Andrew P. Napolitano: What to Be Thankful For?

What to Be Thankful For?

 By Andrew P. Napolitano

What if the government’s goal is to perpetuate itself? What if the real levers of governmental power are pulled by agents and diplomats and bureaucrats behind the scenes? What if they stay in power no matter who is elected president or which political party controls Congress?

What if the frequent public displays of adversity between the Republicans and the Democrats are just a facade and a charade? What if both major political parties agree on the transcendental issues of our day?
What if the leadership of both major political parties believes that our rights are not natural to our humanity but instead gifts from the government? What if those leaders believe that the government that gives gifts to the people can take those gifts back?

What if the leadership of both parties gives only lip service to Thomas Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence that all people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, (and) among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” and that the purpose of government is to protect these rights? What if the leadership of both parties dismisses these ideas as just Jefferson’s outdated musings? What if Jefferson’s arguments have been enacted into the federal laws that all in government have sworn to uphold?

What if the leadership of the parties believes that the constitutional requirement of due process somehow permits mothers to kill the babies in their wombs out of fear or convenience? What if the leaders of both parties believe that the president should be able to kill whomever he wants out of fear because due process is an inconvenience?

What if President Barack Obama has killed Americans and claimed that he has done so legally, relying on the convenient arguments of his attorney general, who falsely told him his killings are consistent with due process? What if the Constitution requires due process whenever the government wants someone’s life, liberty or property, whether convenient or not? What if due process means a fair jury trial, not an ordered killing?

What if the congressional leadership and most of the membership from both major political parties believe in perpetual war and perpetual debt? What if the history of American government in the past 100 years is proof of this nearly universal belief among the political class?

What if the political class in America believes that war is the health of the state? What if the leadership of that class wants war so as to induce the loyalty of the voters, open the pocketbooks of the taxpayers and cause compliance among the people? What if the political class uses war to enrich its benefactors? What if the government has been paying for war by increasing its debt?

What if the political class has been paying for prosperity by increasing the government’s debt? What if that class has controlled the cash-creating computers at the Federal Reserve and the free cash the Fed creates is to bankers and traders what heroin is to addicts? What if the $18.6 trillion current federal government debt has largely been caused by borrowing to pay for war and false prosperity? What if 20 cents of every tax dollar collected by the feds today is spent on interest payments for the government’s debt?

What if American taxpayers are still paying interest on debts incurred by Woodrow Wilson, FDR, JFK, LBJ, Ronald Reagan and every modern president?

What if the silent damage that the artificial creation of cash causes has been manifested not in price inflation but in equity and savings deflation? What if the manifestation of equity deflation is that too much of everything we own secures too much debt? What if the folks at the Fed who create the cash have kept interest rates so low that there is little incentive to save?

What if we all own a smaller percentage of what we think we own because the value of what we own has decreased as the debt on what we own has increased? What if the banks have borrowed the money that they lend? What if they can’t pay it back? What if the stock market is soaring on borrowed money? What if mansions and shopping malls are popping up but they secure more debt than they are worth? What happens when the plug is pulled on this temporary artifice when those debts come due?

What if the government demands transparency from all of us but declines to be transparent to us? What if the government fosters the make-believe notion that it exists to serve us? What if the government denies that it works for us and thinks we work for it? What if it has access to all of our communications, bank accounts, health and legal records, and monthly utility and credit card bills? What if the government knows more about us than we know about it?

What if the government stays in power by bribery? What if it bribes the states with grants of cash, the rich with bailouts, the middle class with tax cuts and the poor with welfare? What if the courts have approved this bribery?

What if, on Thanksgiving Day, our gratitude is not to the government that assails our freedoms but to God, who gave us our freedoms? What if, on Thanksgiving Day, our gratitude is for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? What if we possess them despite the government?

What if, on Thanksgiving Day, we should be most grateful that we are free creatures made in God’s image and likeness? What if we are free to reject the government?