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Robert R. Owens, PhD
Without Hope You’re Hopeless
November 3, 2009

Marching out of Yorktown to surrender, the British Army played the song “The World Turned Upside Down.” As I drive to Mega Lo Mart to make my latest deposit of monopoly money in a Chinese savings account all I can do is mumble the final tag-line of the Wicked Witch of the West, “What a world? What a world?”

There’s a massive unspoken problem in America today floating like the iceberg in front of the Titanic waiting to sink the unsinkable ship. Founded by revolutionaries crying “No taxation without representation!” the Republic these revolutionaries devised devolved into a society where 47% of the people pay no Federal Income tax and the number of people receiving government benefits is even higher. What incentive would these non-paying receivers have to reign in an overbearing and intrusive government? This unseen and unspoken problem is a cancer in the body politic.

Self-serving professional politicians buy votes by exempting non-productive people from personal financial responsibility while providing ever-expanding benefits at the expense of the productive. This is not the Right versus Left, Conservative versus Liberal, Democrat versus Republican, he-said-she-said endless debate that devours the “chatocracy” of cable’s wall-to-wall talking-heads. This is not an academic exercise that pointy-headed political science and history majors with dueling pocket protectors debate for hours in their mother’s basement as they post their latest scoop on their samizdat blogs. This is a dagger pointing directly at the heart of our civilization.

Western Civilization awoke from the slumber of the Dark Ages enlightened and empowered by a belief that humanity has an innate right to be free and a natural right to excel. Rights and freedoms given by God not bestowed at the whim of some legend-in-his-own-mind leader. This civilization gathered steam in Europe exploding upon the world stage through an energetic period of exploration.

In America, after a revolution fought by farmers and merchants against the greatest empire of the day, the Founders, dared to declare:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

After centuries of government thugs standing on the windpipe of everyday people these self-sacrificing giants observed that in a civilized world government was not imposed by the strong upon the weak it was instead built upon a social contract between the governed and those entrusted with the privilege to govern when they said,

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Today this bold and unique experiment in freedom is being devoured from within and challenged from without. Those who believe the collective should reign over the individual, those who believe in the suffocating sameness of Socialism over the rough-and-tumble of Capitalism have worked for generations building a culture of dependency which has tempered the steel will of the pioneers into the sloppy demands of the couch-potato slacker waiting for someone to find their remote as they guzzle some refreshments and wait for the game as bread and circuses take the place of innovation and accomplishment. Schools teaching 2+2 might = 5, trophies for everyone, politically correct new-speak and affirmative action promotions have sapped the vitality from the citizens of our Republic. Politicians and their fellow-travelers use a system of cronies and sweet-heart deals to siphon trillions from the public treasury promising the dumbed-down descendants of revolutionaries that they just might win the lotto before they have to declare bankruptcy so they might as well re-elect the same old grafters once again.

There comes a time when those who are raising the sails and paddling the boat have to admit to themselves the ballast down in steerage weighs more than the cargo. There comes a time when even the most non-confrontational and loyal among us begin to ask, “Who is John Galt” as Atlas tires of his thankless job and shrugs the burden of dead-weight into the dustbin of history. As the perpetually-reelected and the propaganda spewing corporations once known as the Mainstream Media trumpet the inevitability of government rationed healthcare, Cap & Trade industrial suicide, comprehensive import-a-voter immigration reform and the surrender of sovereignty through treaties supposedly designed to deal with mythical global warming, there shines a light in a bell tower, one if by land an two if by sea.

About Robert R. Owens, PhD
Robert R. Owens, PhD  is an Associate Professor of History at Southside Virginia Community College where he also teaches Political Science, Religion and Leadership. He write a weekly column of opinion and observations which appears in numerous locations both print and electronic. He is the author of three history books currently on the market; America Won the Vietnam War, The Azusa Street Revival and Never Forget!  He maintains an archive of his articles here.