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The United States is the last remaining superpower. Sure, China wants to be one and Russia thinks it still is, but we’re the last one standing.
That means a lot of people think we have a lot of responsibilities that extend well beyond our borders. We’re on the hook if we do stuff and we’re on the hook if we don’t.
Plus, as a wealthy nation, a lot of people come to use with their hands out.
Yet the phrase “America first” has risen to prominence, and it should have. Why? Because too many of our politicians are wasting our money helping people in other places when Americans need that help.
As Joe Biden pledges billions of dollars to Africa and to climate boondoggles, families who lost everything in the recent hurricanes in North Carolina are sleeping in tents in freezing temperatures.
North Carolinians are camping out, some of them in tents, amidst snowfall. Federal aid has been slow in coming or never came at all for too many hurricane victims. Yet the Democrats seem to have endless amounts of taxpayer money for their pet projects. The Biden-Harris administration, in the last few months, has sent millions of dollars to jihad-loving Gazans, terrorist-controlled Lebanese, and (most recently) Africans. Not to mention the illegal aliens living comfortably in hotels at U.S. taxpayer expense. All while U.S. hurricane victims wait for federal aid that doesn’t come.
Let’s think about that for a moment.
There are always Americans in need. There’s homelessness and poverty, so there are always people we could help here at home rather than sending money all over the world to people who would gladly hate us for free.
Yet in most of those cases, the programs that would be created to “help” would probably make things worse, so we don’t spend as much time arguing there as we might otherwise.
Right now, though, there are natural disaster victims who are suffering in the wake of a hurricane that hit a part of the country where that just doesn’t happen. They weren’t prepared for it. They couldn’t be prepared. It would be like digging in for a monsoon in the Sahara.
And rather than help those people out, we’re sending money all over the world.
America is second, all too often, and that’s a problem.
Look, if we didn’t have any real issues here, Americans would trip over themselves to send money to these other places. As it is, plenty do so of their own volition.
What we don’t need is the federal government taxing us during economic difficulties, refusing to help disaster victims here, and then sending it to people on the other side of the world.
And a lot of people are starting to notice.
Helping other people is all fine and good, but we need to help ourselves first. Someone who can’t pay their bills shouldn’t be expected to donate to charity, after all—especially if they’re maxing out credit cards to do so—so why are we going massively into debt as a nation, failing to meet the needs of our own citizens, then handing the money to pretty much anyone who has their hands out if they’re not American?
It makes absolutely no sense.
I’d be less angry about it if we had no debt and budget surpluses year after year. If our fiscal house was in order, I could probably accept the idea that we’re helping others simply because we can.
The issue is that we don’t have our house in order. Our house is on fire and we’re pouring gasoline on it and claiming that it’ll extinguish it just fine, then throwing a bit of napalm on it just because we can.
That’s where we’re at right now, and it’s absolute insanity.
Then again, there’s no reason to expect any better from the dipsticks in Washington. There never has been and, at least so far as I can see, there never will be. It’s up to them to prove me wrong.
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Politics, culture, a dose of snark, and a profound love of personal and economic freedom.
When the great Ted Williams (and his brother) were kids, their mother was a fanatical Salvation Army worker, engaged in helping the poor. Unfortunately, she was often away until well after midnight, thus ignoring her own children. Williams mercurial nature might be explained in part by this; certainly this affected him his whole life.
So ... take care of those close to you first, then address the rest of the world.
We're currently at a point now, if we pay the minimum in interest on our $36 Trillion dollar deb and borrow no further funds, we will literally *never* be out of debt as a nation. You could never run a household successfully like the Federal government is run. If we don't do something drastic to scale back spending and refinance our debt, our economy, and with it, our nation, *will* collapse. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. Ethiopia borrowed billions from China and couldn't pay their debts. Ethiopia is now a vassal state for the CCP. Why would the Chinese invade the US, when they can simply outlast us, and buy our country through unpaid debt? I would argue our nation is in the largest amount of peril it's been in since declaring war on King George III.