Immigration

Author's Note:

My views have evolved since I wrote this.  I'm going to leave the original article, but it no longer fully reflects my perception.  Now, it is clear to me that this is a private property issue.  Human beings should never be restricted from moving freely across this leafy space ship.  Develop some land.  Make it yours.  And then you set the rules about who you want using what you have built.  Who you want building alongside you.  That choice was yours once before, and it should be yours once again.

Immigration is a wonderful thing.  Freeloading on the work of others is not.

America has many problems on her hands, but certainly one of the most pressing is illegal immigration.  While the laws we have on the books would handle the situation about as well as it could be handled, those laws are not being enforced.  Border patrol agents are being threatened by Homeland Security with their jobs for attempting to stop illegal immigration.  The Department of Justice is coming down on states like Texas for trying to keep illegal residents from voting, which is already against the law.  Here's the problem: Doing nothing about the state of illegal immigration is granting de facto amnesty to illegal immigrants.  Ironically, securing our borders is one of the very few powers enumerated to our government by the Constitution, and they have failed miserably in this charge.

Obama wants to pass a new immigration reform bill that would legalize 11 million people who are here illegally.  Doing so would send a clear message to the world: If you break U.S. laws, you will be rewarded.  If you follow U.S. laws, you will be punished.  The system already implement enforces illegal activity with free food, free housing, free healthcare, free education, and a free cell phone.  At the same time, it punishes law-abiding hard work with excessive taxes, fees, and regulations.  Legalizing 11 million immigrants would be a demoralizing slap in the face to those who wait as long as 25 years to enter America legally.

Lets look at the current situation.  To put it into analogy: An intruder breaks into your house.  You find them in your house, and you demand they leave.  "But," they reason, "I've cleaned your floors, scrubbed your toilets, and made your bed!  I deserve to stay here!  I'm a good, honest person...except for when I broke into your house."  You go to your local government to try and get them to evict your new resident, but they reason the same: "They've made your bed, cleaned your floors, folded your laundry, and scrubbed your toilet.  They have a basic human right to stay in your home.  After all, they're a good and honest person...except for when they broke into your house."  But paying for their housing is not all you have to do.  "It's only fair," your government says, "that you also pay for their food, education, healthcare, and ability to communicate with others.  After all, those are basic human rights."  So now, by mandate of your authorities, you are paying for the housing, food, education, clothing, healthcare, and cell phone of someone who contributes only a fraction of the costs of their upkeep.  But this is only right - after all, they're good, honest people, except for...well, you know.

America cannot keep this up.  As a nation, we are bankrupt.  We have a growing national debt that will never be repaid.  Cities across the country are declaring bankruptcy.  Poverty is exploding.  We cannot even afford to pay for our troops to eat properly.  The very last thing we should be doing is rewarding illegal activity, especially when it is to our own detriment. The presence of tens of millions of illegal immigrants drives wages down for existing American citizens.  We are finding it impossible to employ even the people who already live here.  So far, the costs of providing a side "path to citizenship" come to $3.8 trillion, and that number is only going to grow.  The only course of action that makes sense for America is to properly secure her borders and enforce the laws already in existence.  Once we do this, we can start looking into simplifying the current immigration process.

The bottom line is this: Absolutely no amnesty.  Period.

Author's Note: This article assumes the USA continues to exist in its current state.

Reclaiming Your Liberty

"America in Distress"

"Reclaiming Your Liberty: Because you shouldn't have to work this hard to be this poor."

America, it's time to come out and say it: We are in trouble.  Continuing on this path can have only one logical outcome, and I think we all know what that is.  Our system is rampant with inefficiency and corruption.  It no longer works.  It's time for a real change.

Our leaders lack even the basic vision required to accept one inescapable fact: America is in distress.  We have some serious problems.  Because they will not accept reality, how can We the People ever hope our leaders will fix the issues we now face?  Rather than accept the facts, Washington bickers back and forth over petty issues and never makes useful agreements on matters of importance.  Instead, they continually kick the can down the road, which is only making the inevitable crash much more devastating.  America is on a bus hurtling towards a solid brick wall at 200 miles an hour, and Washington is squabbling over where they are sitting.  The few voices who try to bring attention to where the bus is headed are lauded as alarmists and ignored.  We need more leaders who see, accept, and rise to the challenges of our time.  We need representatives with enough vision to correct our current path to destruction and restore our once-great nation.

We have far too many lawyers in our leadership.  Somewhere along the line, an unspoken agreement that a law degree is needed to run for office seems to have been enacted.  Where are all the doctors?  The scientists?  The farmers?  The mechanics?  The tech workers?  In short: Where are all the Americans?  All I see are people who, by some stroke of chance, were born into money and power.  In 2010, the average campaign budget for the House of Representatives (the lowest position in high office) was $1,163,231.  While just 1 percent of Americans are millionaires, 66 percent of senators are millionaires, as are 41 percent of House members.  The Constitution ordained a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  Clearly, we do not have the type of leaders the Framers intended.  Instead, we have droves of wealthy lawyers making our laws.  The laws being made are so chalked full of ambiguous jargon, only people with a law degree can make sense of them. These laws are practically impossible for the average American not to break, and when they inevitably do, the lawyer friends of our "leaders" get to profit from your suffering.  All of this is unacceptable, and it needs to change.

Our system is rank with crony capitalism.  It is designed in such a way that a mega corporation like Monsanto - whose current and former members now occupy 18 positions in our government - can sell its "food" to hundreds of millions of people without adequate testing.  Even with the safety of the product in question, the system does not require any sort of labeling.  At the same time, the "mom and pop" organic farm is burdened with impossible regulations and licensing requirements before they are allowed to sell to even their neighbors.  People who try to grow food in their own front yards are being harassed by city officials.  Many laws on the books are subtly designed to allow large corporations and people in positions of power to do as they please while restricting the average American as much as possible.  This is the exact opposite of what our country needs.  "Leaders" who are more interested in money than your freedoms have complacently allowed our nation to come to this.

The fiat money system has created a situation in which we are being quietly robbed of our wealth every single day.  Each new dollar the Federal Reserve prints (and they print in excess of 85 billion per month) takes away just a little bit more of the purchasing power of the dollars you already have.  Combined with our unconstitutional tax system, this helps to explain why it is already too hard for most families to keep food on the table.  Bills consume most peoples' lives and distract them from the larger picture of the world around them.  Our "leaders" use your distracted state to start unconstitutional wars and pass laws that provide unlimited protections to corporations like Monsanto, and it's all done without any challenge from you.  They take your silence as consent.  This too needs to change.  We need to return to sound, gold-backed currency.  We need to eliminate the Federal Reserve's ability to destroy the dollar.  We need to stop attempting to draw Iran into the next world war.  Most importantly, We the People need to realize what is happening and explicitly withdraw our consent.

Despite President Obama's "eloquent" speeches and what the (borderline fraudulent) unemployment numbers claim, our economy is not recovering.  If we don't change directions, it will never recover.  The jobs that are being added are largely low paying, part time jobs.  Meanwhile, we are losing more full time jobs than we are gaining part time jobs most months.  Misleading free trade agreements have led to a mass exodus of manufacturing jobs.  As a result, we have been importing more than we have been exporting for far too long.  America has been living beyond her means for too many years.  The credit card is maxed out, and the bill collectors are knocking on our door.  This, too, is a major problem our leaders refuse to acknowledge.

The verdict is in and the results are all around us: The policies of our current leadership are failing.  It's time for some fresh ideas and a new direction.  Obama promised us "Hope and Change," but he has broken every promise he ever made.  He has delivered the opposite of "Hope" with the only "Change" being a further reduction of personal Liberty. Our leaders seem to have forgotten what they swore to when they took their Oath of Office.  We need more representatives in government who know and care about what the word "Constitutional" means.  Representatives who hold their Oaths of Office in the highest possible regard, as was intended by the Framers.  Representatives who will swear to and then actually protect, defend, and preserve the Constitution of the United States of America.  In short: We need representatives who will protect your individual Liberty instead of a corrupt system.

The time has come for a Return to Liberty.  Whether or not this return is successful will rest on the actions of We the People.

What Should America Become?

If you've read my other articles and are still with me, one thing should be getting pretty clear: Our country cannot go on like this.  Our Founding Fathers would already be horrified to see what this once-great nation has become.  After all, they started a revolution over a breakfast beverage.  And it wasn't even coffee.  If we continue to spiral down this path, the Land of the Free will cease to exist, replaced instead with the land of corporate profits, mass starvation, out-of-control government, and constant police-state oppression.

One thing is certain: There is a storm coming.  This storm has already sparked what can only be described as the next American Revolution.  A government far more corrupt than the one we worked to throw off in 1776 has crept into our lives and is tightening its grip on us.  But what should America become?  It will not be enough to simply remove the current set of leaders and replace them with new puppets.  For as long as the government is able to be controlled by the Federal Reserves and Monsantos of the world, the system itself will be the greatest enemy of the People.

Many people believe it is too dangerous to have any form of central government; it is too vulnerable to corruption and growing out of control, as has happened in our case.  These people believe that nothing less than the total abolition of the central Federal Government is necessary.  From there, local governments (that don't all have to abide by the same principles) could make decisions at the local level, and edicts from a central power would not override the values of the people living under that local system.  This could work, but we would have to unanimously agree on one thing: Nonviolence.  Nobody is to initiate violence against another person for any reason, especially in order to force their beliefs (be they political, religious, ideological, etc.) on them.  Any acts of violence would need to be met with overwhelming response from all nearby communities.  This, coupled with a universally accepted basic bill of human rights (Life, Liberty, Self-Determination, Trial By Jury, etc.) would allow us to choose the type of community we want to live in without having to force everyone in the country into the same mold.  You like socialism?  Great!  Settle in with the people who also like socialism and form a community.  Is a Constitutional Republic for you?  Awesome!  Do the same.  Prefer to live without any form of government?  Join the Anarchists!  But understand that other ideologies exist, and accept that they are allowed to do so.

I would choose to live in a Constitutional Republic, much like the one the Framers intended.  However, I would remove many of the laws now on the books and replace them with a simple idea: You can do anything you want to do, just don't hurt anybody else.  Who determines what constitutes "Hurt?"  A jury.  Everything else would be procedural.  However, I would make some changes to the ideas behind the Constitution and our current situation:

1. We should transition back into a gold and silver-backed currency; fiat money should be permanently outlawed once this transition is complete
2. Term limits should be instituted for all Representatives; this would ensure a steady flow of new people and ideas and phase out the (inevitably corrupt) career politician
3. All corporate campaign contributions should be outlawed; only individual contributions from the constituents themselves should be allowed
4. The process to pass new laws should be drastically simplified and made 100% transparent to the public:
• No new bills should exceed 10 pages in length
• New bills should be written in plainly understandable English and avoid jargon
• All sections of a new bill should be directly related to the title of the bill (For an example of what NOT to do, see The Patriot Act, which was the most unpatriotic piece of law ever written)
• All new bills should be published and freely accessible (on the Internet) for 14 days prior to being brought up for debate in the House or the Senate

Sound like the kind of system you might like to live in?  Well lets link up after and make it happen!

When this storm hits, a lot of people will lose their lives.  What happens next will be up to us.  It's absolutely critical that we are on the same page, working towards the same goal.  If we are not, the American Ideal will truly cease to exist, and the revolution will have been for nothing.  Do you agree?  What kind of community would you choose to live in?

Related Video:
Revolution: An Instruction Manual