The Way Things Are

The election... honestly, I'm sick of it. I'm tired of all the bickering, backstabbing, finger-pointing, and mucking up. Be grown ups! Is that too much to ask? Perhaps it is.

I was getting my coffee this morning, and I noticed the front cover of the Economist: Capitalism at Bay
Below the words there is a photograph of an ancient statue - a lion with three arrows piercing his body. He is falling, and he is going to die.
History does have a way of repeating itself, I wish to God that it wasn't true. Our country is far from perfect, but I love it so much, it hurts sometimes.

I've always had grandiose plans of what I'd like to do 20 years from now, when I harvest my money from the stock market. I've written my monthly checks to Vanguard with great anticipation, some I will spend on myself (no doubt, a ski-in-ski-out) but there were other dreams too, like better nutrition for starving children, scholarship funds, AIDs clinics in Africa.

The government has good intentions, it always begins that way. But if they tax me so heavily that I work for them, then they restrict my right to sew and reap my own money, they take my freedom to distribute my resources out of my own free will. Intellect, free-will, desire, the freedom to choose... that is what makes me human.

Capitalism is not faultless, and greed is rampant, but the thought of losing my freedom makes me ache. Have I taken for granted the freedom that I've always had? Absolutely yes. Will the nation that I was born in be the same one that I die in? Absolutely not.

I am going to be very careful what kind of "changes" I am supporting. Are they really the changes that I want? I'll be reading between the lines.

In the famous words of one of the best fictitious characters of all time:
"That's all I'm going to say about that."