Of, By and For the People – Chapter 11: Debt, and Manifest Destiny

Debt, and Manifest Destiny.

Greetings my fellow Americans!

We’re nearing the end of our journey through the Principles of Liberty from The 5000-Year Leap.  Like in a blueprint for a building, components with diverse individual purposes must be weaved into a single plan to support a coherent and cohesive whole.  Such are the themes of these last two principles, which we will take separately, then bring together at the end of this paper.

 

 

Debt

27. The burden of debt is as destructive to freedom as subjugation by conquest.

We are $28,612,718,679,841 (trillion) in debt as of the day of this writing.  We were $1,000,000,000,000 in debt around the time the book was published (1981).  We were about $400,000,000,000 in debt in 1970, and about $42,000,000,000 in 1940.  From 1865 to 1890 our national debt actually decreased from $2.6 billion to $1.5 billion, and though it spiked from $3B to $25B from 1915 to 1920, it decreased again to $16B by 1930. The last downslope occurred between 1945 and 1950, when it decreased about $1B.  It has risen some $28,360,000,000,000 since 1950, and most of that in the last 40 years.

It’s very easy to get lost in numbers that intellectually incomprehensible and pragmatically unobservable, so rather than focus on those let’s reflect on how much has changed in the past 40 years, during which most of us were probably already alive.  True, we were already $1T in the red by 1981, and as refreshing a change as President Ronald Reagan was when he assumed that office that year, we were 180% farther in debt ($2.8T) soon after he left in 1989.  We are now 1000% above that 32 years later.

What’s the point of reflecting on any of this?  Even though we have carried some debt since our founding, through 1950 we strove as a nation to reduce that debt whenever possible (we were down to $33,733 in 1835).  Today we hear virtually no one in public office even talking about reducing spending as a plank of their campaigns or service, as our debt spirals beyond the stratosphere of human comprehension into the great beyond.  How much of this exponential increase in financial obligation is but a reflection of the cultural disease which has caused us to drift farther away from our national Constitution and the original American ideal?

Suffice it to say our Founders considered debt to be evil, and excessive amounts to be tantamount to slavery.  And being the virtuosos in human nature and history that they were, and seeing what was already happening in Europe during their time, they knew that once we collectively succumbed to the addiction of living beyond our means (aka, splurge spending) it would be nearly impossible to reverse course.  We hate that we are this far in debt, that our cost of living and taxes continue to rise while that those in power keep handing out more and more money, yet protest violently whenever personally affected by any government budget cuts.  Even proposing the latter has become political suicide.

The message from our Founders is simple:  true and lasting freedom and liberty are inversely proportional to financial debt.  When we reviewed the principle of Family, we highlighted the importance of self-discipline to limited government.  Like a recovering drug addict, we must endure short-term pain if we are going to break out of this death spiral of debt.

Let us transition now to the last of the 28 Principles of Liberty:

Manifest Destiny

28. The United States has a manifest destiny to be an example and a blessing to the entire human race.

Such was the Founders’ sense of mission, and their clearness of purpose and concentration of strength through their faith in God, that propelled them to wanting to lead the world by example into a discourse of individual liberty and unalienable rights endowed by a Creator.  This leading by example was also to be clearly distinguishable from those who would seek to conquer and rule over others.  So convinced were they, that what they had put forth as a framework for a higher order of civilization exhibited the utmost respect for both Natural and Divine Law, that the majority human race would naturally gravitate toward it, and America would be a model which most would want to willingly and graciously follow without any force or coercion.

Not only would adoption of the American philosophy be natural and desirable for the betterment of the entire world, but failure to uphold it and/or outright abandon it within our own borders was also to be considered “treason against the hopes of the world,” according to Founder and President John Adams.

Most, if not all, of our Presidents have carried the water of this benevolent message of manifest destiny, at least in formal speeches and addresses to the nation and the world; what has been done in practice, especially in much of the last 100 years, may be more difficult to reconcile with the vision of our Founders.  Like our exponential accumulation of national debt, we have allowed ourselves to deviate from, and outright reject, that vision with our national public policy.  We must re-institute self-discipline, both individually and collectively, as a virtue if the America of our Founders is to survive.

I will wrap up this series with an Epilogue next time,

that includes a summation of all 28 Principles of our founding, and thoughts on how best we can take back our responsibility for preserving, renewing and spreading America as still the best hope for global civilization ever devised by human hands.

OF, BY, and FOR THE PEOPL

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