Ship of state

By Jim Killebrew

[December 29, 2014]  There was once a small cargo ship that sailed across the ocean transporting goods from one country’s market to another’s market. The ship was in good shape since it had been built by a band of citizens who put their heart and soul into the construction. They worked hard and volunteered many hours to make the entire ship by hand. Those who had vision were inspired to design the ship to not only last throughout their own lifetimes, but to live on long after they were gone. The bonds the framers of the ship had with each other and with the markets they visited bringing their goods were strong bonds built on their own character and honor.

When the ship was launched there was much fanfare. In fact, there were those whose intentions were to destroy the ship even before it could be launched. But that small band of citizens who wanted to see the ship succeed worked even harder to make sure the ship was tightly built. In the heart of the ship they placed the very instructions that informed the Captain, officers and crew how to sail the ship on a course that would always be the safest and best for all concerned.

The first Captain, officers and crew were established and began to forge out the routes the ship would take. The Captain was wise with many years of experience and deep moral stability. He followed the ship’s instructions so that all in the ship would benefit from the economic growth the ship brought as it visited the markets of the world. For over two-hundred years the ship sailed the oceans and developed great wealth by servicing the markets it visited.
 

Then one day during an extremely lean number of years the crew members began to complain because they lost some of their resources during a “great depression” that spread throughout the world. Income became scarce and many of the crew became idle, without a job to complete. Many of the officers lost much of their resources as well. The officers and crew alike began to lose trust with the Captain, blaming him for their troubles.

A new Captain assumed duties and began to change some of the instructions located in the heart of the ship. The new Captain established a policy to collect resources from the officers who were believed to have more than others. From that new-found resource, the Captain began to establish programs to have the crew who were idle complete various jobs on the ship. This enabled them to be paid from a source of money that was controlled by the Captain and a few of his officers.

As time passed the number of crew members who were dependent on the pay from the Captain and a few officers increased. This caused the Captain to extract a greater amount of resources from the array of officers; but he added that policy to include those who were crew members as well. Meantime, the market around the world had grown to such an extent that other ships around the world were competing with the small cargo ship.

The resources of the ship increased and decreased as time passed. For many years, and participation in several wars, the ship found itself in yet another economic lean year. The crew had grown weary of the loss of resources and a new Captain emerged who promised the crew a new “hope and change” that he would initiate if they would follow him as Captain.

The new Captain wasted no time initiating policies that started significant change among the ship’s crew and officers. Many of the officers and crew had managed to store up some personal resources over the years through hard work and passing resources from generation to generation through the years. The new Captain viewed those resources and declared that they were unfairly obtained and offered a new idea that allowed him to confiscate those resources and redistribute them to the crew members whom he declared were the “rightful owners.”

The new Captain looked out among his officers and chose a few who would be loyal to him to be his personal “Czars” to answer to him alone. He took responsibilities from the other officers and matched those responsibilities to his personal Czars and they took control of much of the operation of the small ship. The Captain began to issue policies and “executive orders” from within his own power that resulted in higher and higher tribute being taken for his own use.

The crew had become embroiled in a struggle for existence just to maintain what little they had. The Captain, through his officers and Czars, issued a policy that created great sums of money to “bail out” the crew members who had been hit the hardest. But what resulted instead was a large store of money and resources that became his own resource to use as he took control of many of the production functions of the ship.

When the ship reached different ports around the world that were markets for the ship to carry goods, the Captain entered into agreements with the leaders of those markets to borrow more and more money. Finally, the treasury of the ship became overcome with debt to the other markets of the world. The debt was so great that the crew began to realize that it would take years into the future to even begin to pay off the debt. The crew learned that many future generations of their offspring would actually be born in debt and would likely never pay off the debt in their lifetimes.

When the crew finally saw the futility of the changes that had been promised by the new Captain, they began to organize into protest groups to take their grievances to the Captain. Unfortunately, by the time the crew realized what had happened, the Captain and his Czars, along with some of the more wealthy officers, had destroyed the operating instructions that had been placed in the heart of the ship and replaced them with new executive orders and Captain’s policies.
 

The crew turned to the officers for help. The officers, however, had become so accustomed to being supported by the Captain and his Czars that they had become dependent for their livelihood and were unable to free themselves from that dependency.

Then one day, many years after becoming Captain, and remaining in that position by edict, the Captain left the ship and moved to a different part of the world. The markers of debt from several ports had been called and the crew had little resource to pay. Because of the years of dependency, debt, loss of freedoms, and the loss of the instructions from the heart of the ship, the crew and the ship were taken by force from the largest port who had loaned the ship’s Captain the most money.

The little ship now is dry-docked just off the South China Sea where the crew and their families have become slaves of the War Lords who have made them totally dependent with only a level of sustenance that barely keeps them living.

That little ship known as "The Ship of America" was transformed from freedom for all to dependency for all as it moved over a period of time to a socialist form of government. The instruction template placed in the heart of the ship was known as the "Constitution."

[By JIM KILLEBREW]