October 5, 2007
by Clay Barham

This is what we are supposed to believe.  If Americans are free to do what we choose to do with our lives, even if no injuries come from our choices, Politicians tell us America will suffer.  When we compare the Old World against our New World, we see where things are better in the New and worse in the Old.  Politicians, however, still suggest we return to an Old World style of management by them, as our betters, as it was and still is everywhere but America.  The future does not look better for individual freedom.

We built our world on freely working and trading with other Americans, encouraging individuals to follow their own interests, aspirations and dreams that make our lives better.  Compared to the Old World, it worked.  America showed the whole world that individual freedom works best.  It still does when compared to the miseries still existing in the Old World.  How much more do we have to show?  It is said we, as free men and women, choose badly, from ignorance, and must change our ways.  Someone more advanced must make all our choices instead.

For example, we have cars, boats, trains and planes moving people and cargo around quickly. New, laborsaving products are delivered quickly to our local stores and our doors. We have an agricultural and food processing miracle in America when compared to centuries past, when so many starved.  We made great strides with our discoveries and innovations.  We use the internal combustion engine for power and derive needed energy to keep on living better with electricity.  Politicians tell us the good life costs too much, however.

Much of our energy to move around and live better comes from using fossil fuels, which experts tell us is harmful to our world.  They say the use of fossil fuels, which propels our growth, cause unwelcome global climate changes.  Measuring stations placed near heat-producing equipment, asphalt pavement and concrete structures, which produce abnormally high heat, prove the earth is warming.  They say carbon dioxide emissions are the culprit, a thin source of heat blanket for the earth when compared to moisture.  They blame our free choices instead of the earth's ordinary cycles of weather, and they expect us to follow their dictates.  Their dictates have always made things worse.  They believe we are consuming too much, are too prosperous, unequal in what we own and use.  They want us all to stop and get off the prosperity train, give away what we have and get on the poverty train with everyone else.

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Political and bureaucratic choices suit the demands of a few.  For example, they choose fuel substitutes, like ethanol, produced from altering previous agricultural choices and allocations that proved best for everyone. They pay the farmers to change plans and dislocate production.  They want more ground devoted to corn, an acre of which produces only an equivalent of two 42-gallon barrels of oil.  Looking at the millions of barrels of oil we need, all our farmland will be devoted to fuel production instead of food. Oil shale, coal and oil deposits existing within our own borders are disregarded.  Those resources produce a lower-priced, better quality fuel, in spite of the emissions they claim are bad.

When bureaucrats make choices, everything they decide creates ripples affecting so many other areas of our economy and people, and not for the better.  Ignorant politicians and bureaucrats, serving their narrow special interests, are like cockroaches.  They simply mess things up, raising costs, shortages and misery.  Then, the solution suggested to cure the disruptions and dislocations they cause, is more of the same.  Americans are slipping back to the ways things were in the Old World.  If we are going to let the Post Office mentality erase the Free Market, we can kiss good-bye all the great benefits of liberty we have enjoyed so far.  Politicians and bureaucrats have proven many times they are not up to the job, though they will never admit it.

The campaigns of 2007-2008 focus on the political "experts" getting more involved with operating our nation.  They are asking us to vote for them so they can take over, manage our economy, taking it out of the hands of free people who have proven they know best.  The politicians are trying to convince those who have no say, other than by what they buy, to take economic decision-making away from people in the Free Market and give it to them.  They pledge to correct the imbalances and level the playing field, which simply means destroying what has made America so great.

They say it is justice!  They want to dispense justice as they define it.  Their justice means injustice to those who create, innovate, invent and build elements of a free system of life that have proven to be of service for all people.  The pride, envy and anger of those who do not create, innovate, invent and build are offended, and justice to them means punishment of those who do.  That is what we are being asked to vote for in 2008, which, if successful, will turn the future course of America back to the Old World.

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Clay Barham [send him email] has been a candidate for the California legislature and a stand-in talk show host for ABC.  He was educated in physical and behavioral sciences, with a Ph.D. in sociology.  He is the author of five books, with his latest being Foundations of Modern American Conservatism and Liberalism: The Roots of Freedom and Tyranny.  Visit his website at http://www.claysamerica.com.