In many ways, we seem to have lost our way in the world. So many of our problems have been foreseen, that the directions in which we are headed seem so backwards it is hard to know how we got here. Some conservative views to ponder:
Oil - Since the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, we have as a nation worried about our dependency on foreign oil. Both parties have promised solutions, and both have failed us. We sit on huge oil reserves that would provide desperately needed jobs for unemployed Americans, and deprive the folks who hate us of our petrodollars. Yet we continue to make it harder and harder to produce our own oil, and spend millions of taxpayer dollars on unproven green technologies. Does this make sense?
Healthcare - The International Monetary Fund warned the nation of Greece that they must get out of the healthcare business in order to rescue their nation from bankruptcy. Our neighbor to the north, Canada, has tried universal healthcare with disastrous results for their nation and the health of its people. Massachusetts has seen healthcare costs soar out of sight using the same healthcare proposals that were passed into law by the Obama administration. And do I need to remind you of what TennCare has done to our state budget? In poll after poll the American people have expressed their dissatisfaction with the new healthcare plan, yet it looms over us, slowly being implemented. Why?
Our Border - Since the administration of Ronald Reagan, the American people have asked for a secure border. Since 9/11, it has clearly been an issue of national security, and our Constitution demands it! Yet the borders remain open, and the American taxpayer spends million and billions of dollars providing healthcare, prison space, education facilities (and on and on) for the illegals among us. Now as a result of our inattention to this problem, we see a raging drug war that is spilling over the border into American towns and cities. Why wasn't something done long ago, and why are we still doing nothing?
The Deficit - For years, politicians have worried about our national debt, and promised to rein in spending. Yet with a national debt approaching 13 TRILLION, every week we witness some new government program, financed with borrowed money launched to grow the government. President Obama decries the free spending ways of George Bush, yet his first budget was almost three times the highest spending of the Bush years. When almost 50 cents of every dollar is borrowed, why are we spending so much?
How hard would it be to drop the barriers to developing our own oil reserves, allow health insurance companies to compete for our business all across the nation, secure the border, and stop spending money we don't have? We could do all those things if we only had politicians with conservative views that would listen to us. It isn't that these problems are insurmountable. It is that powerful influences in Washington DC have a vested interest in keeping things the way they are...and they use our money to provide those wonderful TV commercials to make us think they care.
I, in my commonsense conservative views, think it is time we voted for the citizen legislator instead of the eggheads from Harvard and Yale with no experience, only academic theories. We need people who know how to solve problems, not raise money from special interests, whether those interest are unions or corporations. We need problem solvers from everyday walks of life, and not the same old political families with their carefully groomed heirs to their hereditary offices. We stand at a crossroads that will determine the future of our nation. We have more information at our fingertips than any generation before us ever had. If it is true that we get the politicians we deserve, I would phrase it a little differently. What do the future generations, our children and grandchildren deserve? It is now their future we are mortgaging. Choose wisely when you vote. THEIR future depends on it!
