BY RUSSELL TURNER
WE ARE NOT THE FIRST
We Americans are a proud people and sometimes we can also be a little arrogant. Many of our fellow citizens believe that we are the first nation in history to be founded upon liberty and freedom; while that is a good thought, it is not completely true. When in school the subject of history is one of the most important subjects that we have, but for the most part history shows that we humans never learn from history. Throughout the 5,000-year record of civilization, Italy was the world’s dominant superpower not once, but twice.
The first great civilization was ancient Rome, an empire that grew from humble beginnings to rank among the greatest ever known. Even while they were ascending to power the former great civilization Greece was in terminal decline. The second time Italy was the world’s dominant superpower was during the very early Renaissance period, more than eight centuries ago in the northern city-states-- Venice, Florence. While the rest of Europe was in a plague-infested Dark Age, Italy was thriving, prosperous, and free. It reminds me of the state of the world today, here in America we are living in luxury compared too much of the rest of the world. If we have the ability to learn anything from history, all of the past empires eventually screwed up their system and became just a footnote in history.
The Roman Empire vastly overspent its finances, debased its currency, and overextended its military. The Venetians imposed countless regulations that made it extremely difficult for individuals to engage in commerce and for businesses to succeed. It is a simple fact, when a nation departs from its founding core principles they are destined for failure. Do the actions of the Romans and the Venetians sound familiar to what is happening in America today?
America has spent and spent until we have a national debt of over 20 trillion dollars and that is not even figuring in the unfunded mandates. It might surprise most people to know that the US government now spends far more money just on the military, interest on the debt, and Medicare/Social Security than they collect in tax revenue. If our government stopped spending any money on all other government functions other than those listed it would still be spending more than it collects in taxes. The founders of this nation never intended for the accumulation of debt to be a normal thing in government. The only time they supported debt was in the case of a natural disaster or funding for a war. Last year our government posted a one trillion dollar deficit even though we were not fighting a major war, fighting a financial crisis, or bailing out the banking system. If we don’t get our act together in a short period of time future generations will talk about how the Americans were just another country who screwed their system up.
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