Jeremy E. Sarber

In every election we hear promises of change. The candidates who make these promises know how the idea of a better future sounds to the American people. We can always find problems with our current state and we hope for better when the next day comes. So when a presidential hopeful promises change, the sound is sweet music to our ears.

Perhaps though we should ask what that change means. Not all change is good. From Robert Owen to Hillary Clinton, we have heard the American left promise grand schemes of bettering our future and they pass these ideas off as new and progressive. But these ideas are not new and they are not progressive. These ideas have been spun to the American people over and over again, in slightly different ways, throughout our entire history.

The left would have us to believe in the possibility of a heaven on earth. They suggest that heaven on earth is imminent yet history disregards that notion. Their methods for transforming society have evolved, but the ends have remained more or less the same. They promote complete equality, needs provided without cost, wants pursued without consequence–ideas too impractical to live in practice, ideas too beautiful to die as ideas.

These leftist ideas were born out of good ethics and religion, but they have also lost sight of human depravity and historical precedence. They are always looking to an ideal future without any regard to the past.

The United States of America has been a long-standing great nation that has begun to decay from the inside out. As we move farther and farther to the left, perhaps we should question these subtle changes and look to our original establishment for direction. The suggestion that we must evolve with these current times by suggesting the implementation of old and broken ideas that have circulated longer than even America’s existence is an illogical notion.

I am a conservative because I am a traditionalist. I am a traditionalist because I believe if something is not broken, there should be no attempt to fix it. I marvel at the genius of our founding fathers and the system of civic government in which they created for us. It has been a system that has provided a light to this world of dark and oppressive governments. It has been a system of true individual freedom and powered by self-discipline and hard work. It has been a system that no other in history has been able to match.

I do not doubt the patriotism of the American left, but I am also aware of their ignorance and pursuit of power. There is no greater threat to this country than the continual feeding of our ever-growing federal government. While the rest of the world has always found refuge here in America, we have no place to escape to when our government grows beyond our control. This truly is the last stand on earth.

In one of the greatest speeches of this modern world, President Ronald Reagan said, “This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.” This is an issue which still weighs heavy on the heart of America, now more than ever.

Free-market and personal responsibility have long been the pillar upholding this great nation. Yet, the left of America has continually chipped away at that pillar. What is worse, it is then the left who campaigns on a platform that puts a magnifying glass on those cracks and promises to fix them. The unsuspecting American people shout their praises and thank them for change as they hack even deeper into the very things which have made this nation so strong.

We hear the politicians tell us their inspiring stories of rising up from the dirt to sit on thrones. They tell us how they have overcome all the great obstacles in life to find triumph on the other side. They present to us these self-made success stories and spend the remainder of the time convincing us we cannot do the same. We are told to wait on them and they will give us aid, bail us out, and improve our individual conditions. They do not seek the improving quality of America. They seek power. A government cannot control these conditions without first controlling the people.

Higher taxes and more regulations are never going to be viable solutions. The American government needs to put trust back into the private sector to do what it has done so well since this country’s birth. Time after time, our taxes are raised to fund more and more government programs. As these programs grow in size and strength, we still fail to see their purpose accomplished.

When do we as a people cease to support these programs and the politicians behind them? When will we wake up and realize that a farmer knows the farming industry better than the government or that a parent knows what’s best for his/her children more than some suit-wearing, time-wasting, tax-spending politician in Washington?

The strength of this country has always come from the citizens who live here. Yet, those who promote that great truth are villianized for being opposed to the left’s “humanitarian” efforts. The left, without any regard to the American people’s own ability, promise to provide daily bread to those without. The sound-thinkers of this country, however, know how much greater it would be if those without their bread could be taught how to plow their own fields. Not only would they then receive that bread they need, but they would also obtain the great satisfaction to be found in labor and personal accomplishment.

No man, woman, or child should ever be refused medical attention. But how can we expect all people to be forced into a national health care program which would ultimately equate to the health care of a third-world country? How can any government take the hard-earned money from its citizens, promise to use it for the good of the people, later tell those citizens the money has been used elsewhere, and then expect its citizens to give them more money to irresponsibly spend? At some point, we have to stop believing in the hype of a savior-government.

The policies of the American left will always win philosophical debates but lose in reality. This kind of ideology should have collapsed right along side of Robert Owen’s New Harmony experiment or with the overdoses and crime of the sixties, but it never did. The dreams of the left have always bobbed up and down throughout history. In dreams though, we are able to fly like birds, listen to animals verbally speak to us, and whatever else our imaginations desire. But it would be a mistake to believe those dreams could become a reality.

The nature of human beings never changes, so a proven and successful governing concept has no need of change either. Our society of free-enterprise and once limited government has surpassed the accomplishments of any other nation on earth. So I find it foolish and arrogant when our most recent presidential aspirant points to a place on the map which the earliest Americans sought to escape from and compels us to aspire after them.

Believe it or not, I am a proponent of change. I support the shrinking of our centralized government. I support tax cuts and and the decrease of government regulations. I believe many changes need to be made, but I utterly oppose any change even suggested to the fundamental American way. The most basic right given to us as Americans is the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The American left is a threat to even that.