Pioneer Spirit

It was not that long ago that people from all over the world uprooted their families, boarded crude ships, and sailed off to meet the unknown. The suffered through illness and rough seas, bad weather and a long voyage. They were going to America, the land of opportunity, a place where land could be bought, a place where there was no real-estate monopoly controlled by the nobility, a place where a person could make their own way in the world. And still more recently, the exact same phenomenon happened with a westward migration, families traded sailing ships for covered wagons and braved the unknown wilderness to make their own way in the world. In either case, when they arrived at their destination, it was not a town, or city, or established place. They built their own homes from nothing, they planted their own crops, raised their own animals, and not only did they survive, they thrived. I’m not a historical revisionist, there were problems, of course there were. Lack of medical personnel led to other wise preventable deaths from disease, drought, crop failures ... life was not ideal, things were not perfect, survival required hard work and sacrifice, but that is not the point. The point is that the spirit of this nation was founded by these people, “pioneer spirit” means seeking your own place in the world, relying upon yourself to make that place habitable, and in extreme cases, relying upon your neighbors or your church for minor assistance. You are descended from people who took chances, who relied upon themselves, who trusted in the provision of a loving God, who worked hard, who made necessary sacrifices, and who survived. Stop and think about it for a minute, think about the phenomenal determination and strength and sheer will required ... well, would you pack up your family and drag them off through the unknown to the possibility of a better opportunity? Brave the wilderness?
So ... what in the world happened?
What bizarre collection of circumstances could take an entire people group from an extreme rugged individualism to what we have today, let’s be honest with ourselves, the prevailing response to adversity is to look around and see “who is going to handle this for me”. The obvious question has to be how we got from one to the other, and how do we find our way back. We, as a nation, face the economic realities of the “nanny state” and the enviable end to the services that people have come to rely upon. (If you don’t believe this to be true, please do some global economic research ... and no, AARP and the Democratic Party are not sources for truth in this case)There are those who suggest that the journey from A to B is a grand design, a multigenerational conspiracy designed to turn the United States into the Soviet Union ... and I’m sorry, but that’s not what happened. There are and have been people who have that vision, and they surely have advocated for the nation to head that direction ... but there never have been enough of them to do anything alone. I maintain that the American people were dragged off of the frontier and into public housing through a series of short sighted decisions made by weak willed politicians hoping to bring home enough bacon to be reelected ... to then go back to the capital and have to spend their next term figuring out another way to bring home even more the next time, and on and on, right up to the edge of the financial precipice that we now find ourselves on.
Year after year, bill after bill, the government has added more and more to the list of things that they hand out and provide. You NEED them all, right? “What would people do without food stamps/ college loans/ medicaid/ medicare/ disability benefits/ subsidies/ tax credits/ WIC/ etc, etc, etc. They would all starve to death in the street.” I tried to get statistics of people dying in the street prior to the advent of social programs, but couldn’t find any. These programs allow people to disconnect from their neighbors, to stop going to church, be “independent”. They allow the American people to look to Washington DC to search to the answers to their problems instead of looking deep within themselves. Of course God had to disappear ...  Because without God there are no unalienable rights endowed to us by the Creator, there is no need to work hard, to be charitable, to help your neighbor. Government programs rob you of your liberty, of your true nature as a self reliant pioneer child of God, of the money that you could put to good charitable use, and your community of the ability to be proactive and responsible.
I’m quite sure that Social Security sounded pretty neat when they came up with it. It was simple, you pay into a trust fund your entire working life and then when you retire, you get your money back, right? Well ... no, but that is how it was proposed. In reality SSA pays out much, much more than it takes in, and then the question becomes, for how long? There is only one concrete answer ... not forever. And the rigidity of today’s weak willed politicians, their refusal to be the stewards of bad news, their concern with their own political futures, their insistence on letting the next guy deal with it, will make the transition from “nanny state” to forced individualism sudden, abrupt and it will most likely be accompanied by wide spread violence and chaos. You have been told not to worry about saving, that the SSA is going to take care of you, you have been told to buy a bigger and better house, and then a bigger and better one after that, you reinvest the equity, stay in debt, and you don’t actually own anything at all, and medicare has filled a void that the market would have filled. There is no such thing as lifetime health insurance, or retirement health insurance, every insurer assumes that they only have to deal with you until you’re old enough for a little of that “free” health care. The worrisome part in all of this is that you are not a jack of all trades, you have trained your entire life for a career that may fall woefully short of meeting your needs in the future. If it proved necessary could you build your own home, plant your own crops, raise your own animals? Are you so dependant on the modern life and the State that you cannot fend for yourself?
We do not have to wait for the United States to follow in Greece’s footsteps. We do not have to wait for forced austerity measures, we do not have to let the inevitable be a shock to our children. We can reclaim the “pioneer spirit” for ourselves, we can become the rugged individualists that live with in us. Instead of looking around for the State to step in and solve problems and come to the rescue, we can solve our own problems, we can save our own money, we can help our neighbors and family when they need it. I know everyone wants to get their benefits, but what you have to admit to yourself is that you do not NEED them. You are descendent of the great frontiersmen who tamed this land, who made this country great, the ability to look within , to depend on no one and to persevere lives within you. We can choose to make the government irrelevant, to shake them to their very core. If no one applied to receive food stamps and WIC, if no one lined up for unemployment benefits, if we turned to each other instead of Washington in our times of need, if we worked harder, if we sacrificed more ... we could right this ship, we could put the government out of business. It is within our power to choose liberty and it is within our power to restore the pioneer spirit of this great nation and these great people. Washington spends because the people clamor for more, because there is no end to the hands held out waiting for “assistance”, deprived of that it would all come to a halt. The government of a liberated, self reliant people would find little to do and even less to spend money on. We need to have insight into necessity in order to be a free people, look around and do what is required, make do with less, give more and do it cheerfully ... and when we have stood on our own two feet, when the pioneer decedents show that they are an independent and free people, then we can force Washington to change, to rescind the powers it has taken for itself, to return to protecting the life, liberty and property of it’s citizens and nothing more. We must earn the title “Free” and it is bought and paid for with sacrifice and determination. It lives within you.