By Randy Rossi -
The Wall Street Journal just published a great Op Ed from Daniel Henninger titled “Killing the American Dream” which explains how Democrats are doing exactly that which is a tragedy. America became the most prosperous and powerful nation in the world because of a belief that any American can live the American Dream no matter who they are or where they are from if they work hard and live good moral lives. That doesn’t mean it is easy, but it is achievable. As the son of a legal Italian immigrant who was raised in a converted two car garage when I was a young kid, I lived that American Dream and retired as a group president of two manufacturing companies. Even though I was called a “Wop”, “Dago”, and “Papist” at different points in my life, I was taught that if I worked hard and lived a good life anything was possible. And it was true. The key to success was hard work ethics and self-dependence and it was a common theme across America as I was growing up. And we were taught that America was the greatest country on earth that brought freedom to over a billion people in WWI, WWII, and the Cold War. We were raised as proud Americans who believed that anything was possible.
Sadly, that American Dream is under serious threat for the same reasons that all democracies over the last 2,400 years have eventually failed (America is the oldest continuous democracy on earth at just 238 years old!). Edward Gibbons the author of the famous book “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” said it best in 1776 when he first published his book. He said that “The insidious poison of free bread and circuses” is what destroyed Rome. What he meant by that is the Roman emperors and politicians started literally giving the Roman citizens free bread, free olive oil, and free gladiator games at the coliseum to buy their votes and it worked. Rome was famous for the hard work and bravery of its citizens for hundreds of years which made it the powerhouse of the Western World. Sadly “free bread and circuses” destroyed that work ethic and bravery and Roman citizens stopped working and joining the military. As a result, Rome had to bring foreign “barbarians” into the country to do the work and join the military because Roman citizens didn’t want to do so anymore because free government stuff destroyed their work ethics. Finally the “barbarians” decided to conquer Rome since they were doing all the work and the great Roman Empire fell into chaos and poverty for hundreds of years.
Today Democrats are doing the same thing to Americans that the Roman emperors and politicians did to Romans. They are throwing mountains of free stuff at Americans to buy their votes. Democrat President Biden and his liberal team are pushing “cradle to grave” free stuff to Americans to get their votes. Dems want to add trillions of dollars of debt to give away free healthcare, free child care, free college, free unemployment benefits that exceed some job incomes, and on and on to buy votes and power. If everybody gets this free stuff, why work for a living? This will kill the great American work ethic that made America the most powerful and prosperous nation on earth, just like it destroyed the Roman Empire if we let it. On top of that, instead of teaching our kids that America is the greatest nation on earth, many of our liberal schools are teaching the “1619 Project” which spews the dishonest lie that America was built on slavery. Never mind that every continent on earth practiced slavery (except Antarctica) for thousands of years while the USA practiced slavery for just 82 years since it was formed in 1783 and ended slavery in 1865 through the Civil War in which 650,000 Americans died and 1.2 million were wounded to free the slaves and make them citizens with the right to vote.
Sadly, if the American people are naive and ignorant enough to give up their freedom for free stuff, the greatest nation in history is toast based on history. Alexander Tytler who also studied the global history of democracy at the time of our Founding Fathers summed up why all democracies fail with his “Tytler Cycle”. In it he says “bondage leads to faith, faith leads to courage, courage leads to liberty (democracy), liberty leads to abundance, abundance leads to selfishness, selfishness leads to complacency, complacency leads to apathy, apathy leads to dependence (on the government!), and that leads back to bondage. It is a repetitive cycle in history. It happened to Rome and most recently it destroyed the 5th most prosperous nation in the world, Venezuela in which the average Venezuelan has lost 22 pounds in the last two years because they can’t afford food because they made themselves dependent on a socialist government. The Chinese people did the same thing as over 40 million Chinese people starved to death and were killed under communist Mao who controlled every aspect of life in China.
In case all this is too complex, let’s summarize what’s at stake using Thomas Jefferson’s brilliance from over 250 years ago when he said “Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those that are not”. Or take the wisdom of John Adams who said after reading 14,000 books on the history of democracy “There hasn’t been a democracy yet that hasn’t committed suicide”. Giving the government total control over your life is suicide! Americans still have a chance to save their freedom if they speak up loudly now against this Democrat control over our lives through “free stuff” and then vote wisely in 2022. China is watching very carefully to see if Americans have the wisdom and strength to control their own lives by working hard and living moral lives. If they don’t, China will take over the world economy after the Democrats destroy America’s work ethic and prosperity.d
