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Potatoes, Onions, and Asparagus, Oh My!

There is dirt under my nails. Lots of it. I’m sweaty, filthy, and sore. Yet running through my head is, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.” Granted, most of the little songs that come from Baby Q’s musical froggy’s butt get stuck in my head but this time it’s apropos.

This morning Snarky really, really finished the chicken coop; he thought he had finished it yesterday until he found one of the troublemaker chicks outside the coop last evening when he went to put them in for the night. They’re still just small enough to fit through the holes so he added finer mesh wire around the bottom to keep the little suckers where they belong.

I played on the tractor, running the cultivator through the same field we disced last week. Apparently we’re about two weeks behind our neighbor in when we can plow since it was just a wee too wet in there. I kept getting stuck, my wheels spinning a bit, when the cultivator would dig too deeply, but as soon as I raised it a little, on we’d go. I’m going to have to run over it again tomorrow or as soon as it dries out some more.

I also cultivated the area next to the grape vines and blueberries and then went back to plant the asparagus crowns, onion sets, and potato eyes. Now, I have never planted any of these items before. Why? I don’t know. I’ve either inherited them in gardens to which I moved or it was always the wrong time of year. I, of course, started with the asparagus since it’s going to be a permanent part of the landscape. I got my handy dandy bulb digger and started making two 6″ deep holes (since I had purchased two packages of crowns).

After opening the packages, I discovered I had not purchased two packages of one crown in each, but rather about seven-to-ten crowns. I was gonna need a bigger shovel.

Luckily, while I was traipsing back from the shop with the shovel I remembered pictures I’d seen of asparagus beds, not holes, and subsequently dug a nice 5′ x 5′ x 6″ trench for the leggy things.

But squares are easy…it’s those rows that give me trouble; I have a hard time keeping them straight. Wobbly rows be damned I went ahead and planted about 40 potato eyes and about 120 onion sets. Now I just need it to rain so I don’t have to truck water up to that spot.

If you’re happy and you know it, stomp your feet.

I’m sure the potatoes and onions should have been spaced a little more but this isn’t about perfection; it’s about learning, adjusting, and just going for it, every single day. Thank gosh I read Joel Salantin’s You Can Farm. It’s always good to hear about the mistakes others have made as well as their successes. I come from a line of people who think that you have to do it perfectly the first time and there’s no room for adjustment. Well, perfect is fine, but if there’s no room for mistakes then there’s no room for learning.

Do you know why WD-40 is called “WD-40”? Because it wasn’t until the fortieth formula did they succeed in getting it right. That means thirty-nine mistakes! I’m not sure I’m willing or able to keep trying for something thirty-nine times.

If you’re happy and you know it, wave your arms.

Need vs. Want

My 1965 Webster’s dictionary, to which I refer when I want a more traditional definition of a word rather than the watered-down definitions one finds in more modern dictionaries, defines need as “a lack of something requisite, desirable, or useful.”

Yesterday we received a quote from a contractor. We need a water line run for the LG Combination Washer/Dryer that we’re purchasing. We currently haul our laundry down to the local laundromat, something I haven’t done in twenty years and which I wouldn’t have conceived of doing just a few years ago. I wouldn’t even rent an apartment when I moved to Las Vegas if it didn’t come equipped with this necessity. I was too old for lugging laundry. I was beyond this college-day’s activity. Yet here we are, in our late 40’s, having purchased a house with no laundry room, space, or closet. We need it.

We also have an electric range with one oven. Having been raised on gas ovens, the act of cooking well on electric still eludes me, even after being stuck with electric for years at my various abodes. At least the rest were self-cleaning; this archaic model has the four requisite burners and two racks in the single-oven and no broiler pan. We need a five-burner, double-oven range with the ability to “cook multiple dishes at the same time at different temperatures”, one of them being a convection to “circulate air in the lower oven for consistent temperatures and uniform browning”. This, of course, means running gas to the location of the out-of-date, wholly inadequate range that currently sits in the kitchen.

Our third need is a tankless water heater to replace the minuscule, 30-gallon, wholly inadequate water heater taking up space underneath a cabinet in the kitchen. This appliance is so insufficient that I can’t wash my hair and shave my legs during the same shower; Snarky can’t take a bath in more than 3 or 4 inches of water which does absolutely nothing for someone trying to soak after a hard day’s work.

Last but not least, our fourth need is electricity: additional outlets in the sun room and run to the shop for Snarky to run his power tools and to give us room to plug in the freezer that will store all that meat we’re going to have.

Please note that these are household needs and pale in comparison to the needs of the farm (fencing, plowing, animals, etc.) that need to be obtained.

With all these needs in tow we called a local plumber/electrician/gas guy. “Barry is his name but he’s called ‘Blue'”, our friendly real estate agent told us over breakfast the other morning. Van had taken Snarky out turkey hunting at daylight and then subjected himself to my electric stove-top cooking. “As in blueberry”. Ahhh, local humor.

Blue told us he’d be by either before noon or after; he showed up at 2:30, clipboard in hand and Pall Mall’s in his shirt pocket. After explaining all our needs and showing him the appliances with which we were filling our “requisites”, he provided us an estimate.

In my experience, estimates are provided with a breakdown, an itemization of labor and parts so that one knows for what one is paying. Not so in the case of the blueberry. We received a paragraph describing the fulfillment of our needs. Our needs had a requisite $2,760 price tag.

While we may be able to “afford” this, some re-evaluation was…needed. We certainly don’t want to be known as those newcomers with more money than sense. Hell, we’re already talked about down at the post office as, “the new people on the hill who get the most packages.” Yes, that’s what our postal driver told me the other day. My response was, “And I don’t pay taxes or shipping or make a trip to town, so there will be more.”

After getting over the sticker shock and some discussion, two of our needs became wants. There will be no electricity in the shop; an extension cord run from the house will suffice and we’ll find freezer space. There will be no five-burner, double-oven gas range with the ability to cook multiple dishes at the same time at different temperatures; over-cooked, sometimes burned meals will have to suffice.

And with that, another lesson in truly going Galt has been learned, and $1,000 has been saved after the revised estimate.

But I still really want a double-oven gas range…

Week 1 at Basterds’ Bluff

The move went very well in spite of an increase in the moving rate; I guess those 30+ boxes of books (in addition to the rest of our stuff) took a wee bit longer to move than anticipated. The movers came a day early to avoid the threatening rain which of course made us scramble to ensure everything was done a day earlier than planned. Thank God for my sister, Michelle Ray, being here to help…we couldn’t have done it without her!

Temperatures being less accommodating than they were the same weekend last year (the weekend we got married) we cranked up the multiple propane wall heaters, opened the doors, and started putting things away as fast as the guys could get them in the door (which wasn’t very fast because they were so cold). As boxes and furniture began stacking and their comments of “how the hell you gonna get all this stuff in here” became more frequent I began to despair…how were we going to fit it all in?

Long story short, we did get every single item for which we’d planned into the house with plenty of room to move about and not one extra box or stick of furniture went to storage that wasn’t planned. Our kitchen is so big we actually have two refrigerators (one for food, one for alcohol and bacon) and an old metal-topped table in the middle…you know the kind: white, with that nice red painted trim around it, the kind of metal they used to make cars of (and probably painted with the same sort of paint, and it probably contains lead).

*********

We’re at 2,000′ elevation and it snowed the first few days, with wind adding to the chill factor. Damn global warming.

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The house is 95% put away, Snarky has the shop put together and all his tools put away. The house is truly a cozy little home and now that we’ve lived in the space for a bit we’ve decided that the addition for which we’d planned and budgeted is not needed. Woo hoo!

*********

We don’t have a laundry which means I get to go down to the end of the road to our local laundromat and mass wash and dry. I must say I was a bit intimidated the first day…it’s been 25 years since I had to use a laundromat, so I only took four loads with me to break myself in. Easy schmeezy. Now that we’re not doing the addition (which included a laundry room) I’ve found an all-in-one ventless washer/dryer that runs on 110 that will fit perfectly in the big ol’ kitchen, right next to the portable dishwasher.

*********

And, we have chickens. Six of them, three different varieties (of which we have no idea). Bought at the local Tractor Supply, the sign simply said “Pullets” and “Red Pullets”. Guess what? “Pullets” is not a variety, it just means they’re all hens (insert facepalm here). So we have two whiter chicks, two yellow chicks with red stripes, and two red chicks (two per kid). The kids are happy and, of course, the girls have named theirs; Thing 2, being nine, has named her’s some cutesy names like “Crystal”; Thing 3, being two, has named one of her’s “Poop”.

Things 1-3 with their brood.

“Bye, chicks! Bye, poop!” she said last night.

“Is Poop your chicken’s name?” I asked.

“YES!”

And there ya have it.

So We’ve Gone Galt

As you may have heard, the Basterds bought a farm somewhere on the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee, an area dubbed the “Redoubt of the East” by none other than M.D. Creekmore over on his survivalist blog, so I guess this means we intuitively “done good” and picked the perfect place to bug…and stay bugged…out.

If you just need the short version of the story: I sold some property, we bought land in Tennessee, we left our jobs, we moved out of the rat race that is Atlanta, and we’re going to be farmers. If you want the details, read on…

For awhile there we talked of really bugging out to Ecuador where we could buy land cheaply, hopefully with existing crops and existing buyers, but thankfully the rose colored glasses came off and we rethought the reality of such an extreme move. That, and the fact that the mosquitoes there carry every horrible disease they can, I’m allergic to them, and I’d probably drop dead the moment I stepped off the plane when one infected me (it’s not that I’m a wimp or anything, I just happen to have the sweetest blood imaginable and mosquitoes love me. I could take a bath in DDT and they wouldn’t care.)

So, what does it mean that we’ve “gone Galt”, and how did we do it?

Well, we happened to find this particular place by doing a little research in the areas that were close enough to Atlanta for Snarky to get the kids. We had certain criteria that had to be met or we’d keep looking or even stay put: the property (or at least the house) had to be out of the view of neighbors…not because we run around naked in the yard doing rain dances or anything, but because we just    want   to   be   left   alone; it had to be tillable land on which we could, at the very least, sustain ourselves, or better yet, grow enough to sell; it had to have a house on the property but how much house wasn’t an issue – we were willing to take a lesser house for more land; and the sale price had to be less than $250,000.

With that, Snarky sent me a list of at least 30 properties in Georgia and Tennessee and I, naturally, started at the bottom in order to work my way up the list. I was in love with the second property and it was this picture that hooked me: 

Hooked is one thing, but looking is another. I think it took us a few months to actually look at the place (we were preoccupied with thoughts of leaving the country entirely) and it was a last minute decision to hang out in Chattanooga for the weekend. I called the listing agent but didn’t leave a message because answer your phone, yo. Impatiently, I called the main office and they told me to call him back on his home phone. Blah, blah, blah, so I did and his wife told me he could call me back after 1 p.m. when he was back from a training class. “Great, we’ve got an amateur”, my pessimistic brain told me, but I settled down and waited.

At 1 a heavily-accented Southern man called (“we’re not in Cali anymore, Toto”) and we arranged to meet the next day. I’m still learning about Southern ways but after spending time with our agent, Van, I think I’m catching the pulse of this place. Southerners tend to be story tellers. They may not be the next Carson McCullers or Tennessee Williams but they still have something to say and they’re going to say it and there will be no interrupting them, changing the topic in mid-stream, or, least of all, getting them to stop all together before the tale is told (if you can get a word in edge-wise.) Their slow manner of speaking makes one think Southerners are slow thinkers but don’t be fooled; just because they don’t speak in rapid-fire New York-ese doesn’t mean they’re not three steps ahead of you. The complete learning will be a lifetime but there’s nothing like spending a full day with a Southerner to get a jump start.

With that said, Van drove us through the local downtown, pointing out various points of interest with an ongoing monologue of what the terrain was like (“You got this valley, then this big plateau, then another big valley, then another plateau, then Nashville beyond that”), what happened where (“Have ya ever heard of the Scopes – Monkey trial? Well, right thar is where it was held”), and local hot spots. Oh wait, there aren’t any.

After driving us past several properties, it was time to see “Ellen’s place”. Just 1/8 of a mile off “the main drag” and down a 1/4-mile or so gravel drive, I could barely contain myself when we pulled into the driveway (“driveway” being a subjective term…this is the country, ya know); Van got out to go see Ellen and I looked at Snarky with widened eyes and a big smile.

He said, “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

“Absolutely nothing.” (Well, there was an expletive in between “absolutely” and “nothing” but I’ll leave that out).

Being a wonderfully foggy January day, all sound was eliminated…the peace was deafening. I was in love.

The house was cute (bigger than I imagined), the fields are perfect, the soil is black, we can’t see any neighbors (we don’t really have any), and the garden is going to be amazing once this long winter gets over and everything starts to bloom.

Needless to say we went back two weeks later to make sure we still loved it and made an offer; after a little wrangling we came to an agreement…27 acres, complete with a two-bedroom house, small pole barn, 4 fields, acres of hardwood to harvest, and a tractor and other equipment, was going to be ours come March 15 for the bargain price of $162,000!

As for the “we left our jobs” part, we both had had enough of corporate America and the uselessness of our positions; I announced my retirement to my company and Snarky left his job of seven years (more on those tales in other posts).

What does “we’ve gone Galt” mean? We’re starving the beast as much as possible by:

• Not paying into the system via income/payroll taxes.
• Purchasing as little as possible and, when we do have to purchase a taxable item, we look for it first online where we don’t have to pay taxes.
• We’re not driving long distances for jobs we hate (spending huge amounts on gas and vehicle maintenance).
• We’re raising our own food (or will be), thereby paying even less into the system and eventually making money from what we raise.
• We are “on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties.”

We plan to share everything about our adventure here, both good and bad, successes and mistakes. Join us on this journey and perhaps you’ll find a path of your own.

Know The Law: Americans Can Have The Same Firearms As The National Guard!

Extremely important…KNOW YOUR RIGHTS, people!

The Looters Are In Control

Taking this directly off ZeroHedge’s website this morning because it’s just so damn important.

[And now it’s time for Mr. Obama to start paying for all those votes by reaching deep into our pockets. If you intend to avoid paying your “fair share,” however, please take note: There will be  few places to hide. For a gimlet-eyed view of what may lie in store for taxpayers and citizens of all political persuasions during the next four years, ponder the guest commentary below, from Wayne Siggard, a regular in the Rick’s Picks forum. RA]

The election was all about new math:  47 = 51. The foresight and genius of the Founders knew no bounds.  Ben Franklin said, “Once the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”  The trumpets have sounded.  The heralds have announced the awakening of the masses to that reality.  The greatest and most free nation the world has ever known has just sold its birthright for a mess of pottage; or, at least, the promise of an Obama phone. The takers have voted to take control over the producers.

Everyone will now get a fair shot — except that those who work in government and those who take government welfare will get a fairer shot.  Obama knows that you didn’t build that company.  You didn’t live frugally and save more money than your neighbor while they spent theirs on drugs or riotous living.  He knows this because he didn’t get anything without government assistance — affirmative action put him ahead of more qualified people who earned a spot that he took, just like Elizabeth Warren. You couldn’t possibly have gotten anything on your own merit or hard work.

“A claim for material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.” – Friedrich von Hayek

Von Mises said that full government control of all activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties.  Have you ever tried to drill an oil or gas well?  Have you ever tried to build a house or commercial building?  Have you ever tried to manufacture and sell a product?  The International Building Code (IBC) increases in size, restrictions and requirements every year. Why? Because a bureaucracy needs to expand to justify its existence.

 “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” – Lord Acton

Have you ever experienced the disdain and contempt of a bureaucrat whose permission you sought?  It used to be that their power to grant a license or permit was retribution for their pay being less than that of the private sector.  Now, you get to pay them 50% more than you would get for the same job, and the disdain has not decreased.  Firemen, police officers, and military personnel can retire as young as 38, many making over $100,000 per year if they work until 50, and many can take another job and collect another pension on top of the first.  Meanwhile, according to the Census Bureau, the average middle class family’s income has decreased $4,019 during the Obama years, to $50,964.  More than half of the lifeguards in Newport Beach, CA, make over $150,000 per year and can collect more than $100,000 in pension benefits starting under 50 years of age.

So, What’s Coming?

That paradigm of preternatural  prestidigitation, the Federal Reserve Bank, will continue its policy of zero percent interest.  The big banks will mask their insolvency with free money from the Feds.  Greedy speculators and fools who overspent on housing will have their mistakes paid for by those taxpayers who had the foresight to save and invest wisely.  Obama bundlers and other insiders will continue to get billion dollar investments from the government, sucking valuable capital from the private sector. The official inflation rates will miraculously stay low while you are paying 100% more for gasoline and food.

 “History is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments.” –Friedrich von Hayek

Foreign nations are no longer purchasing U.S. government bonds. The largest purchaser is the Federal Reserve Bank.  In other words, the government is printing money from thin air. In 1970, you could go to Las Vegas and buy a silver dollar for one paper dollar. It now costs around $35. A mansion behind the Beverly Hills Hotel sold for $200,000. It resold in 2004 for $16 million. A house in Flintridge, CA, sold for $115,000.  Its current value is $4.5 million. The base price for a Corvette was $5192.  It is now $49,600, a comparative bargain.  What you could buy for $1 million in 1970 now takes $36 million.  Senator Everett Dirksen in the 1960s is reputed to have remarked,” a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon we’re talking real money.”  You can now add three zeros.  The bottom line is that if you are collecting 0.15% interest on your CD, you are losing real purchasing value of at least 10%, and that rate will be accelerating in the next four years.  Carlo Ponzi was a hopeless naïf compared to our elected officials.

Harry Reid Has a Plan

Harry Reid already has a bill on his desk which requires that all pension plans (except for the unions, of course), 401Ks, and IRAs be converted to annuities from the government.  This pile of cash represents the largest pile of readily available cash in the world right now.  The money will be gone as soon as it hits the government’s account, and you will be left with empty promises.  There is no money, only a printing press.

Capital export controls will be enacted.  You will not be able to get your money out of the country.  Already you can no longer open a bank account in Switzerland unless you have over $30 million because the reporting requirements are too onerous for a smaller account.  All requests to Switzerland for visas from Americans will be suspended. History will be repeated (shocking, I know), and all gold in private hands will be confiscated.  The Republicans will cave, the tax rates will rise, and anyone making more than the insider politicians and government employees will encounter ever-increasing marginal tax rates.

Payoffs for votes will be made.  Affirmative action requirements will be increased in every field of endeavor.  Women’s abortions and contraceptives will be free. Regulations will stop the advent of fracking and the boom in oil and natural gas will come to an abrupt halt.  Payments to environmental groups for lawyer’s fees will expand exponentially.  Government-controlled lands with oil and gas potential will be declared wilderness or national monuments, just like Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah.  I could go on for another ten pages, but , in a nutshell, the message from Mr. Obama is, “You lost.”

And finally, Israel has recognized that Mr. Obama will offer no succor.  Before the end of January, they will raid Iran.  Gasoline will reach $7 per gallon, and voila, solar and wind energy will be competitive.  No matter that your thermostat is set at 40 degrees, if you can get fuel or power.

The looters are in control.  Set your alarms.

A Funny Thing Happened at the Hostess Store

Hostess, once proud producers of Twinkies and Suzy Q’s, is shut down. Some have said it was their choice. If you call having a gun pointed at your head and being told how you’re going to run your business, how much you’re going to pay people, and not being able to produce if those people strike even when you offer them work a choice, then…okay.

Actually, by allowing the union into their business in the first place, they should have seen this coming. But I digress.

When the announcement was made on Friday I told Snarky that we should go down to the local Hostess store and stock up on Twinkies. They’ll be worth gold in the coming days when TSHTF.

image courtesy of @ChrisLoesch

So, as part of our Saturday morning running around, we first went to the Hostess store. The parking lot was full and I commented, “Oh, I guess other people have the same idea.” A nice woman who had just finished shopping offered us her cart; she said they were hard to come by this morning. Thankfully, we took it.

It wasn’t too terribly packed inside and the first thing we spotted were Twinkies! The price was right (7 for $5) so we put 14 in the cart and moved along to Cup Cakes and other baked crap we would never buy. As we made our way around the store, two little old ladies were filling two carts to overflowing; they couldn’t grab enough jams and condiments and at least two of everything they were selling. It was THEN we found out that yes, the store was going out of business; this was it’s closing day and everything was 50% off.

Needless to say, our cart started filling up, too. We even gave #BabyQ free rein to put things in the cart.

But here’s the funny part…

There were obviously “progressives” in the store, so I, having a big mouth, kept talking to Snarky about how we could thank the unions for this, and look at all the people who will be out of work, and all the businesses that will be shutting down. Yes, I was trying to rub it in.

Then, as we were in line with our cart too full to hold anymore, a woman two people behind us asked if she could cut in front of us. She only had a few things and was late for an appointment. She looked like a Democrat, so I asked her, “How did you vote?” Yes, right there in front of everyone, I shot off my mouth.

“That’s very personal.”

“Well, did you vote pro-union?” I asked.

“No, I’m against unions!” she answered.

We allowed her to get ahead of us. However, I suffer from esprit d’escalier, the name the French give to that damnable moment when, as you’re walking away from a moment, you think of all the things you SHOULD have said.

I should have come right out and asked, “Did you vote for Obama?”

I should have come right out and asked the employee behind the counter if she was union before I told her, “I’m sorry you’re losing your job.” (She probably wasn’t union in that small store, but I didn’t check.)

And maybe, just maybe, we should have bought more Twinkies. We’ll be exchanging them for silver or gold, if you’re interested.

What Won’t Work

Mankind has always sought to substitute energy for reason, as if running faster will give one a better sense of direction. Periodically, we should stop and ask ourselves if our efforts are focused upon the crux of the problem – the things that must be settled if there is to be a manageable solution – or if we are expending our energies on side issues which cannot yield a decision, no matter what their outcome.

-Bernard Baruch

To continue the topic of Taking Back America, the following list outlines those things that won’t work:

• Either listening to, or dishing out, meaningless “patriotic” rhetoric, whether in the form of slogans, admonishing statements, or appeals to custom and tradition. None of this “patriotic” gibberish will do one thing to change the realities of where we now stand.
  You are not indebted to government (politicians) for allowing you to exercise some of your remaining natural rights. You were born with these rights, and government can take them away from you only through the use of force.
  Self-proclaimed patriots profess a love of “country”; libertarians profess a love of human freedom.
• Continuing to listen to half-cocked, short-term solutions served up by vote-conscious politicians. We’ve had our fill of them, even though our nature is to emotionally follow a charismatic leader who offers easy solutions.
  It is time to start ignoring the political “solutions” that have actually been the cause of our problems. They have been ignoring you for years.
  To paraphrase Voltaire, men will stop committing atrocities when men stop believing absurdities.
• Looking to the government for solutions to your problems. Government cannot solve your problems because government is the problem. When people proclaim that “there ought to be a law” to correct what they deem to be a “social injustice,” they are advocating the use of government force to make others conform to their desires or moral beliefs.
  Compassion is a good thing; charity is a good thing; concern is a good thing. Force is not a good thing. The question is not whether man loves his fellowman enough to insist on “helping” him. The survival question for mankind is whether man loves his fellowman enough to leave him alone! Your neighbor has the right to be left alone to live his life as he pleases.
• Getting hung up on the question of equality. Guaranteed security and equality conflict with freedom. Forcible equality conflicts with freedom. The American Dream gives all men equal rights; it does not call for making all men equal.
• Wasting your time arguing with irrational people – people who believe that something for nothing is possible, that theft is justified by a “worthwhile” end, or that government is a living, omnipotent, omni-benevolent entity that can solve everyone’s problems. You do not have enough time to improve your well-being, enhance the cause of liberty, and also function as a flyswatter. 

This post is based on Robert Ringer’s Restoring the American Dream.

Taking Back America

The time has come. The citizens of this country either must draw the line and take America back from the politicians and entitlement-hungry looters who now control it or we must be prepared to relinquish forever their remaining claims on liberty.

I’m talking about restoring the American Dream. This means each individual regaining his right to his life, his liberty, and his pursuit of happiness. It is time for Big Brother to get out of our lives – to let go of the reins and allow us to control our own destinies.

The fundamental concept of our founding fathers was that people have a natural right to sovereignty over their own lives and that governments have no right to interfere with that sovereignty. In that respect, the Declaration of Independence, as a document, was unique in human history. For the first time, men were saying that they were above government, that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Government has nothing to do with the American Dream. It is government that has succeeded in destroying that dream. The American Dream is a way of life that can be experienced only by free individuals.

Please understand that the American Dream has nothing to do with a country. The American Dream has to do with the freedom of people to pursue their own happiness without the interference from others. It could have originated anywhere, but luckily its birth occurred in a geographical area called the United States of America.

What loving America really means is loving the American Dream. It means loving freedom and individualism. It means admiring all the people who have contributed both to the birth of that dream and to its furtherance. These people cannot be distinguished by race, religious belief, nationality, occupation, or sex. They can be distinguished only by their common belief that liberty must be accorded the highest of all values.

Another concept is destroying the American Dream, however. The proponents of the welfare state (the collectivists) have succeeded in making millions of people believe that the America Dream is outdated. But how can an idea as basic as freedom ever be outdated?

In truth, it is the firmly controlled society that is outdated; it has been around since the beginning of recorded time. Indeed, it is rare to find a government at any time in history that was not a monarchy or other kind of dictatorship; the attempt to make men free was almost unheard of until 1776.

The American Dream means the freedom to pursue a better life and it was that freedom which inspired millions of people to cross oceans to get to America. Those millions of immigrants were not looking for government handouts; they were looking for opportunity. The American Dream gave them that opportunity. Unfortunately, with the nanny state we have built and with unbelievably porous borders and no upholding of our laws, illegal immigrants flood here and receive instant handouts at the expense of honest producers.

We do live in the greatest and freest country on earth. But it is much less great and much less free that it once was. The question is, do we love living here enough to do something about preserving what is left of that greatness and freedom, enough to restore them to their original state?

(Further posts and steps you can take right now are forthcoming. A start of some steps is here.)

This post is based on Robert Ringer’s Restoring the American Dream.