Wild Pigs

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have"

Thomas Jefferson

It’s common internet practice for people to send assorted pictures, cute sayings, religious tracts, and very often political commentary, to a large number of relatives and acquaintances. (The internet is much cheaper than the US Postal Service if you’re into bulk mailing.) With that, I recently received an interesting note that I thought I’d share, slightly edited. I don’t know where this originated, and it has been around for a while, but I do like the author’s style.

Catching Wild Pigs

A professor at a large college had some foreign exchange students in the class. While having a background discussion with one of the students, the student looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, 'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?'

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. 'You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. While we continually lose our freedoms -- just a little at a time.

A democracy will falter, and finally fail, starting when the citizens find they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. It might be added that this same process occurs when politicians find that they could legally “buy” votes with ever expanding social giveaway programs, instead of illegally with a five dollar bill and a pint of cheap whisky. With that, nearly every student of American history is well aware that our political system has long been the abode of shady practices, dating clear back to the days of George Washington. Surprisingly enough our republic was strong enough to survive such wheeling and dealing for nearly a hundred and fifty years. Then, with the great depression of 1929 and FDR’s “New Deal” bailout socialism of 1933, the United States began a long and painful slide into histories trash heap. As originally envisioned, FDR’s social security program was a good idea, and badly needed at the time. Since then however, social security has turned into a typical federal boondoggle and little more than another source of funds for federal spending. Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 Medicare program was another good idea (as much as I hate to give Johnson credit for anything), that was badly needed, and has since turned into nothing more than a bureaucratic means of channeling ever increasing federal funds to the medical industry. Nearly every other “social” program instituted by the government has failed, often disastrously. Henry Morgenthau, FDR's Secretary of the Treasury, exploded at the failed New Deal programs. "We have tried spending money," Morgenthau noted. "We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. . . . We have never made good on our promises. . . . and have an enormous debt to boot!"

Back during the Clinton era, the left decided they should help all the “poor folk” live the American dream, and own their own home, which wasn’t a bad idea either, IF those “poor folks” had jobs that paid more than minimum wages, and had a bit of job security as well. The White House applied a bit of political pressure, and the banking industry was making home loans to a lot of people that they’d normally not touch with a ten-foot pole! In the view of the liberal left this brought about prosperity, as people were “spending money”. Borrowed money perhaps, but they were spending, and the real estate market was booming with artificially inflated prices. ‘Course when those loans came due… There's been a lot of economic manipulation over the last decade or so, with political pressure on banks to lend where they really shouldn't have, adjusting the interest rate to stimulate or slow the economy, all depending on the whims of the White House, Treasury Department, and of course the Federal Reserve. The biggest question to today’s liberals is, how do we get people spending again? After all, that's what creates strength in an economy, the rate at which they spend. Nor does it matter I guess, if it’s John Q. Citizen doing the spending, or the federal government! Who cares that the bills are slowly piling up, and are going to have to be paid someday, by somebody. We should always remember that there is no such thing as a free lunch!

For the most part I’m opposed to these bailout and stimulus bills proposed by the White House, and so readily accepted by Congress. Certainly I realize that our nation is in deep economic doo-doo, and a return to prosperity will be a long and difficult project. I’d also think that President Obama and our elected representatives are trying to do the best they can under the circumstances. It’s not their fault they were severely shortchanged in the “original thinking” department! Now, to solve our current economic problems, (for lack of any better ideas I guess), the Obama White House and congressional democrats are planning a “New New Deal”, based in large part on the failed socialist policies of the FDR era. As history has demonstrated, the centralized control that President Bush began and President Obama plans to continue isn't going to work. Although it may increase the control of government over people's lives… it will fail to restore America’s economy. Historically we have every reason to that if we get a New New Deal, then universal health care, federal bailouts, and jobs stimulus programs will be quite costly, highly politicized, and will inevitably fail.

So, today the fences are up, the corn is being scattered, and our government stands ready to slam the gate. Your choice…