A New American Declaration of Independence

In the past two plus weeks traveling half way around the world and finally landing back here in the United States of America, the best place to live on earth, I arrived at the realization that our country today is on the threshold of success or failure.

If we are to be successful, our leaders in Washington and in our state houses must get their act together and act responsibly. Doing less, will plunge this nation to the depths of despair and we will surely end up no better than some of the same countries I visited while abroad i.e. The New Russian Federation; the former Soviet Union.

Life in Russia today is hard and it hard for any of us to imagine how much harder it was before the breakup of the Soviet Union during the six long decades of the Cold War because today even with the beginning of open markets and greater freedom for the individual, life in the streets of Moscow and elsewhere is not what we are accustomed here in the land of opportunity, the United States of America.

Sadly, in the last two weeks, I kept abreast of what was happening in the United States while I was gone and what I heard and saw on American television was not at all encouraging with the continual bickering and the politics of destruction of both parties.

I also do not understand why Mr. Obama with a still reeling economy continues to rant about raising taxes for individuals and businesses making more than $250,000 per year. Doesn’t this president understand that these people are the backbone of America, the people that create the wealth for the rest of us? Surely, these are the same people who create jobs, work diligently and pay taxes to support the system that Obama is intent of destroying.

This mentality of collectivism must not be allowed to continue in this country. The sharing of wealth has not worked in any other country on earth including the old Soviet Union of past years. Socialism is a failed system and if that is what Mr. Obama wants to accomplish in this country by the redistribution of wealth; having working people pay for the ever-growing idle sector of our population, then, this country will also fail just like the rest of the countries who have tried it before us and have also failed. Should we allow this happen in this nation we all love, the United States as we know it, will be no more.

I heard about the failures of socialism from the very lips of a Russian guide just a few days ago while taking a tour of the city of Moscow. When I asked her if she was happy now that Russia is on the way to democratization, she replied saying, "The old Russian empire was bound to fail because it created too many lazy people; there was no motivation and no money to go around for the average person who did not even have enough to eat.” 

She continued saying that today not much has changed in the new Russian federation due to corruption and other elements but at least she said, we are on the road for better times ahead. Russia is out of the dark times of communism where everything was government controlled. Her own mother, a doctor in St. Petersburg is forced to live in a two-room apartment because her pay is only about $700/month equivalent. This is socialism at best.

I say, this election year let us reaffirm our American heritage by repeating the words of the 1776 Declaration of Independence when Thomas Jefferson said these truths, “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.” But, those rights cannot and must not infringe on working Americans as Mr. Obama is trying to do.

Yes, we are all equal under the law, but that equality carries a personal responsibility. We cannot have a society where the well-deserved are punished and forced to pay for the ever-growing idle citizens of this country who choose not to work because when that happens, chaos and discontent occurs and then, can revolt be far behind.

It happened once when the king of England tried to enforce taxation without representation on the American colonies; it can happen again if we continue to force 50 percent of the American pay for the other 50 percent who choose to collect a paycheck and all kind of benefits that the average American worker does not have instead of working and paying into the system.

President Reagan said it best more than 30 years ago, “Government cannot spend what it does not have; taxing some to pay for what government wants to spend is not in the American spirit not to mention, counterproductive in the survival of this nation."