The Conservative Front

David Kirkham is the organizer behind most of Utah’s Tea Parties. He sent this in an email today.

“At a moment like this, the last thing we can afford is four more years of the tired, worn-out, old theory that…prosperity trickles down…” –Barak Obama

Sadly, we now know President Obama meant it when he embarked on the path of the greatest wealth destruction in history.

I have witnessed the cruel consequences of callous governmental control across the world and its devastating effects on every day workers and their families. As a young missionary for the Mormon Church in Peru I witnessed many things I care not to remember…only now I feel I must recount them to serve as a warning to the ever increasing governmental intrusion into our lives.

Peru is a desperately poor country. I served among the poorest people who lived in crowded slums which smelled like a mixture of the sewer and the dump–because there were no facilities for either. Living conditions were abysmal. Day after day throngs of desperate men waited in the town square hoping someone would give them a dollar or two for a day of back-breaking labor. To “control” food prices, the government instituted price controls–snitching neighbors ensured compliance.

I vividly remember walking through the Peruvian market places and seeing the bright blue and red labeling on bags of rice, “USDA, For Food Assistance Programs Only, Not for Sale.” The poor built their homes by mixing adobe bricks with their bare feet in the stifling heat–with water carried in from town on their backs. Many sold a day’s toil for a day’s worth of USDA donated rice and oil. Astonishingly, I witnessed entire containers of donated USDA Food Aid left to rot on the docks as no one would pay the required bribes to the local officials to unload the containers–all while children nearby went hungry.

One day we met a man who was ecstatic he had been able to purchase some empty 5 gallon USDA oil cans to make a door for his home. Seeing his plight, I offered to help him build his door. We gathered the ubiquitous beer bottle caps from the ground, then drove a used nail through the bottle cap. The bottle cap then served as a crude washer–to help prevent the can from tearing off the nail as ever present thieves tried to steal what meager belongings were inside the home. I pried open those USDA oil cans, flattened them out, and used a rock to nail those cans to a crude wooden frame so that man could have a door on his home. I will never forget the welcome sign on that humble man’s door: “USDA, For Food Assistance Programs Only…Not For Sale.”

Did fixed prices and massive governmental intrusion lift those destitute people from their despair? No, it didn’t. I know, for I lived and worked among those suffering people. I came to realize the government was not the answer to our problems. I came to believe, we don’t need the government to take care of us; we need to take care of each other.

Ironically, the “tired, worn-out, old theory” of trickle-down-economics is actually quite new. It was born when 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence and then defended it with their blood. They boldly proclaimed to the world they were free to produce, free to give, free to pursue their own happiness, and free from the confiscation of their wealth by looters and tyrants.

The old, bankrupt theory here is Obama’s. For thousands of years kings and rulers have looted their subjects. Then, the productive hid their greatest wealth–their minds–from the asphyxiating greed of those in power; thus, impoverishing all and creating a stagnate world of despair. Poverty will never be banished by turning everyone into beggars. I have seen the disease of wealth destruction–masquerading as wealth redistribution; it inevitably metastasizes into trickle-down despair.

Socialism is argued by some to be a means for providing for everyone. How’s that working out for the people of Peru? In a recent debate, questions like this were answered with, “That’s not Socialism.” Yeah, it’s only Socialism if it works. Since it hasn’t ever worked, we can keep holding out the idyllic, Utopian vision without ever having to account for any failures.