America, the Silly Nation

By Alan Caruba

As we prepare to celebrate Independence Day, we will hear about our Founding Fathers, about those who fought our wars to preserve and safeguard our nation, and other men and women who contributed to the nation’s greatness.

It is good to look back, but future generations will look back as well and wonder how such a great nation became such a silly nation, the object of scorn and ridicule around the world, challenged by every gangster nation that shares the planet; attacked by Al Qaeda, threatened by North Korea, mocked by Venezuela, insulted by Iran, and sustained by the wealth of China and other lenders.

What other republic is governed by fools who voted without reading “climate” legislation whose 1,200 pages of rules and regulations will enrich a few and leave the rest scrambling to pay the light bill? That is, if the light turns on. If passed by the Senate, it will be the largest tax increase in the history of the nation. It exists to “save the planet” from a “global warming” that is not happening.

What other nation would systematically ensure that its vast resources of coal, enough to power plants to produce electricity for the next hundred or two hundred years, not be used because no new plants will be built? Fully fifty percent of our electricity comes from coal, but this nation is about to waste billions of dollars on wind and solar energy—so called “clean” energy—which accounts for about one percent.

If wind or solar was a sensible way to produce electricity, surely utilities would have invested in it long ago. It isn’t. It never will be. Only a very silly nation would shift billions of dollars to such “clean” and “renewable” energy when it was sitting on top of tons of coal.

Only a silly nation would ensure that its other vast, natural and national resource, oil, would be put off limits to all exploration and extraction in Alaska and along our vast coastlines, as well as huge reserves in the nation’s interior. Only a silly nation would do this while listening to its politicians talk about “energy independence.”

Only a silly nation would ignore the vast potential of nuclear power and use all manner of bureaucratic obstacles to drive up the cost of building plants to generate electricity.

Only a silly nation would ignore the security of its southern border as a virtual invasion of illegal aliens pours across, and take advantage of all manner of welfare programs, special education programs for their children, and free medical services. Our prisons, too, are filling up with illegal aliens.

Only a silly nation with twelve million or more of these illegal aliens in its midst would actually be looking for a way to magically make them citizens overnight while ignoring the fact that they having been taking jobs from natural born and naturalized citizens by working “off the books” and sending billions back to Mexico and points south. Amnesty would double or triple the existing population of formerly illegal aliens in America as family members joined them.

Only a silly nation would allow the teachers unions to totally control the quality of education and transfer power to Washington, D.C., away from the States and local communities where it rightfully belongs.

Only a silly nation would spend thousands of dollars per student and, at the same time, ignore the message they are sending with obscene drop-out rates. Only a silly nation would impose a one-size-fits-all system of testing on millions of students.

Only a silly nation would to allow the graduation, year after year, of students lacking the most basic math, science, reading, and other skills necessary to provide the workforce we require.

Only a silly nation would ensure that the costs of a college education were so high that graduates enter the workplace burdened by years of debt.

Only a silly nation would continue to seek negotiations with Iran whose leaders cry “Death to America” every day. Only a silly nation would elect a President who, when the desire for freedom and democracy broke out on the streets of Tehran, expressed respect for the “Supreme Leader” and outrage only after protesters had been shot to death and clubbed into submission.

Only a silly nation would permit itself to literally go broke, along with most of its States, and then vote billions more in a “stimulus” bill while, at the same time, giving billions to failed auto companies and taking government ownership. We own an insurance company as well. This is contrary to the Constitution. It is nationalization.

It was, however, a silly nation that caused the housing mortgage meltdown with government mandates that required banks and mortgage firms to lend money to people who would not normally qualify for them.

It is a silly nation that proposes to provide healthcare insurance to everyone at the same time Medicare is on the brink of bankruptcy. Nationalizing the healthcare system will kill a lot of Americans by rationing health services, but that’s what a silly nation does.

Only a silly nation would raise taxes in the midst of a major Recession verging on a Depression. The last Great Depression lasted ten years because of such foolish actions and ended only because the nation had to gear up for World War Two.

There was a time when mature people led the nation prudently and, when necessary, boldly. What we have now are petulant and indifferent children intent on personal enrichment.

What we have is a President that does not like America..

What we have is a silly nation.