What will you do with your new-found liberty? Many of us will find it bracing and exhilarating. Many others will hate it with every fiber of their being. The basis for these very disparate reactions will be the same: you will be on your own. We had better be making provisions to save the Commonwealth of Virginia. We are well-positioned to do so, yet I see very little if any effort directed towards doing so. Denial abounds. Our governor concentrates on his national aspirations and kisses the federal ring. Our state senate concentrates on playing a role in national democratic party politics by thwarting our efforts to advance liberty.

We all are complicit in the moral decay of America. No, I don’t mean pornography and gay marriage; neither of which are any business of the government. It is our shameful embrace of the almighty nanny state, our desire to create a perfect and painless society, our willingness to use force against our fellow Americans in the attempt, and our childish belief that it was even possible in the first place; all of these contributed directly to the Leviathan that many believe is at long last in its death throes. I watch with more than passing interest as the federal Leviathan starves to death while eating its own entrails.

The very idea of social engineering is based on a false premise: that a society produces an ever-growing pile of surplus wealth that can be redistributed, that we can afford as a society to support everyone who is incapable of supporting themselves, and that all those people need to do is either make a convincing case for it or muster a majority to vote for it. We allow this to happen. In many cases, we are a party to it. We stopped understanding economics, which is little more than simple arithmetic. I blame public education among the major culprits.

This belief in infinite surplus wealth introduces “moral hazard.” Americans stopped saving for a rainy day and went on cruises instead. Why? Because our home prices were going to go up forever; because Alan Greenspan was some kind of “Maestro” who had made it possible for us to send our productive capacity to China and still be rich anyway; because we could afford to deficit-spend forever with not even the sky being the limit.

So we oppose bailouts for banks, but not for ourselves (Social Security). What the hell is wrong with us?

The math behind social welfare systems is impossible; see this piece by Karen Kwiatkowski at LewRockwell.com

Our complicity in moral hazard is outlined by Charles Hugh Smith in this piece at “Of Two Minds”. Also read his previous pieces titled “The Great Reset” and “Promises That Cannot Be Kept.”
The author says succinctly “We need a national conversation about reality, not wishful thinking.”

The “promises” piece shows that federal promises, otherwise known as “entitlement liabilities,” are being accumulated at the rate of about $5,000 Billion per year, more than one-third of GDP. The social engineering / welfare systems are going to either be drastically scaled back, or they are going to collapse. Those are the two choices. Pick one.

But the present political establishment fully represents the status quo, and the maintenance of the status quo. They have their heads buried so far in the old paradigm that “Extend and Pretend” is the only game they know. So, that is the game they will play. Until they can’t.

There will be a debt deal. The national debt will be raised. The can will be kicked down the road, one more time. At some point, perhaps quite soon, the markets will say “No Mas.” And then, the ceremony is innocence is drowned.

“The Second Coming”

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats

1919