American Dream Restoration

The US economy was created to function as a private sector, capitalist free market economy that allowed maximum economic freedom for its citizens. Regulations were minimal and private property ownership by citizens was encouraged.

 

The American Dream began with the dream to acquire land and create useful inventions to drive a national economy while ensuring freedom from government interference. I will know when it begins to be restored when I see students return to retail and fast-food jobs and our adults leave their minimum wage jobs to return to manufacturing and other higher paying jobs.

 

Pilgrims began to migrate to establish American colonies in the 1600s and began the hard work of eking out a living. It was a meritocracy that encouraged effort, good behavior, learning, accomplishment and innovation. The American colonies had land to farm and resources to extract to allow citizens to prosper.

 

The Europeans who migrated to America lacked these opportunities in their home countries, because the “royals” owned the land and they didn’t. The American colonies offered them an opportunity to own their land and their resources and to sell their produce and lumber. These farms and timberland had to be cared for and these new owners finally had the incentive to improve their operations and the freedom to execute these plans. This prompted them to seek out the “best practices” that were available to make these improvements. They studied the weather, read books, gathered facts and experimented to make sure their innovations were effective. They collaborated with each other and created inventions and better methods to get better results.

 

When these colonists broke with Great Britain, won the Revolutionary War and formed their government in 1789, they designed it to be limited and benefit the citizens. In 1803, the US government was able to purchase the Louisiana Territory from France and that offered us the opportunity to expand. The US government allowed citizens to claim the land free of charge to get the land settled quickly. This further reinforced the notion that the US was the “land of opportunity”. Those who chose to move West were fully aware of the effort and resources this would take and the risks they would face, but they also knew the prosperity their families could achieve if they were successful.

 

Their children were home schooled and self-taught and did their chores on these farms. Everyone carried guns to protect themselves from hostile Indians and wild animals. They became very self-sufficient. The US Cavalry served on the frontier to offer some protection from hostile Indians. Groups of farms created communities that worked together to help each other build buildings and clear roads. Everyone learned how to do everything. The settlement of the Louisiana Territory continued throughout the 1800s, but other events occurred as well.

 

The War of 1812 between the US and Great Britain was fought to stop the Brits from kidnapping US sailors and it ended in 1815. The Barbary Wars were fought from 1801 to 1805 and again from 1815 to 1816 with the North African “Barbary States” to end the attacks on US merchant ships in the Mediterranean Sea. Muslim pirates were seizing merchant ships and demanding ransom payments.  Spain ceded the southwest to Mexico in 1821. In 1836 Texas became independent and became a State in 1845 in 1846 The Mexican American War ran from 1846 to 1848 and resulting in the US annexation of what would become California, New Mexico and Arizona. The Civil War of 1860- 1865 solidified the US to continue to develop the entire North American continent as it currently exists.

 

The Industrial revolution began in the US in the 1790s. The steam engine started to replace wind and water power. The telegraph was developed in the 1840s. The telephone was invented in 1876. Electric power was pioneered by Thomas Edison and became viable in 1888 using Nikola Tesla’s Alternating Current. In 1885, Karl Benz developed a petrol or gasoline powered automobile.

 

As more US citizens pouted into the cities, the need to maintain clean drinking water and clean living conditions prompted the development of water chlorination, sanitary sewers and trash removal that took from the 1850s to 1920 to complete.

 

The American Dream from the 1600s through the 1900s was one of invention and advancement.  The next chapter includes the inventions we’ve continued to make since the 1920s and includes the development of labor saving devices like the clothes washer, dish washer and vacuum cleaner, but also includes refrigerators, air conditioning and gas heat. We now have water treatment, sanitary sewers and trash removal. In 1945 we introduced penicillin and we were finally able to cure infections. Our life expectancy soared.

 

We entered World War I in 1917 and won it in 1918. Our cost was $32 Billion and 116,516 lives. We made it through the Great Depression from 1929 to 1939. We began to produce weapons in 1940 to support our allies. We entered World War II in 1941 and won it in 1945. Our cost was $341 Billion and 405,399 lives. Both World Wars were fought in Europe and not in the US. The US economy boomed after 1945 and families were thriving. We were quick to implement new inventions and we had won all of our wars. We gave the US government high marks for limiting our exposure to the World Wars and most Americans trusted their government to act wisely to manage these wars. This trust lasted through the 1950s. But the US role shifted from being a “reserve military” that held back and entered to ensure victory to the “world’s policeman” tasked with stopping Communist aggression against all nations. This turned out to be a failure.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war

 

We enjoyed listening to radio and going to movie theaters since the 1920s. We attended circuses, ball games and had a myriad of activities for families to enjoy. The American Dreams had reached its peak and we were about to experience a period of decline. US government regulations and high taxes prompted us to elect Ronald Reagan in 1980. We had lost the war in Vietnam and were not happy with our government.

 

The US government began to abandon the US Constitution in 1872 with the formation of National Parks. Again in 1913, Congress delegated its duty to coin money to the Federal Reserve, a private bank and enacted the income tax. We had elected socialist Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s and he established Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. The cost of lives and money to win World War I and World War II was high. The role of government shifted away from US citizens and our free market economy. Inflation caused prices to increase 10-fold from 1913 to 1980 and we began to conclude that the Federal Reserve was to blame.

 

The American Culture began to shift with the introduction of the television set in 1950. We were drawn to this device and it allowed us to see movies at home, but for some it began to become an addictive pacifier. Now that all the hard work had been done from 1600 to 1900, Most Americans had become distracted and lazy and abandoned their responsibility as voters and were complaining about stress.

 

The US economy continued to deliver jobs from 1945 to the 1990s and the Cold War with Russia ended in 1989, but government actions began to have a negative impact on US citizens.

 

The 1960s and 1970s were a disaster. The Vietnam War lasted from 1963 to 1973. The cost was 58,000 American lives and we lost.  Anti-war demonstrations and violent race riots were common. Lyndon Johnson advanced socialism with Medicare and Medicaid and the War on Poverty in 1964. We did end “Jim Crow Laws” in the South, but we unleashed a political climate that was corrosive. The Supreme Court had legalized abortion and banned Christianity in the schools. The US economy continued to function until the 1990s when we off-shored our manufacturing jobs to other countries.

 

The US economy surged in the US electronics industry during the Reagan years with the development of the PC in the 1980s and the end of the Cold War in 1989. But in 1989 we saw a resurgence of government regulation and excessive immigration that continues today. Things got worse in 1992 when the US approved UN Agenda 21 and again in 1993 with the passage of NAFTA. The Gulf War success in 1990 re-established our faith in the US military, but the $6 trillion cost of the invasion and nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq and the doubling of the US National Debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion by 2008 and the 2008 Mortgage Meltdown destroyed our faith in the US government.  

 

Now we have an economy full of smart phones and dumb college students. Some will argue that what I have labeled as our decline is too harsh, but I believe we need to replace immigrant employment with student employment and get our manufacturing jobs back to restore economic prosperity to families.

 

It’s easy to trace our demise back to government actions. Government doubled immigration in 1989 and refused to close the border to displace American workers. They also refused to allow oil exploration. In 1993 government began UN Agenda 21 implementation in the US to squander our resources. Then government forced lenders to give mortgage loans to unqualified buyers and created the 2008 Meltdown. Then Republicans allowed Obama to become President to destroy our Healthcare and Education industries and advance the Democrat socialist agenda and double the national debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion. That left us with 100 million working age US citizens without jobs.

 

In 2016, we had enough and we elected Donald Trump, who is engaged in a pitch battle with our socialist Democrats over his plan to restore our private sector, capitalist free market economy and win our culture wars. I support his efforts completely.

 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader