is not the billionaires who are getting their way or distorting the process. It is the lack of people at the grassroots standing on what they believe and demanding that it be protected. As set out in the book Moment of Truth, a third wave of leadership is coming – a grassroots movement that believes in truth and is willing to commit to the honor of defending it. It will be family owned businesses, small business owners, individuals, civic leaders, teachers, coaches and pastors who will finally stand up and say, “Enough! This is what I believe and this is what I demand for my children’s future.” Everyone has a sphere of influence, from their family to their co-workers, to their social circles. It is time to stand for truth. It is time to tell others what we believe. It is time to protect the dream. This is not just America’s dream; it is the world’s dream of freedom.
It is time to stop the diffusion of surrealism that distorts the reality of a principle based society. It is time to take a stand on that which we believe and communicate it to our spheres of influence. It is time that we say ‘enough’ to business as usual. It is time that our actions reflect the true love for our children.
It is time to honor our rendezvous with destiny.
My name is Marc Nuttle and this is what I believe.
What do you believe?