Year-end Letter

Dear friends, family, relatives, colleagues, and associates,

I hope everyone is having a great holiday season.

This is the time of the year that many of us write our year-end letters highlighting the past year especially as it relates to our families. Because I believe this is such a pivotal year in the history of the United States, in the history of freedom, I am going to summarize not so much on the “normal“ activities of my life this year, but instead concentrate on those most important happenings concerning public policy.

Those of you who know me well know quite well that during my earlier adult years I became focused (some would say obsessed) on the deterioration of individual freedom in this country. As I grew older, I discovered that to get along with my fellow man, I had to broaden my horizons to lead a more full life, de-emphasize my concerns, and in the process might even convince some people of my warnings by not being so obsessed with them. As civilization didn’t immediately collapse, my focus continued to broaden.

But now I have observed over the past few years an accelerating pace of a devolution of society and a terrifying increase in the presence of a police state in the US. So I am here, now, on record, stating that I am reverting to being a real pain in the ass --to some, those ostriches who would stick their heads in the sand, refusing to see tyranny in front of their very eyes, refusing to hear the plaintive cries of the oppressed, refusing to engage their mind as to what is rationally clear, that once was the promise of America is now gone.

As a young boy growing up in the Fifties, my education was filled with stories about American exceptionalism. Only in the US, could one really reach his full potential because of the opportunity provided by the freedom America provided. The rule of law and the Constitution guaranteed our rights to free speech, religion, of the press and petition for redress of grievance. The right to bear arms protected us against our protectors. We had the right to confront an accuser. The Government couldn’t blast into our homes without a proper search warrant signed by a judge. Our property couldn’t be taken without due process of law. We had the right not to be a witness against oneself. We had a right of trial by jury of our peers.

I believed in all of that. I remember reading about Patrick Henry and Francis Marion, the swamp fox of the American revolution, and reveling in the fantasy of being in their shoes. America was the greatest country on earth. I believed in it. I reveled in it. I ate it up.

Maybe, as I grew older, I realized as a part of growing up that the ideals didn’t always fit the real world. But the older I got, the greater became our national debt, the more our money was worth less. One couldn’t just start a business; one had to get permission from government. And the taxation-–as a child in the Fifties we were taught the serfs had it so horrible in the Middle Ages because they had to give up 20% of their income to their landlords. Yet, the average American was paying close to 50% in taxes. Something was wrong. And then–-all of those lives lost in Viet Nam-–for what? To stamp out Communism? It turns out that the introduction of McDonald’s, rock music, and Levis into the Soviet Union probably had more to do with the demise of Communism than anything else.

I also remember watching all of those old Nazi films in the Fifties, the most memorable line being, “May I see your paperssss pleasssse?” That was the symbol of totalitarianism. That represented the horror in living in a police state. Yet, now Americans take it in stride to subject themselves to the grope and scope of the TSA, routine roadblocks on the highways and the prospect of a national ID card ( to chase down all those nasty illegals) that amounts to an internal passport, the very thing Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union imposed to keep its citizens in line.

All my life our freedoms and our wealth have eroded. The same political establishment keeps on getting elected and things have gotten consistently worse. As someone once said, the Democratic and Republican Parties are two wings on the same bird of prey. And now Congress has just passed legislation that gives power to the executive branch to use the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens (the National Defense Authorization Act). And President Obama has asserted and carried out the power to murder American citizens, with no due process, no lawyers, no arrest, no jury trial, no right to habeas corpus. Why didn’t the newspaper headlines read, in huge bold letters, “Martial Law Passed by Congress,” or “President Assassinates an American citizen and his son.”

All of those ideals I cherished as a child are now gone in the name of the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the undeclared wars overseas that is bankrupting our country, summing up, the war on freedom. The groundwork has been laid; the last nail in the coffin of liberty has been set. Horror stories of botched swat-team drug raids abound. Swat teams descend on a person who has defaulted on his student loan. Vitamin stores are raided. These incidents are horrible enough. But the groundwork is now set which will bear the fruit of future horror stories commensurate of those involving the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The American people are not immune from this immutable law.

There is only one man who has been able to penetrate the ruling class barrier, who has challenged the establishment, challenged the status quo, stood up against the destruction of our economy and the confiscation of our liberties. That man is running for president. That man has never voted to raise taxes, won’t take a Congressional pension, always voted against big government, never went on a paid junket, always voted according to the Constitution, and always supported individual freedom and personal responsibility. That man is the only man, the only Republican or Democrat running for president who has the moral integrity, the knowledge and the wisdom to fully restore the greatness of America, that greatness promulgated by freedom and blossomed with a prosperity that no time in history can compare. That man should be the next president of the United States; that man is Dr. Ron Paul.

I urge all of you to recognize the true crisis we are in. Once freedom is taken away, it is almost impossible to win it back. Please educate yourselves to the situation at hand. If you do, I believe most of you would agree that Ron Paul is our last peaceful hope to restore the values of freedom, prosperity and peace.