Is Sacrifice Destroying America?

"It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice. So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other."(1)

"Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. . . . The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good, and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate.”(2)

In the opinion of our most powerful leaders, sacrifice is the most fundamental virtue, the very virtue that makes us special, human, concerned and partakers in the acts of God. For the leader of the free world, sacrifice is what we need to improve the economy, improve the lives of others and make this a better planet. For the Leader of the Universe, sacrifice will get us to heavenly bliss. Yet, have we asked whether sacrifice actually produces any good at all? A virtue that is practiced by so many, so often and so fervently must surely have resulted in a better world. Has it? Well, look at it.

If we consider what these two men have said about the value and importance of sacrifice, I think the most important question is “what does sacrifice mean in practice?” If we develop a new spirit of sacrifice, what does that say about our past spirit of sacrifice? Does it mean that we haven’t sacrificed enough and that we should work harder for others than we have? Just what is enough sacrifice and who is the authority on that? When is it time for a person to stop sacrificing and start being concerned about his own well-being? Just who should be the beneficiary of sacrifice, a person who has no choice about his problems, who is trying to be self-sufficient or the professional parasites dredged up by politicians?

What about the person struggling to send three children to college? Or the person who is wondering how he will get the money to buy a new tire for his car that might save the lives of his children? Maybe after working 70 hour weeks, each of these people should join ACORN and agitate in bank lobbies for more loans for the poor. Or should they drag their tired and worn bodies to a local soup kitchen to feed homeless people while they wonder when they will have their next meal.

I don’t know how Obama or God would answer these questions but I suspect that there are many millions of people already working hard and doing their best to take care of their families – who are now being asked by these smiling faces to work harder and give more for the sake of the “less fortunate”. Perhaps they might say that the new spirit of sacrifice should extend only toward people that have too much money and that rich people should allow the government to raise their taxes so it can help the poor. Yet, who has the moral authority to decide how much money is “too much”? Which “mere man” has the moral authority to point the government’s gun at an individual and insist that he pay this percent or that percent from his income? And what are the consequences for the economy of the use of that money?

What does a person with “too much” money do with that money when he is allowed to keep it? Most of the time, he invests it in a bank. The bank then loans it to people who buy homes, cars, start businesses, etc., all of which have the result of creating jobs for people. Isn’t the government’s forced sacrifice then hurting the very people it claims to be helping? Isn’t it true that every dollar taken for charity to feed a poor person today is a dollar that would make it possible, through a job, to feed that person indefinitely? Isn’t it true that a new job created by government costs more than a job created by the private economy? And isn’t it also true that in order to have that new job created by government, you are destroying one or more other jobs in the private economy?

But sacrifice is our most fundamental virtue according to Obama and God. How could it be that it hurts people? If one dollar can have this kind of effect on the life of one poor person, how much harm could be done by trillions of dollars taken from the rich to help the poor? How many millions of jobs are being lost down the abyss of sacrifice? Worse, how many professional parasites are merely living off of the dole because they don’t want to earn their keep?

What do these job losses that we are seeing today make of this “new spirit” that our President exhorts us to have? What do they make of government corruption, government grants and government programs that are nothing more than excuses for politicians to skim money from the treasury in order to enrich themselves and their friends? Certainly, he would say that these trillions represent an “investment” in the future. He, in his singular wisdom, will decide how this money is to be spent; such as in jobs fixing bridges that do not need fixed, building new bridges where they are not necessary, laying fiber optic cable where profit-making businesses would not lay them, creating jobs for people who have never been productive and giving a tax reduction to people who do not pay taxes. There is no end to the “good” that President Obama can do with the money of the people who have too much of it.

The “new jobs” being created by President Obama have a high cost. They are created at the sacrifice of about two jobs in the private industry. Have you wondered why unemployment is getting worse? This is the reason. Further, money taken from tax payers to create new jobs is money that the taxpayers could have used creating productive jobs through their spending. Instead, it creates non-productive jobs whose product no one buys. This sacrifice further harms the economy and the taxpayer’s standard of living. It means fewer products, fewer jobs, fewer thriving businesses and a lowering of expectations.

Yet, is all this sacrificing merely politics as usual? Not really, we have now a new situation that threatens to destroy America. I call it “philosophy as usual.” It is a technique of deception for which most Americans do not have an answer. Firstly, they cannot refuse to ‘help people’ because they have been taught that helping people is good. The politicians take advantage of this and create programs of forced charity, high taxes and special interest programs that claim to help people. Today, Americans are exhorted to get together, stick together, work harder, think of others, help others and ensure that everyone has a chance for a meal, a home, an education, health care; all provided by government through taxes, all examples of community service, all “good intentions.” They claim to be establishing a world of fairness, where everyone has a level playing field and greedy capitalists are prevented from exploiting them. How could Americans disagree with that? How can they say ‘No!” to this orgy of spending that does so much good?

Some prominent people who are complaining about this orgy of spending are wondering if there is something wrong, not with government, but with themselves. They are paralyzed by their own premises and feel guilty for complaining. Why do they dissent against a government that wants to do so much good? They have no answer because they also believe in charity towards others. Question Obama and they will tell you self-righteously that he is merely asking people to work together to solve common problems, that we are in a crisis that can only be solved by Americans in a new spirit of sacrifice. We should be offended that someone would disagree with that. In fact, anyone who disagrees must certainly be an evil capitalist out to exploit the victims of our common crisis. How can you argue with that?

Aren't the arguments in favor of Obama’s actions, like those mentioned above, so irrefutable that no one can refuse? You may think so but I dissent. I say, it is time to stop this orgy of sacrifice and waste and plunder. This ‘change’ that America supposedly voted for is about stealing from productive citizens, their savings, their futures, their standard of living and their retirement. It is about exploiting the working people of this country for the sake of a bottomless pit where no good is being done, where the only benefit goes toward those who want to rule a nation of slaves.

In fact, it is not a better world that Obama and the Pope want – even with all this sacrificing going on – or should I say, because of all this sacrificing going on. What they are missing is that this new ‘philosophy as usual’ is not about helping people; it is a con game practiced by professional parasites who know that they’ve got America by the throat and there is nothing to stop them. Whenever you hear calls for sacrifice, you invariably are never told that sacrificing is working. In fact, you are told that even more sacrificing is necessary.

Is it possible that sacrifice is destroying America rather than making it a better world? Is it possible that America is paralyzed and can do nothing about the mass looting that is going on today because it has accepted the principle of sacrifice, and that it cannot fight back until it rejects the notion of sacrifice as good?

An example of how sacrifice has harmed our nation is the sub-prime crisis which is at the heart of our economic meltdown. After telling us in 1995 that the Clinton Administration’s new policy to broaden home ownership would not cost the taxpayers a single penny, you must wonder what the government’s largesse, its use of lower credit standards to redistribute income, will eventually cost us. Look at where our economy is today and you will see the handiwork of people who believe in sacrifice. The authors of this mess, including and especially Barack Obama, have escaped scrutiny.

In short, the sub-prime crisis has shown that sacrifice is a failure at taking care of people. A turkey dinner, a block of cheese or an adjustable rate mortgage won’t get it. A check comprised of constantly devalued money won’t take care of anyone’s future. In fact, the sub-prime crisis is more than a failure of sacrifice; it is an example of how poor economic policy can destroy a society. Few saw the sacrifice at work in giving mortgages to people who could not afford them; some called it redistribution and others called it socialism.

Likewise, when Hitler proclaimed the superiority of the Aryan race and preached that Germans should sacrifice themselves to the “Volk” he was not just preaching National Socialism or fascism; he was preaching sacrifice. When Marx said “From each according to his ability to each according to his need” he wasn’t just preaching communism, he was preaching sacrifice. And when Obama declares that redistributing the production of the rich to the poor is the right thing to do, he is not just preaching socialism or fascism, he is preaching sacrifice. When the conservatives seek to answer Obama with Jesus, they will lose the political fight because they are not just preaching theocracy, they are preaching sacrifice. Whether you call Obama’s pet projects spending programs, pork or ear marks, what they are is sacrifice. And the reason that Obama gets away with his atrocities and violations of individual rights is because there is no one on the horizon with the courage to challenge sacrifice; to say “Enough.”

To continue the scheme, all Obama has to do is give the liberals in Congress a free hand to spend as much as they want and the conservatives will say “if you are going to spend all that money, we might was well do it too.” People argue against “socialism” while Obama declares that he is merely doing the right thing; because we are on the edge of disaster, his good intentions justify his pushing us over the edge. Obama’s advancing of the principles of sacrifice, no matter what political system you call it, no matter how "new" you think it is, is the sure way to destroy progress, create poverty and collapse economies.

And, yes, the economy did collapsed as a result of the sub-prime debacle. The first to be blamed for the collapse were not the quasi-governmental organizations that created and managed this scam but the old standby “greed” and “lack of oversight.” But is this true or are we being bamboozled by the very people whose philosophies have created the situation?

The principle of sacrifice is still Obama’s guiding principle and he has promised more of the same that created the present situation. In the guise of a program to “stimulate” the economy, he has created the biggest altruistic “giveaway” of money to radical and socialist leaning organizations in the history of our nation. You don't really think that giving money away to people who have never earned a dollar in their lives will actually stimulate the economy do you?

President Obama’s first “stimulus program” will redistribute even more money from the productive by creating unproductive jobs, windfalls, boondoggles and probably outright fraud by the many organizations waiting in the wings for their political payback from Obama. Under Obama, tax policy is being written that will give checks to people who do not pay taxes. Jobs programs intended to stimulate our economy take money from productive citizens in order to provide make-shift jobs for people who will probably not be very productive.

Barack Obama's entire election campaign was based on the idea of income redistribution and one can be certain that sacrifice will guide virtually every policy of his administration from domestic to foreign. This is because he has accepted the notion that sacrifice works, that it is moral and that it can be used to gain power.

We need to understand that sacrifice is not about helping the helpless; sacrifice is about harming the productive and violating their individual rights. If you don’t believe this, observe the hatred with which many altruists criticize people who are self-sufficient. This vitriol shows the pleasure that such people derive from the denigration of individual accomplishment and excellence. Notice government officials whose jobs it is to redistribute money when they scream that government benefits should only go to those who have no skills and “have never had a chance.” Seldom, in the pronouncements of these people, do you find a defense of the individual, his accomplishments or even of his right to keep what he has earned.

Professional parasites, who make outrageous demands on our society (from our productive citizens), are the altruistic storm troopers, the practitioners of plunder that Obama has turned loose on society. They, and other groups, along with leftist politicians, will become ever more demanding about the “need” of our society to move ever faster toward bigger and bigger redistribution programs. The tipping point for the decline of our civilization was the sub-prime crisis and you can be sure that Obama will add some huge weights to the scale.

Certainly Obama will give speeches about the value of hard work and self-sufficiency in a cynical effort to make us think he is a normal President who admires the Constitution – while he designates “Czars” to take over and manage our economy and our personal lives. While the nation sinks further under the demands of sacrifice and while lawlessness, joblessness and starvation become the order of the day, Obama will try to win the next election on the backs of the productive who won’t vote for him. Obama thinks that every unemployed person represents a vote. You don't think he wants employment do you? For every big problem caused by Obama’s policies, Executive Orders and legislative initiatives, you can be sure that every “solution” offered will be more of the same…sacrifice and theft. What can you expect from a plunderer?

Is sacrifice destroying our country? The answer is “You bet it is.”

(1) Barack Obama
(2) Pope Benedict