August 3, 2009 – I sometimes get the impression when I tell people that I believe that America will cease to exist, that suddenly the entire country is just going to vanish off the face of the earth, like the lost continent of Atlantis. I know, it sounds far-fetched, but that is what people seem to think when I tell them that this country is dying.

America is not going to vanish, it will still be on the maps. The difference will be that it will not be the America that our founders had hoped for, or the America that I grew up to love. You see, America was more than just another country, it was more than just a land vast land with bountiful resources. It was a place were people could live that was built on the principle of individual rights and liberty.

In the movie Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe, there is a scene where the Emperor, Marcus Aurelius states to Maximus, “There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish… it was so fragile.”

That could just as easily be said about the dream that was once America. Over the years that dream that our founders held, of a nation which cherished individual liberty, has long been forgotten. In its place we now have a nation in which the government is all powerful, regulating every aspect of our lives.

The America we live in today is on a speeding train, heading rapidly towards socialism, a nation where the government controls everything. Our nation’s founders gave us plenty of advice on how to maintain our liberty and keep our government under control. Sadly, we have not listened too well.

So, what I would like to do is to give a few quotes by our founders, then show exactly how we have ignored their advice.

Most people are aware of the current economic crisis facing this country. The sad thing is that it all could have been avoided had we heeded the warning given by Thomas Jefferson, “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

Central Banks are something that have been a part of our government for a long time. I doubt that many remember the classic battle between the bankers and President Andrew Jackson. In this battle Jackson called the banks for what they were, “You are a den of vipers. I intend to rout you out and by eternal God, I will rout you out.”

Jackson kept to his word, and for the only time in our nations history, a sitting president paid off the nations debt entirely. However, the bankers did not give up, for now we have the Federal Reserve Bank, a central bank that controls the issuance and the value of our nation’s money.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Craig v. Missouri, clearly stated that Central Banks are in conflict with what the Constitution states, “Emitting bills of credit, or the creation of money by private corporations, is what is expressly forbidden by Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution.”

Sir Josiah Stamp was President of the Bank of England. Stamp is quoted as saying, “Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.”

Our first President, George Washington, once said, “Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice.”

All our nation’s monetary problems can be directly attributed to the fact that our economy revolves around the formation of credit. The banks are reaping untold billions of dollars in profits while the people suffer in near poverty, all because we have not heeded the advice given us by our nation’s founders. Jefferson’s quote seems to be coming true, we are waking up homeless on the nation our fathers conquered.

Ben Franklin made two statements that we also have ignored, at the cost of billions in social service programs. His first quote states, “The Constitution only give people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.” His second quote states, “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.”

Welfare, Food Stamps, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and WIC are all programs designed to help those less fortunate, or those who have not achieved the same standard of living as others. But who pays for all these programs? Those who do work, that’s who.

Once again we are not heeding the founder’s advice. Franklin wasn’t alone in thinking this way. Thomas Jefferson also stated, “To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”

Jefferson is also quoted as saying, “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

Our government has made it their job to impose the burden of supporting the poor upon the backs of the taxpayers. Charity is something that comes from the heart and is something that Scripture admonishes us to do. But forced charity by garnishing our wages is sinful and tyrannical, and it is something that has no root in Constitutional principles.

One of the primary reasons the original colonists fled to America was because of religious persecution. They sought a land where they would be free to practice their beliefs without interference.

That is the reason our founders felt it so important to include the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment clearly states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…”

In his Commentaries on the Constitution, Joseph Story is quoted as saying, “It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. The future experience of Christendom, and chiefly of the American states, must settle this problem, as yet new in the history of the world, abundant, as it has been, in experiments in the theory of government.”

Fisher Ames, who is credited with being the author of the Second Amendment, once stated, “Should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a schoolbook? Its morals are pure, its examples are captivating and noble….”

John Quincy Adams, our nations sixth President, once said, “The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.”

Why then have we remained silent while the courts have taken it upon themselves to deprive us of our right to freely practice our belief? A small, but vocal minority, who claim that religious practices in public places offend them, has given our courts the incentive to restrict our right to freely practice our religious beliefs.

Yet, didn’t Thomas Jefferson once say, “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are only injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

Do you begin to see a pattern here? Our government has steadily ignored the advice given by our founders, and one wonders why our country is in such a sad state of affairs. Unfortunately, I am not done.

Thomas Jefferson once told us that, “If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.”

Under President Obama, we now have a Food Czar whose job is to ensure the safety and quality of our food supply. Yet where in the Constitution does it allow the government to control the food supply?

Where in the Constitution does it authorize the massive Food and Drug Administration, which as news stories recently have shown isn’t doing such a bang up job on protecting us from foreign bought food items?

In 2003 the Senate introduced S 722 which would have placed severe restrictions, often making it a criminal offense to take dietary supplements. Now we are facing the Food Safety Enhancement Act, House Resolution 2749, which will require that every entity, whether it be a business, a church organization, or a home gardener to register with a new federal food bureau.

We already have to get permission from our government to go fishing or hunting for the bounty that God has provided us. Now we are going to have to register with the government if we want to grow our own tomatoes?

What did Jefferson say, our bodies will “…soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny?”

This list of government abuses of power is endless. We have government bailing our financial organizations and the automotive industry. Currently we have a billion dollar program where the government will give you up to $4500 for your used car if you buy a new car.

Senator Carter Glass, author of the Banking Act of 1933, once said, “Is there any reason why the American people should be taxed to guarantee the debts of banks, any more than they should be taxed to guarantee the debts of other institutions, including merchants, the industries, and the mills of the country?” I wonder what Carter Glass would be saying if he were alive today?

Our government is broke people, where do you think they are getting the money to do this? From the Federal Reserve, whose printing presses are running non stop to keep our economy artificially afloat.

It is true, our nation’s economy is a disaster, and it is only going to get worse. But our government’s meddling in the affairs of private industry is only going to postpone, and most likely increase the suffering when our economy does come crashing down around us.

James Madison made a speech on the floor of Congress in 1789, in which he stated, “I own myself the friend to a very free system of commerce, and hold it as a truth, that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and impolitic — it is also a truth, that if industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out.”

I know, people are going to read this and say, ‘But I didn’t hear all this on the news, so it can’t be true.’

Let me tell you why you haven’t been told all this. From the Congressional Record Volume 54, dated February 9, 1917 page 2947 I quote Representative Oscar Calloway, “In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States.

“These 12 men worked the problem out by selecting 170 newspapers, and then began, by an elimination process, to retain only those necessary for the purpose of controlling the general policy of the daily press throughout the country. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest newspapers. The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interest of the purchasers.”

The news media are mere puppets, bought and paid for by the business interests and will not report on any issue that is contrary to the interests of their owners. This includes all the major networks, FOX, CNN, and MSNBC. If you think you are getting the truth, or even partially informed, if you watch the news, you are mistaken.

As an example, if the media were truly doing their job of informing the public, why all the fuss about Michael Jackson, when a 1018 page Universal Health Care Bill is making its way through Congress, and the news has not reported on one provision of this bill?

Our government has stopped caring about what we want a long time ago. Didn’t Bill Clinton say, in 1993, “We Can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans?” Didn’t George W. Bush say, “I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well?”

The executive has no power other than to command the military in times of war, to make treaties, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to nominate people to certain positions within our government, to grant pardons, and to veto legislation if he finds it unconstitutional.

What other powers could George W. Bush have been talking about? All the powers of the president are clearly defined in the Constitution and need no help from him to preserve and protect them.

Under the pseudonym Candidus an article appeared in the Boston Gazette on January 20 1772. In that article we find the following, “[I]f the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them.”

In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton clearly states, “No legislative act contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy (agent) is greater than his principal; that the servant is above the master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people; that men, acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”

Each of these examples I have given you have been designed to reduce us to slaves. Thomas Jefferson stated just that when he said, “Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (administrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.”

John Adams once warned us that, “…a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

That is why I entitled this article Stop the Train, I Want Off. This country is sinking, and doing so fast. I love the land, and I love what it once stood for. Now I am sickened by what I see my government doing, and when I see my fellow countrymen sitting back and voting the treasonous bastards responsible back into office.

I guess Walter Lippmann was right when he said, “Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort which it brings.”

This train is going someplace dark and dreary, someplace I don’t want to go. So, you can stop it anytime and let me off. I will watch in the distance as it plunges off a cliff. You can either stay on board, and lose what remains of your liberty, or you can open your eyes to what is happening and join me. I would rather die on my own a free man, than at the hands of my government a slave.

Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders and says “OH SHIT!!…. HE’S AWAKE!!”

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?“

~ The Author ~
Neal Ross can be reached for comments at bonsai@syix.com. Visit Neal’s Blog at http://www.zombie-slayer.com/neal