What Happened to the Simple Solutions?

FROM “IN DEFENSE OF RURAL AMERICA”

by Ron Ewart, President, NARLO, ©2017

(Mar. 26, 2017) — Each week we share lunch with a highly experienced, wise, knowledgeable businessman in his seventies and we talk about the issues that many informed Americans talk about.   He reads our articles every week and we discuss the articles as they relate to what is going on in our local, national and global world.  He often mentions that we write about what is wrong with America, but we never write about the solutions.  To that end this current article addresses his concern.

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How did we manage to let life and the solutions to our individual and collective problems become so complicated?  How is it that only politicians can take the laws of physics, economics and the principles of freedom and liberty and mess them up so badly?  Do we have a national or sovereignty death wish?  Do we value freedom so little that we will cast it aside for security, political expediency, a socialist agenda, very costly radical environmental policies that erase our liberties, or a one-world-order that bears no relation to the individual rights under our Constitution?  Have we become so naive, ignorant, self-absorbed and apathetic that we would succumb to the propaganda from government, where a handout from them, or a new law, carries with it the handcuffs of slavery?

Name a problem and there is, believe it or not, a fairly simple solution, no matter what psychologists, educators, socialists, radical environmentalists, or government tell you.  But as we said in our last article, America is so divided, the simple solutions become less likely.

Take illegal immigration, for example.  The solution is first to vigorously enforce current law and severely punish employers that employ illegal aliens.  The second solution is to build a wall.  The third solution is to reverse the insane 14th Amendment Supreme Court decision that allows any foreign national, born on American soil, to become a U.S. citizen.  The fourth solution is to put the U. S. Army (or national guard) on the border to protect it, completely, with the threat of physical force for violators.  The fifth solution is to cut off social, educational and medical benefits to illegal aliens across the board.   There should be no benefit for breaking our laws, much less amnesty.  This removes the magnets that attract them here in the first place.  Then maybe we wouldn’t need a wall.  None of these solutions are complicated and we didn’t have to write new laws.  Would we give a known burglar the keys to our home, along with everything in the refrigerator and our checkbooks, because we have compassion for him?  Hardly!  Irrational compassion, thrust down our throats by Progressive do-gooders, will be America’s downfall.

Then there’s energy.  There is a simple solution.  We have more than enough oil in the Northern Hemisphere that is within our economic and environmentally sensitive grasp to meet our daily needs and be free of foreign oil.  Drill for it.  Build more refineries to process that oil, if needed.  Cut gasoline grades down to about three, no more.  Build nuclear and natural gas-fired power plants.  Build more hydroelectric dams for power, irrigation and flood control.  Stop subsidies for ethanol and other uneconomic idiotic solutions and let them die a rapid death before these boondoggles drive our taxes up dramatically and drive our food prices out of reach of the average family, just to please a radical environmentalist.  And stop this crazy idea of conserving energy.  We don’t need to conserve; we have all the energy we need, if we will just go get it.  We need to expand our opportunities and horizons, not limit them.  Limits are for losers and whiners.  America wasn’t built on limits to creativity and innovation, only limits on government power.  Of course we need to continue working on economic energy solutions to replace crude oil.  New economic technology will come along if we just let the power of our industry and capitalism operate efficiently and without impediments and constant second-guessing from an out-of-control, heavy-handed, stupid government that ruins everything it touches.

The science is unsettled whether man is causing global warming from CO2 emissions or the burning of fossil fuels.   All the emissions from our gasoline-powered cars, or industry, are most likely not killing the planet, as government and the environmentalists would have us believe.   Nevertheless, should we work to diminish pollution? Of course.  But we should do so only if there is a quantifiable, scientifically-proven benefit to the cost?  Unfortunately, government never thinks in quantifiable benefits.

How about welfare?  Remove the subsidies for everyone, except those who demonstrate that they can’t take care of themselves.  Any person with two arms, two legs and a functioning brain, in good health, does not need a government subsidy.  Once and for all, let’s wean those folks off the government teat and let them learn to stand on their own two feet.  Sure, it can be tough, but we will grow stronger as a nation and stronger as individuals if we do.  Phase out Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security over the next 10 to 20 years and get people to plan for their medical care and retirement using private markets.   If they don’t plan, why should the rest of us have to carry them?  The greatest incentive in a free country to responsibility, self-reliance and self-sufficiency is an empty wallet or a hungry belly.  This country is headed for the sheer cliff of bankruptcy if we don’t.  If America goes bankrupt, you can kiss freedom and liberty goodbye.  In the ensuing chaos, your allegedly benevolent government will just declare martial law and suspend the Constitution.  But then, they already suspended the Constitution, haven’t they?

Our educational system has become a monumental, propaganda-driven cesspool.  Our kids are being indoctrinated by a curriculum that was designed by psychologists, government socialists, educators, radical environmentalists and the one-world-order crowd.  We must return our public schools to LOCAL control immediately and get the state and the Feds out of it before it is too late.  Teach facts, not political correctness.  Teach real truth, not propaganda.   Teach our kids how to think, not how to memorize.  And above all, teach them unabashed individualism.  Teach them about individual rights and our Constitutional Republic form of government and why freedom is the best environment in which to solve our problems.   Socialism, communism, radical environmentalism, the one world order, multi-culturalism and collectivism will, in the end, destroy us.  We are free individuals, not robots, unless we let these educated idiots take over every aspect of our lives.  All these “isms” will just rob us of our individual, creative power.

As we speak, a serious effort is under way by the Trump Administration to repeal and replace ObamaCare.  One of our readers said that it should just be repealed, not replaced?  His argument is, what business does the federal government have being involved in health care in the first place?  He’s right, of course, unless Americans want to live in a socialist nation and repeal the Constitution.  If the states want or need to take care of their less-well-off citizens, then it is up to the individual states to institute that care, paid for by state taxpayers, not federal taxpayers.  States have to balance their budgets, which forces them to limit their spending.  The federal government has no budgetary limits and because of that it can run up trillions in debt, which it has.  Further, the federal government builds up huge money-sucking bureaucracies such as Medicare and ObamaCare that take a minimum of 20% of taxpayer funds in waste, fraud, abuse and corruption before it ever is granted back to the states.

It’s not complicated.  Americans have to ask themselves.  Do they want to live in a free society that includes individual freedom and individual choices, or do we abdicate our freedom to a government which will make all of our choices for us?

Now let’s take a look at terrorism.  The solution is really quite easy.  Simply tell every country that harbors terrorists who end up attacking the United States from their home countries that they will face swift and violent military action to eliminate the threat.  Period.  They either police their own terrorists or suffer the consequences.  That is what we did before to protect Americans and American interests.  One of our wiser presidents said, “Talk softly, but carry a big stick.”  It’s about time his policy was put back into practice.

Finally, one of the simple solutions to limit political corruption is to start holding government officials, in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, accountable by punitive actions that include recalls, impeachment, huge fines and incarceration.  If they violate the Constitution, and they do all the time, there must be a price to pay, or there is no deterrent from them continuing to do so.  As part of that solution, we need to look for and encourage men and women of principle to run for office and support them with our words, deeds and dollars.

There will always be problems that emanate from natural or man-made events.  But honorable, intelligent, innovative, creative people, operating under the banner of constitutional freedom, will always find a solution (and usually a fairly simple one) to those problems if they are free to seek out those solutions.  But if we continue to allow special interest groups and government, at any level, to get in our way, then solutions to problems will always be complicated and always carry with them a huge, totally unnecessary price tag.

In a recent article we said this:  “The only answer is not in complexity, but in simplicity and fewer laws.  Yes, society needs laws to maintain “reasonable” societal order.  But as laws increase, after a certain point, order begins to breakdown under its own weight, as people try to comply with often conflicting and confusing laws, codes, ordinances, regulations and rules.  And worse, the more laws there are, the more opportunities for emotionally and financially draining lawsuits between aggrieved parties, egged on by lawyers who make their living off of human weakness and interpreting laws that no one else can understand.”

“There is an inviolate law in nature.  Complexity in organisms can lead to the emergence of order.  Biological evolution and diversity on Earth is a result of that law.  However, it has also been shown that too much complexity in these organisms, in almost all cases, leads to chaos and finally extinction.”

“Ultimately, if we continue on the path we tread, we will become as a rogue spider, spinning a web from which we shall be forever entangled.  Could that be our final destination?  Are we to choke on and become entrapped by our own obsessive/compulsive drive to complexity, or can we learn from the laws of nature?”

If we choose not to employ economic solutions and vigorously defend our freedom, liberty and property rights, our individual freedom will become extinct.  There are always reasonable, viable and economic solutions to our problems, if we don’t let politics and special interests get in the way.

For some simple solutions, check out our “18 Principles for America” that are patterned after the U.S. Constitution.  They represent a simple blueprint to solve our individual and collective problems.  We open these 18 Principles with the following statement:

“Government today and probably throughout history, due to human failings, has been, is and always will be about “power”, but very seldom about “principle”. However, if we choose to avoid principle, we do so at our own peril. This great land of ours could easily share the same fate unless we return to these principles, for which millions of brave men and women have sacrificed their lives, their limbs and their minds to defend.”

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NOTE:　 The foregoing article represents the opinion of the author and is not necessarily shared by the owners, employees, representatives, or agents of the publisher.

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Ron Ewart, a nationally known author and speaker on freedom and property rights issues and author of this weekly column, “In Defense of Rural America.”  Ron is the president of the National Association of Rural Landowners (NARLO) (www.narlo.org), a non-profit corporation headquartered in Washington State, acting as an advocate and consultant for urban and rural landowners.  Affiliated NARLO websites are “SAVE THE USA” (http://www.stusa.us/) and “Getting Even With Government” (http://www.gewgov.com/).   Ron can be reached for comment HERE.