Making vs. Taking

The strength of a nation rises and ebbs over time. Strength - fiscal, moral, social, political - increases when a nation creates the opportunity for all of its citizens to pursue their hopes and dreams to the best of their own ability. People free to make their own way have invariably created more opportunity for those around them and given more freely to those less fortunate. A nation's strength ebbs away when its government takes freedom away from its people, no matter the professed motive of said government.

Our country became great by making more and more people more and more free over time. The process was not perfect and mistakes were made, but in the course of history no country made more such progress. And as freedom grew, so did creativity, productivity and the wealth of our nation. America led the world in manufacturing, agriculture and innovation and spread them around the globe. We made the planes, trains and automobiles, and the loans to export them to the world. In the process, America made all those willing to work, those who recognized that rights also bring responsibilities, more prosperous and free.

But sadly our strength now ebbs away because we are no longer a nation of makers. Ruled by a government bureaucracy run amok, we have become a nation of takers. Half of Americans pay no income tax. They take the benefits our great country provides but contribute nothing to producing them. We take the goods now produced overseas since we no longer make them, and pay for them with the loaned money we have taken from those same countries selling us what we no longer make.

This new economic model is clearly unsustainable. To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher - eventually we're going to run out of people to take from. Only if we return to making - making people more free from government, making products here in the U.S., making people responsible for their own actions and free to reap their own rewards - will we once again thrive as a nation.