With Venezuelan Food Shortages, Some Blame Price Controls

If you want to see a modern day example of why Obama’s policies and us against them politics won’t work, please read this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/world/americas/venezuela-faces-shortages-in-grocery-staples.html

What has happened to the “Grand Experiment”?

"Our nation was founded as an experiment in human liberty. Its institutions reflect the belief of our founders that men had their origin and destiny in God"

- John Foster Dulles

The United States of America has traditionally been called "The Grand Experiment". It is the first country that was formed "by the people, for the people". Its foundation is one of a democratic republic and of liberty.

The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, gave the people power as the rulers of the government, instead of as is traditional, where governments rule the people. The founding fathers warned over and over that this form of government would always be under attack, that it would be subject to change if the people were not vigilant. The more people rely on the government the more they flirt with the loss of this grand experiment.

Unfortunately, the last hundred years or so have been a slow, deliberate march towards the very powerful, very centralized government our founders feared the most. A march that has led us away from their dreams, beliefs, and convictions, to the over regulated, controlled society we now live in. We have gone from the marvel of the world to just another big government democracy. We no longer even truly function as a republic. To get here we have had to ignore and override much of what our Constitution and Bill of Rights stands for.

The Federal Government and its bureaucracy now has its fingers in every aspect of our lives. There is nothing we can do in this country, nowhere we can go, that our lives are not regulated by the government. From the water we drink, to what we wear, what we drive, what we eat, what type of light bulbs we can use, what we can and can't do with the land we own, on and on. Even our thoughts are beginning to be regulated through hate crime laws and such. The Federal Government has its fingers everywhere.

The question I have is where do we go from here? Do we give up? Just accept what now seems inevitable? Or do we begin to fight back? Do we use the same, thought out, purposeful strategy that has been used against us? Is it even possible to slowly but surely return the United States to its roots? Or have we truly already lost? I believe we can still take this country back, but it is going to take a lot more than winning one election. It is going to take educated, informed decisions, a purposeful strategy, people who understand the stakes and are willing to act. It is also going to take time.

To start, we need a President, Senate and House who are willing to discuss and tackle the challenges facing our country. Leaders, who will stop playing politics, catering to special interest groups, and putting their own power and careers ahead of the country, who understand their Constitutional roles and responsibilities. Senators and Congressmen in our country were intended to be citizen legislators. They were supposed to go home and spend a good part of the year with their constituents so that they were in touch with what is going on in the various areas of the country. What they have become, in effect, is a ruling class, sitting above the lives of the "common folk". Content to make rules, laws, and regulations that both keep them in power and subjugate those whose rights and liberties they are supposed to protect.

These same lawmakers have also created huge government bureaucracies, bureaucracies that have broad powers to regulate and control our society. These bureaucracies have a life of their own; they expand and intrude on our lives without legislation or citizen oversight. Much of this is done under the guise of "protecting us", but what they in fact do is rob us of our liberties and make us slaves of the government.

In addition, we need to begin addressing our judicial system and in particular the Supreme Court. It is critical that Supreme Court Justices be appointed who will put aside the "legal precedents" and judicial activism that has occurred over the past one hundred years or more. They need to begin returning our country to our real constitutional roots. We need justices who will give back to individuals and to the States the power invested in them by our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and by our founders.

On top of all this, and integrally related to it, is our national debt. America's debt is greater than that of the entire Eurozone's (and U.K.'s) combined. In just the last 39 months, under Barack Obama, the federal government's debt has increased by over five trillion dollars! It is a disaster looming on the horizon that will cripple our nation if we do not make significant changes now. Yet for the most part, our career politicians in Washington are playing political games with it, they are refusing to even begin dealing with the issue. When some legislators are willing to sound the alarm, are willing to step forward and say this has to change, they are lied about, ridiculed, called uncaring, radical, and rigid. We need to get this government under control. We need to stop playing political games and one-upmanship. We need leaders who are willing to get our finances in order.

So where do we really begin? Because I am not interested in another pretty face or witty line, I am not interested in politicians who show up on late night TV shows as if they were Hollywood celebrities, I am not interested in special interests and pet projects, I am not interested in political games or "Super Pack" advertising, I am not interested in lies, exaggerations and caricatures, I am not interested in us against them, poor against rich, black against white, young against old. We are Americans and we are in very serious times. We need serious leaders. We need people, citizens, who understand America, citizens who are willing to lead, who will stand up and tell us the truth and then be willing to act.

All of this sounds over whelming, almost undoable, but there is one glimmer of hope; the American people. With all the changes that have taken place in our great nation there is one thing that has not changed; the power we have as citizens to change our government. If the people who are in power now cannot, or will not, change the direction of our government, than we the people of the United States need to change them.

Leveling the Playing Field

"Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.”

Alexis de Tocqueville

The danger of an ever more powerful centralized government, “leveling the playing field” and looking out for the “needs” of it citizens is that in the end while we are all “equal” we are also all slaves to that government.