What Kind Of America Do You Want to Live In?
by Average American Bob  

We are at the cross-roads my fellow Americans. Over the last two decades the battle between Liberalism and Conservatism has escalated into a full-fledged, no holds barred fight for power and control. And make no mistake; both major parties have core values and broad plans to gain and/or retain power. The major difference is that Liberals/Progressives use their power to control the masses by increasing the size of government with growing an ever-increasing number of people who are dependent on government, who will most always vote for those who will promise to continue the dependency programs.

The Conservatives also have core values and a plan to retain power but do not have an agenda to ‘control’ the populist.  They want to start returning to the idea of maximum personal freedom, liberty and choices. They want everyone to have equal opportunity, so that every citizen can live their life the way they want and pursue their idea ‘happiness,’ as stated in the Declaration of Independence. They believe in the Constitution, as written by our founders, as the governing laws of our great Republic.

It demands that in exchange for a level of personal freedom, not found in any other country in the world.  It asks that we be self-reliant, do our best to provide for ourselves and demonstrate personal responsibility by making good decisions, working hard and climb the ladder of success to whatever economic level you desire or your ambition, talent and skill will allow. This is provided through equal opportunity with no guarantee of equal results.

We have a civic obligation to provide for ourselves and families, obey our laws and contribute to our society through taxes for our police, fire fighters, military and care of common use parks, streets, buildings, etc. Nowhere in our great Constitution does it allow the government to take money, in the form of taxes or fees, and give it to someone else because they, the government have determined that the recipient is somehow more deserving of that money.

This is not about Democrats and Republicans anymore. This is about far-left Liberals/Progressives who believe that the government should have the power to force people to pay for the livelihood of those who have less, while taking a good percentage for themselves, as all social programs need more and more government for administration, oversight and forced compliance. In order for the Liberals/Progressives to be successful, they need two groups of people:

1) those who work hard, take risk, sacrifice, strive for success and fulfill their idea of the American Dream by earning achieving much more than the Average person, and

2) They also need another group… those who can’t or won’t.

For anyone who has read the Decoration of Independence and the United States Constitution, you already know which political ideology those great documents were written to support and which ideology it was written to protect you from.

You would think that, during a child’s journey through their K-12 education, teachers would engrain in students an accurate understanding of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and its Amendments. If they did, we would not be at the cross-roads we are today. But the truth is that within human beings there are and always will be those who are filled hate, greed, envy and those who desire power who are willing to exploit those people for their own gain.

The Story of Three Americans, Tom, Robert and Harry –   

All lived in the same area, went to the same schools, all came from lower income, poorer families.  Tom paid attention in school, studied hard and got good grades. With the help of scholarships from colleges, civic clubs and other sources, he went to a two-year college, then transferred to a four-year University and got his degree in business. He worked part-time to help pay his education cost.  After graduation he was offered a job at a major corporation and worked his way up to middle management and a six-digit income. He got married, had two kids, bought a home and for him… was living the American Dream.  He didn’t live above his means; he saved his entire life for retirement and finally did retire in a home that was paid for and close to his children and grandchildren.

Robert was a bit of a ‘goof-ball.’  Didn’t pay attention in class and subsequently got Cs even a couple of Ds… except during football season where he maintained straight “A’s” while he was on the team.  During his junior year of high school his mother got very sick and felt, because his dad didn’t make very much, that he needed to help. Yes they had a very small house, his dad never paid more than $300.00 for any car he bought and most of his clothes were hand-downs from his cousin. But they were a very happy family.  When they did go out to dinner, which might be once a month, it was a real treat. They didn’t take vacations, but they took weekend camping trips once and a while, and he and his dad enjoyed fishing off the local piers.  So when the bills were mounting up Robert decided to quite high school and go to work to help out. He took a minimum wage job at a local newspaper as a ‘fly-boy,’ the one who used to take the bundles of newspapers off the end of the press.

A year later he joined the military where he was offered the opportunity to get his GED high school equivalency. He learned discipline, team-work and leadership skills. Robert also learned that with hard work and doing his job better than others he would be promoted ahead of other soldiers.  He earned the rank of E-5 Sergeant in just 30 months, for which he good great pride.

As much as he liked military life he decided to go back to being a civilian. But with little work history and the economy not doing so well, he ended up taking a job at a gas station, but always keeping eyes and ears open for the opportunity of a better paying job.  Six months later he found an opening at an oil refinery where he got enough of a raise in income he could afford a new car, get married and have his first child.  Two years later he found a job delivering bottled water where he learned to ‘sell.’

The increase in pay allowed him to buy their first new home.  Three years later he got his big break being hired by the phone company to sell advertising.  He did well, worked his way into management and after 7 years had the confidence to go out on his own and build a personal business in professional speaking and business training which gave him a very good six-digit income that was even more than Tom earned.  But Robert had to sacrifice much more.  When he started his business he worked many days late into the night.  As his business grew, his career choice meant that he had to travel extensively taking him away from his family for up to 40% during a typical year.  With other decisions he made concerning spending and investing, he too retired near his kids and grandkids but his home was not paid for and with a down-turn in the market he decided to keep working a couple of months a year to maintain his life style.

Neither Tom nor Robert ever expected or took any government assistance or anything from anyone.  It was THEIR responsibility to make their own choices and live their lives the way the chose.  It’s obvious that while Robert and Tom made very different decisions in their lives, they both reached their goals.Robert had a higher lifestyle during his working years, but at great personal sacrifice. And because he didn’t plan as well as Tom and made poor investment choices, he ended up with a lower lifestyle for retirement.  Both had the same opportunities and the results were because of free choices.  That’s living the American Dream for both men.

Then there was Harry.  Harry didn’t like school so he seldom did homework, opting to go play whatever sport of the season with his buddies at the park. He started getting into trouble in his early teens, nothing too serious.  He dropped out of high school and took a job in an auto mechanics shop.  He hated getting up every morning and was often late. As a result, he was fired within13-15 months.  He applied for and got unemployment.  Was only about half of what he was getting but he could live on it.  He stayed with friends, ate junk food… but he didn’t have to get up every day to go work.

As his unemployment was coming to an end, he started to think about where he could get a job. But then the Government extended his unemployment and he was pleased that he would not have to go through the work search yet.  He then learned he could get food stamps and housing assistance (he laughed many times when he thought about getting money for so long without working).  So when the unemployment finally stopped after almost two years  he started doing jobs under the table.

He got his girlfriend pregnant and when the baby was born she started getting all kinds of assistance from local and the federal governments.  His girlfriend was also able-bodied but she didn’t want to work either. Her new baby provided a convenient excuse not to work, and the government gave her the means in the form of welfare not to work.

Harry found that there were many women who wanted to have babies so they could collect government money. Some even agreed to give him some of the money they got for the babies he fathered.  Of course none of the women would tell anyone that he was the father, so he never was forced to pay child support. He most certainly was not going to admit anything. The government was giving out the money like a winning slot machine.

The fun part was that he heard politicians who told the world that people like him and his girlfriends never had a chance, they didn’t have the same opportunities, that he was a victim of the system and that he should hate those who were rich and making six-digit incomes.  The government was up to over thirty programs where he could get money or assistance.

And you can be sure that he voted for every politician who promised him more and more free money and other stuff like cell phones. He would vote against any politician that stated that he should be self-reliant and exercise personal responsibility and go to work every day.  Why?  His government funded life-style lets him live as good as many who were working. If he took a minimum wage job he would take a cut in pay.

Harry knew that even though his money and assistance came from the government it was really coming from his fellow Americans who strived to be successful and he simply didn’t care. Life was good… he didn’t have to get up and go work… he just hung out with his buddies and visited his girlfriends. He even had enough money that he could go to the movies, buy beer, cigarettes and even a few drugs here and there. He even had a big flat-screen TV to watch sports and movies. Some of his friends on welfare even took nice vacations.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/welfare-recipients-take-ebt-to-disney-world-and-vegas/

Every once in a while he would wonder why all those hard-working people would make such a commitment to being successful when the government was stealing so much of their hard-earned income to give to people like him. What suckers! At times he would feel ashamed.  His sense of self-worth was little but, “whatever!”  The only positive he could muster was that he was giving those rich people, who felt guilty about people like him, a sense of superiority and he, in this strange way, could stroke their morality and help them feel good about themselves. 

The Methods and Techniques of Social Engineering and Propaganda Used to Advance a Socialistic/Marxist Agenda 

Make no mistake, the Liberals/Progressives have been introducing socialist programs for over a hundred years. Social Security, Medicare, the Senior Drug Program and most recently the Affordable Healthcare Act, also known as “Obama Care.”

Government-run programs have a history of going broke. The end result is they constantly have to be modified, and in turn, require government to take more from hard working Americans and payout less to program recipients. But it’s the methodology that is used to slowly and methodically introduce these programs and grow the power of a centralized government that can and will take more and more of your freedom and liberty away in the names of ‘Fairness’ and ‘Equality’.  You will hear phrases such as, “It’s the right thing to do” – “we have a moral obligation” or “for the greater good.”  Think about that for a moment.  Who’s ‘right thing to do’?  Who’s morality?  What greater good?  When did we the people or the Constitution give the power to the federal government to decide morality for all of us?

In a free society there will always be those who are rich, those who are poor and those in the middle. When did being poor become something unacceptable?  I, and many others who have come from poor homes, have been able to use our ambition, desire to have more, and the willingness to work hard in order to move up the economic ladder. Yes, it takes sometimes many years, but that’s the price of success.

You probably already guessed that Robert’s story above is very close to my own.  There is a distinct difference between “the truly needy” and poor people.  And the only motivation of the left to take from the middle class to give the working poor, is to buy votes without caring if they kill ambition, take away pride and a person’s sense of worth.

As the battle continues, understand this, conservatives are as compassionate and charitable as some liberals and, according to polls, more than most.

http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/castingstones/2008/04/conservatives-give-more-to-cha.html

It’s the motivation that has to be examined –

We all understand that we have to help the truly needy, those who CAN’T or are UNABLE to help themselves with the basic needs of housing, clothes, food, clean water and healthcare.  In those cases there are thousands of private resources, churches and organizations that do the most effective jobs at helping those people. If our Government wants to help those truly needy people, give more to those organizations in the form of grants.  As far as helping the poor… stop giving them free stuff and money.

I’m all for training programs and child-care assistance that help people get back into the work force where they can be productive, tax-paying citizens (doesn’t matter how little), where they can recapture their sense of self-worth, pride and the pride of accomplishment. That’s what the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 accomplished as it offered the training and work requirements that got people off the welfare roles in three years.  So why did Obama strip that Act of the key requirements in favor of more money and no requirements in the first so-called ‘Stimulus’ program? (Here is a three-minute video that verifies this statement)

http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/1733970918001/administration-strips-work-requirements-from-welfare-program/#sp=show-clips&v=1733970918001

So does this far-left Liberal President really want to help the truly needy and poor?  I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say yes… but only as a second thought.  Every decision this administration makes is first political.  It has been his strategy from January of 2009 to get as many people as possible dependent on government.  The ultimate goal is to have more recipients than providers.  I’ll use my same analogy that I always use in explaining this phenomenon: If you take from Peter and give to Paul… you will always have the support of Paul.  If you can get to point where you have more Pauls than Peters… you have bought enough votes to stay in power forever because all those Pauls will never vote to receive less.

That’s why we are at the crossroads. This administration has been successful in giving those “who have less,” more than any other administration before them. They have not given a second thought as to the cost.  Just spend, spend and spend some more.  Don’t worry about passing regulation and the healthcare act which kills jobs… because that just drives more people into dependency. This president has done nothing to promote job growth and won’t.  His constant statements about being for the middle class are lies.

After Fast and Furious, the IRS and NSA scandals and the most obvious, Benghazi, you now know that Mr. Obama is willing to lie to you and anyone to advance his agenda. Did he not promise that those making under $250,000 would not pay one more dime in taxes?  Well with Obama Care we are all paying for dozens of new taxes imbedded within the law.  And that’s just what is within the new law.  Many other tax hikes have been imposed on business through new regulations.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/taxes-going-pay-pay-obamacare-145413745.html

If you have any doubts that you are being lied to, then just look at all the lies that were spewed by Mr. Obama and his pundits’ daily leading up to the passage of the ACA.  You could keep your healthcare plan, your doctor or healthcare facility being the biggest ones.

All you have to do is use your common sense to understand that everything the progressives do is to advance an agenda that requires a larger government that has the power to control the populist… not serve them.  The conservatives want a government that is small and serves the people within the confines of the Constitution, giving maximum freedom to the individual.

Don’t ever believe that conservatives don’t want equal opportunity – we do!  We just don’t believe in taking money from those who work so hard to be successful to guarantee equal results.

Your choice is simple. Do you want a government so big and powerful that can dictate to you how much of your hard-earned money you will keep and how you will live your life?  Or, do you want a government that is subservient to the people, and allows you maximum freedom by letting you strive to whatever success is for you, and allow you to keep more of your own money and live your life the way you want?

I welcome your comments.
Average American Bob