Problems Dim Desires

Sad experience shows us that ever-growing problems make our desires more difficult to obtain.  Personal financial struggles, compounded by unfair and over-burdensome taxes, are constantly working against us.  We now work more than half a year to pay our taxes.  Executives, judges and bureaucrats issue orders that inappropriately act as law, usurping legislative authority.  Our justice system often seems to protect criminals, as law is manipulated by questionable lawyers and judges.  People are losing control of their property for an ever-increasing number of political excuses.  Justifiably, parents are deeply troubled as immorality appears to be more and more acceptable and seems to come from every quarter.  Entitlement programs have reclassified the needy to include almost anyone with wants.  Government favors have successfully purchased so many votes for politicians that they have expanded their favors to rich corporations, costing taxpayers' billions of dollars.  Unfair laws often abuse the wage earner and reward the irresponsible.  Government rules, regulations, controls and repressive laws frustrate our ability to build or do business.  Our freedoms and rights are often encroached upon.  The bureaucracy that causes such strife may be as close as our own school or as distant as the federal monstrosity.

Results Of Problems

During a recent thirty-year period, total social spending by all levels of government increased more than 500 percent.  Spending on welfare increased 630 percent.  There was a 560 percent increase in violent crime; more than a 400 percent increase in illegitimate births; a quadrupling in divorce rates; a tripling of the percentage of children living in single-parent homes and more than a 200 percent increase in teenage suicide.  Although spending on education increased 225 percent, there was a drop of about 100 points in the SAT, college entrance scores.
The loss of private property robs many of their retirement plans.  Crime dominates our news daily, is a constant worry and force many to hide in their own homes.  Crime and excessive government spending demand heavy taxation.  Families find it difficult to pay for their own expenses, especially medical and educational costs.  Working citizens are overburdened.  This bogs down our nation's economy and often force both mother and father out of the home and into the work place to provide for their family, to the detriment of their children.  Children's lives are damaged, even ruined, as society's moral standards sink ever lower.  Growing animosity toward our failed welfare system is understandable and angers the giver and receiver.  More and more of our time is being taken up in defending ourselves from our own government.
These problems force people into a subservient position of having to look to government for essential needs.  This dependency puts us at the mercy of bureaucrats who take away our freedom of choice by telling us what we can and cannot do.  Unwise laws precipitate welfare dependency, illegitimacy, violence, crime, functional illiteracy and dysfunctional families.

Not knowing the answers to the following questions, leads us into problems!

What is the source of our rights?  Is the source of rights an authority over us?  If so, who claims this power?  What are, our rights?  How is a right legitimately acquired?  How can we tell the difference between, a Right, a Desire, or a Demand?  Are rights different for different people?  What is the proper role of government?  Are there things that government should do and should not do?  How do we know what they are?  What is the correct way to financially prosper?  Are there legal ways to profit that are wrong and harmful?  What is the source of peace?  Why do we have two groups of teenagers, one we call a gang, that steals, plunders and murders -- while the other group of teens are responsible, law abiding citizens that help others?  What makes these two groups different?  What is the best way to provide for the needy?  How do we help the needy in the wrong way, which hurts the giver and receiver?  How can we provide greater help that will receive greater support?  Why did our founders speak harshly against a Democracy and how is a Republic superior to it?  How do we solve the conflict between majority rule and individual freedom?  What are enumerated powers and how has our departure from them caused citizens to become subservient to government?  What is meant by a "Limited" form of government and why has our departure from it subverted the very foundations of our Constitutional Republic as warned by James Madison?  What part should morality play in government?  Why are alternative methods of election superior to popular vote?

Every citizen in the United States, to keep from being misled, to dispel confusion about government and to be prepared for involvement, must learn:

  " THE BASIC FREEDOM EDUCATION"