By Donald S. Conkey
Choices have consequences — both personal and political — and in 32 days Americans are going to make a political choice, a political choice that could have negative consequences, a choice that could likely affect their lives and the lives of their posterity for decades to come.
Americans are going to make a choice between two men who would be president of these United State of America for the next four years.
There are many who believe that this election will be the most important election Americans have ever been involved in. I tend to agree with them.
But the choice Americans are being asked to make in this election didn’t begin with the election of Barack Hussein Obama in 2008, it started in the late 1800s in the state legislative halls of several states where a number of corrupt state legislators sold their vote to would be U.S. senators — who at that time were elected by the state legislators.
U.S. senators, elected by the state legislators, were supposed to be the state’s check on excessive federal intrusion. This corruption by state legislators led the populace to distrust government, much as many do today and led eventually to the passage of the 17th amendment, the amendment that ‘transformed’ America from a true republic to a partial republic; destroying the state’s check on excessive federal intrusion.
On Sept. 14, 1901, Theodore Roosevelt, leader of the fledging Progressive Party, became president following the assassination of President William McKinley.
Thus began the progressive era in America with what Roosevelt called his Square Deal. In 1908 Roosevelt backed liberal Republican William Howard Taft as president.
During Taft’s term both the 16th and 17th amendments to the Constitution took root and were later ratified, the 16th on Feb. 3, 1913, the 17th on April 8, 1913.
Incidentally, the slogan used to pass the 16th amendment is the same slogan used today by progressives (Democrats) to divide America — “Soak the Rich.”
In 1912 Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat progressive, was elected president and it fell to him to implement both of these new amendments, both of which “fundamentally transformed” America from what the founders had in mind to what we have today — big government that wants to control every decision every American makes, with redistribution of wealth its main focus today.
That focus is designed to destroy the America the founders gave this nation — individual imitative and personal freedom. Under Wilson the first tax bill was introduced on Oct. 3, 1913, and Americans have been groaning under ever increasing tax burdens ever since, with job creators paying the largest part of this load.
Under Wilson the Federal Reserve was created and implemented, the same body that now prints money at will.
Now, 100 years later, Americans, in retrospect, look back and see how today has come about. They can now see how Franklin Roosevelt, in the 1930s and until his death in 1945, used his New Deal to initiate the further transformation of America from small government to big government where government began to replace individual ruggedness with dependency on big government.
They can also look back to 1963 and another assassination, that of John F. Kennedy and see how his progressive VP, Lyndon Johnson, became president and implemented his own Great Society, the legislation that initiated the destruction of the ‘traditional family’ — the foundational unit for all civilized societies.
There are those who believe it was the role of Bill Clinton to make the final transformation from capitalism to socialism.
He failed and the unvetted Barack Obama was elected in 2008 by an adoring, but ill-informed electorate, to finalize the transformation. He has nearly succeeded — but the people finally woke up and now see the future under socialism in America.
And this is where America is today, the result of too many citizens voting for something that seemed very appealing but which, in the end, has led to the self-destruction of many nations.
Today’s political war is very real. In 1776 the war was to free Americans from the tyranny of King George III. Today this political war is to prevent the re-enslavement of America by its own government and to return America to those governing principles deeply embedded in America’s foundational documents by the Founders.
America is now seeing the consequences of America’s bad choices during the past 110 years in electing leaders whose agendas have led to the crisis America is in today.
Remember — the Nov. 6 election will have consequences. Vote — but vote fully informed.
Donald Conkey is a retired agricultural economist living in Woodstock.