Cease-fire to class warfare

By Jim Killebrew

[January 21, 2014]  Class warfare and class envy, what a tried and true tool of some who would pit Americans against each other based on their economic situations. One opinion article in our little town's paper one Saturday was entitled "Here's how to tell the middle class from the upper crust" and was an article that castigated the so-called wealthy as people who are too snobbish to care what happens to middle-class Americans. By the third column of the article, the political motives of the writer became obvious with the question, "Why would any middle-class family support Republicans?"

Whether middle class or wealthy, or any political persuasion offered in America, we should look at the trends in America during this current time and answer an important question. I guess the thing I don't understand is how does it profit any politician, or the people who surround them, the unions and millions of dependent people who keep voting for dependency if the country becomes so shattered by bankruptcy and continued debt? I understand that more federal agencies will be created and more bureaucracy will be needed to keep things going for awhile. But there is always a day of reckoning when the debt becomes due.

But what is the use of having any power over a country that is broken, with a destroyed military, fractured social system and very few rich to foot the bill? I understand the theory and the implementation that started in the Depression of the 1930s, but eventually the rich will be poor. All the money available will be redistributed and will run out. Stronger nations, China, India, Middle East will be able to overtake the country with little or no force. If there are 50 or 60 percent dependent on some facet of government welfare or a substantial variety of government programs, it is for sure they will not fight to hold on to anything; they will not know how nor will they have the will to do so. The richest of the rich will have moved themselves and their operations out to another country long before the collapse, so what will the extreme left gain by destroying the American way of life, unless it is just the sheer satisfaction of destroying it because they take pleasure in doing so.

My mother used to say about some people who tended to destroy themselves in the process of trying to hurt others was like "cutting off your nose to spite your face." It is like feeling sorry for the Menendez brothers because they are orphans.

If a liberal person aligns himself with the current values of liberalism, he would say he wanted higher taxes, bigger government, more public officials and employees, more agencies with millions more public employees, larger, stronger unions, punishment for people who have money and social changes paid for by the government. Now if that liberal person was the one who had the money for the government to tax, take and redistribute, and the same liberal "wealthy" person looked at the current debt, along with a long recession and unemployment as it is currently, I would hope that he would wonder what was going to happen when his money was gone. As well as wonder about the state of his life when the unions have shut down his business, all the Social Security is gone, Medicare is gone and the Chinese military is marching over the hill.

He might say, "What was in it for me?" What was in it for any of us, except failure. It matters not if we are rich or middle class, when a democratic form of government begins to feed upon itself and demand from those who have worked and produced the fruits of their production, and through some governmental confiscatory manner robs them of their means to give to others, the days of that democratic nation are numbered.

Perhaps instead of blaming the rich, or the Republicans for that matter, why don't we look at these problems in a logical, rational way? Is there any rational, prudent person who believes that we can continue spending money we don't have and not have dire consequences? Is there anyone who really believes that we can continue to tax to a point where it makes no sense to produce anything? Is there anyone who rationally believes we can continue to borrow money from China and others to continue deficit spending all the way to the destruction of the U.S. dollar on the world market? Is there anyone who rationally believes we can continue to import 70 percent of our energy from other countries as we embargo the development of our own resources that would make us energy-independent?

A reasonably prudent person would say this is outlandish. Blasting the wealthy may feel good to some for now, but someday they will be gone. To whom, then, will we turn to blast?

[By JIM KILLEBREW]