The Last Revolution

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies....If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."


Thomas Jefferson wrote this in 1802. Now, 206 years later, we've hit rock bottom. Our financial markets are a mess, our currency, if used in England or Europe is a joke, our trade deficit continues to grow (this means we make less stuff to export and have to import more stuff to buy),our politicians lie like snake oil salesmen, we've mortgaged our energy future by relying on foreign oil, we tax everything yet we're 11 trillion dollars in debt (The nation's real tab, on the other hand, amounted to $53 trillion as of the end of the last fiscal year. That was the sum of our public debt; accrued civilian and military retirement benefits; unfunded, promised Social Security and Medicare benefits; and other financial obligations -- all according to the government's most recent financial statement of September 30, 2007), and we are fighting a war with the same weapons we had in Vietnam...with likely the same end result.

The revolutionary war that was fought from 1775 to 1783 gave the people of this continent freedom and less government. Our forbears were tired of England's heavy-handed rule. Quite simply, King George was an ass.

I'm not going to recite the entire Declaration of Independence right now but here are a few phrases that should raise your eyebrows and at least get you thinking about the political process. History ALWAYS repeats itself.

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 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. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

There are some powerful words in this document.... dissolve political bands, government becomes destructive...right of the people to alter or abolish it...train of abuses...

Our government has failed. It's broken. There is no joy in this for me to recite. Our elected leaders should be ashamed of themselves. Over the years, we have created so much government that it is choking the free market economy. We've nationalized banking and insurance in the past week, and are on our way to doing the same thing to the automakers, and the airlines.

We need a new bubble.

Or a revolution.