RIP, Republic of These United States

By Tom Rhodes, 11/17/2012

A New Hampshire buddy of mine constantly refers to people who moved from Massachusetts to New Hampshire as “MassHoles.” Hating how they left Massachusetts because of the taxes, but then vote to install the same failed programs in New Hampshire. Their motto “Live Free or Die” no longer represents the sentiments of the people of New Hampshire. To pay for all these government “services” New Hampshire has had to raise its taxes to absurd levels. His property taxes have gone from a few hundred dollars a year to nearly $10,000 and because of it he’s had to put it up for sale, and is thus now a Florida Resident.

In Florida we have a saying, “We Don’t Care How You Did It In New York!” That phrase has been augmented with, “Just because you messed up your way of life up north, doesn’t give you the right to move down here and mess up ours.” And “If you don’t like the way things are here, go back to where you came from.” I often lament people moving from up north, to get away from oppressive liberal governments, they cry for the very big state government that chased them out of their state. Michigan is a prime example, now a ghost of what it was, but the people who moved from there, wanted more government than Florida traditionally had, and voted for it. Now unless you’re homesteaded and in the same house for decades, Florida Property taxes looks like Yankee property taxes.

This phenomenon is remarkably consistent. Just ask the natives of Colorado Springs what the influx of Californians has done to their state. People who prefer big government in their place of origin will continue to prefer big government at the place they move. We see it all over the USA.

Now this is not just a local US phenomenon. People who come from places with big government, and who like big government services are going to act like people. They will think short term and in concrete terms, but not look in depth at the causes. People leave an area because of oppressive taxes, bad business environment, more jobs else ware, etc. They don’t relate the massive amounts of services provided by the government that they loved with the reasons why they left. What people want is a regions wealth generously distributed by a benign and caring big government, they fail to realize the very wealth they want to a piece of, was created by people keeping more of what they earned a small government with limited services and powers that takes less of what people earn.

This contradiction is generally invisible, just as many people fail to save when they are young and fail to be prepared for old age. Back to Aesop’s Fable, The Ant and the Grasshopper. We’ve always had Grasshoppers in the USA who failed to make wise life decisions. Lucky we’ve generally had many more Ants, and the Grasshoppers haven’t been plentiful enough to eat all the resources. We can see what happens in the USA when the Ants move and the Grasshoppers are left to run things; Detroit. Once Detroit was the crown jewel of industrialized society, now a city in ruins that cannot support itself.

What makes us think that we can allow the influx of massive numbers of people from other countries and maintain our original paradigm for government? Just like MassHoles changed New Hampshire, and Yankees have so changed Florida it’s not considered “southern” anymore. We cannot absorb massive numbers of people from other cultures and maintain our culture. The demographics or our country have changed. The values of the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence, and wrote our Constitution, are no longer the values of the USA. Davy Crocket’s, “Not Your’s to Give” is a story/speech to which a majority of our country can no longer relate.

America as it was is dead. Not a pessimistic observation, just reality, now we need to learn to deal with it.