American Ideal

 I am an American. Through and through I identify as an American over anything else. Sure, I am a human, on Earth, white, male, middle class, a teacher, a tradesmen, an engineer, a Navy Veteran, a father, a husband, and many other things.  I feel that my identify as an American does not conflict with any of those other identities, but only strengthens them.

As an American, I am codified by the identify of America and what is happening in and to America.  I do not agree with everything Americans are doing, or what people are doing in the name of America. I do agree with our founding documents and believe that our founding fathers were right in forming this type of government.  A constitutional republic that limits Federal Government to basic tenants and allows the states to regulate everything the federal government does not.  The Bill of Rights protects the individual people from the overreach of the people elected to represent us in government but mostly from the career bureaucrats that work behind the scenes largely unaccountable for their actions.

The federal government, since the beginning, has risen up in the name of virtuous causes to fix things for the people. In this role, the federal government has always made things worse. Through the championing of worthy causes in name the federal government has grown the stranglehold on the people in deed leading to oppression ans the stifling of what it means to be American. 

What does it mean to be American? Simple - Freedom. Freedom of action but also freedom to the effect of those actions. 

Through government programs the federal government has forced a migration of free people living in rural communities and living a self sufficient lifestyle to cities where people are living a life dependent on the government for their everyday needs. Now, due to federal action, we have labor shortages in rural areas and we have joblessness in urban areas. We have rampant crime and horrible education offerings in cities while we have empty schools in rural areas. We have open skies, clean water, and food to eat in rural communities while cities sit in their own feces with tainted water and nutrient deserts. Those who are trapped in these cities cannot afford to move to rural communities that have better education, less crime, more job opportunities, and affordable housing because they cannot afford to get off the government support that keeps them there. Where is the freedom in living on a urban plantation where you are given enough just to live but not have a life in exchange for supporting the institution of government.

In America, in 2020, we have around 159.8 million people working and we have around 10.9 million jobs open that are not filled.  At the same time we have 331.4 million people in America with 204.8 million people of working age who are able to work in America.  This means we have roughly 170.7 million jobs available with 204.8 million people to fill these jobs. 

Why are there 45 million people who are of working age and eligible to work, who have decided not to work? Are they all stay at home mothers? How many of these are in urban areas and are not working because there are no jobs where they are, but they are not able to move because government welfare programs make it harder for them to move than the act of moving is difficult? How many are not working, because they do not have training in one of the areas where there is a job opening?

There are also roughly 126.6 million people in the USA who are not eligible to work because they are either too young, too old, or do not have the capacity/ability to work. 

If we did get everyone of working age willing and qualified to work, we would have a job shortage of 34.1 million workers. With a job shortage, there would be competition for wages and companies could be adding laborers to their growing companies and start to offer more products? Maybe we could take those 34.1 million people and train them to make microchips for vehicles, have refineries for rare earth minerals, make solar panels, make pharmaceuticals, or provide for one of many other products and jobs that we found during the COVID pandemic that we no longer had the ability to do here in the USA and this hurt us handedly when we could not get this from China. 

Can you see how the federal government, which trying to address something they deemed as an issue led to an even larger issue than what was originally the problem? 

As an American I identify with the ideal of being an American.  This ideal is codified in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States of America, and the Bill of Rights. My allegiance is to the United States of America as defined in the Constitution of the United States of America. I proudly served as in the US Navy and I would proudly serve my country again for I do believe in the Constitution of the United States of America as the governing document of America and believe that the values on which it was founded are still valuable to this day. 

Limited government was not something the founders just made up and plucked out of thin air. They were not revolutionary in their thinking and created this concept in a vacuum.  The greatest mind for hundreds of years writing about government and building on the advances of others realized that limited government was the only way to truly have a free people that were only limited by their imagination and the needs to the world around them.  Government was to limited in its ability to predict anything by the fact that the government is only a few people with limited reach into the community and would often be insulated from reality by the constrains of their position. For the reason, the federal government of the United States of America’s power are limited fist and foremost to whatever is not specifically listed as a power of the federal government falls to the states to regulate.  This means that any time the federal government makes a rule of law that is not in their auspices but is the realm of the states, is a direct violation of the state’s rights. 

The federal government can: 1) coin and regulate money, set bankruptcy laws, levy taxes, borrow money, and set commerce laws; 2) establish a military, and declare war. 

Then it was given the following specific restriction in the constitution.  

1. No exercise of powers not delegated to it by the Constitution. 
2. No payment from the Treasury except under appropriations made by law.
3. All duties and excises must be uniform throughout the United States.
4. No tax or duty to be laid on articles exported from any state.
5. No appointment of a senator or representative to any civil office which was created while he was a member of Congress or for which the amount of compensation was increased during that period.
6. No preferences to the ports of one state over another in regulation or tax collection.
7. No titles of nobility to be granted by the U.S. government, or permitted to be granted to government officials by foreign states. 
8. No bill of attainder or ex post facto law to be passed.

As such, the Department of Treasury and the Department of Defense are the only two departments of the federal government that are constitutional.  All other departments are not constitutional with the possible exception of the Department of State, Department of Commerce, Department of Veteran Affairs, and Department of the Interior. Of course - all of these could be contained into one of the two original departments. The only reason they were created in the first place was to make more jobs for people whose positions are redundant.