Davidfarrow’s Weblog

Editor’s note: From time to time, I will post the works of another. Geoffrery Gray is the nom-de-plume for a well-known editor in the city. In this case, it’s more of a nom-de-guerre. Let me know what you think!)

The crucifixion of the honest man
By Geoffery Grae
For a few decades, the United States of America was a shining example of what the world could accomplish. It was a country founded on reason, on the ideal of hard work equals success. No one owed anyone for anything other than his honest debts. The sweat and tears and blood of your body were given back to you in notes that were backed by a system founded on an honest exchange. It was the height of a just and moral economy, the backbone of a rich and vital country.
But then the government went back on their word. The word “silver certificate” was taken from the language of the dollar bill and 1968 was the last time you could exchange your dollar, the symbol of the silver being held for you in trust, for an equal amount of silver bullion. The promise that the American government made, a promise that they were so certain of and so proud of that they made the very symbol of their currency the initials of this great country, was tossed aside as if it was never given. The morality of the dollar was once unshakable: the pure, intrinsic value of honest exchange, fair pay for honest work, was destroyed and yet we did nothing. The moral security of the country was failing and we trusted that someone must have had our best interest in mind, or the government would never have made that decision.
Yet now they are creating a system that will destroy the honesty and morality of this country as surely as a weighted pillow asphyxiates a weak and dying patient. The system that they are proposing will render even the most honest person into a beggar. It will take from those that have put their life blood into their work and given up countless hours, days and years; forgoing love, friendship and regular meals to reach their far-glimpsed goal, and put it into the hands of those that have only cried and whimpered that they were never given a chance; that they are owed and that it is their right to have everything that the hard and honest workers of the world have. But a right is not a right if comes at someone else’s expense.
The day has come when the honest man looks at the bank situation and asks “Why should I pay my mortgage?” Why, indeed, when you could get government help for failing to pay it. But where would that money come from in order to help the man who has now decided to let the government pay his bills? Not from the government itself, the government is not a wealth creator: it comes from your pockets and the pockets of your friends and family and working children. When a woman has a child and no husband and chooses not to work, the government is offering her more money per week than the average day laborer. Where is the motivation to do better? Where is the motivation not to become pregnant and jobless and live off the money of others? When a company fails, where is the motivation to find what went wrong, to go back and fix the failing parts and create a new and self-sustaining system? Why try when you could just take the life blood of the American worker and pump it into the useless corpse of a dying corporation in hopes of temporary reanimation?
What has been created is a system of legal robbery, where the government steals from your pockets without asking and distributes it without asking. It would be better, it would be more honest, if men in pressed white shirts, straight black ties and sunglasses, walked up to you on the street and held a gun to your face, demanding the contents of your wallet and your pin number. It would be more right to be able to look our robbers in the face and know exactly what they are doing. Because the money is not going to support domestic tranquility, it is not establishing justice or providing for the common defense, nor is it promoting the general welfare of the people: it is not within their legal rights to do this. It is in fact against the very laws set forth in our own Constitution, which was written By the People, not the government, not some ambiguous entity that looms like the threat of imminent disaster.
The day of revolution will come when we, the People, realize that the monster’s shadow is merely the light behind a cluster of rats, standing on each others shoulders and chewing on worthless bank notes to line their disease ridden nests. It is time to reclaim our wealth, our honesty and our morality. It is time to return our country to a place that rewards those that work hard and encourages those that don’t to get out and take a turn at pushing the cart instead of riding in it.