For What Should We Be Thankful?

 Andrew P. Napolitano

What if the government’s true goal is to perpetuate itself? What if the real levers of governmental power are pulled by agents and diplomats and by bureaucrats and central bankers behind the scenes? What if they stay in power no matter who is elected president or which political party controls either house of Congress?
What if the frequent public displays of adversity between the Republicans and the Democrats are just a facade and a charade? What if both major political parties agree on the transcendental issues of our day?
What if the leadership of both major political parties believes that our rights are not natural to our humanity but instead are gifts from the government? What if those leaders believe that the government that gives gifts to the people can take those gifts back?
What if the leadership of both parties gives only lip service to Thomas Jefferson’s assertions in the Declaration of Independence that all humans “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” and that the purpose of government is not to redistribute wealth but to protect these rights? What if the leadership of both parties dismisses those ideas as just Jefferson’s outdated musings? What if Jefferson’s words have been enacted in the federal laws that all in government have sworn to uphold?
...What if the congressional leadership and most of the membership in Congress from both major political parties believe in perpetual war and perpetual debt? What if the history of American government in the past 100 years is proof of this nearly universal belief among the political class?
What if the political class believes that war is the health of the state? What if the leadership of that class wants war so as to induce the loyalty of its base, open the pocketbooks of the taxpayers and gain the compliance of the voters? What if the political class uses war to enrich its benefactors? What if the government has been paying for war by increasing its debt?
What if the political class has been paying for prosperity by increasing the government’s debt? What if that class has controlled the cash-creating computers at the Federal Reserve and the free cash the Fed creates is to bankers and traders what heroin is to addicts?
What if the $21.7 trillion current federal government debt has largely been caused by borrowing to pay for wars and false prosperity? What if 22 cents of every tax dollar collected by the feds today is spent on interest payments for the government’s debt? What if, at this rate, in seven years the federal government will pay more annually to debt service than it will to fund the Pentagon?
What if American taxpayers are still paying interest on debts incurred by Woodrow Wilson, FDR, JFK, LBJ, Ronald Reagan and every modern president?

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