Did You Vote 4 Stuff?

Nov. 6, 2012, has finally come and gone. Good riddance. Now, allow me, please, to ask a question. Did you "Vote 4 Stuff?"

I’ve pointed out in a previous blog the day the dream of a self-reliant and independent America died. Forget about “Dreams from My Father,” I’m talking about Dreams of Our Founding Fathers and the day those dreams were packed away in a lockbox, possibly never to be seen or heard from again; the day the light from the “beacon on the hill” was extinguished.

So let’s get to it… “Vote4Stuff.” What is that? In case you didn’t see it, and with the proliferation of political advertisements it’s quite possible that you missed it, allow me, please, to bring us all up to speed.

“Vote4Stuff” was a “nonpartisan campaign” conceived and produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire with the help of some of their "Hollyweird" friends to urge young voters to use “social media to express the issues most important to them in the (upcoming 2012) election.”

You can go here and see the original YouTube video (if you can get through the 2:38 of mindless Holyweird drivel) that kicked off the “Vote4Stuff” campaign. Basically, what is presented is a number of disingenuous actors/actresses attempting to use, I guess, what they think is a humorous video replete with the “F-bomb” to get people to suggest "things" that they are looking for as an outcome to the 2012 election and then post those suggestions to social media. The promise is made then that the “stuff” posted will be judged and the best “stuff” will be incorporated into a final “Vote4Stuff” video” that will be published by DiCaprio and Friends.

Allow me to make the tie-in. The whole “Vote4Stuff” campaign is based on what people want. What people want from the government? What people want from a government that is already borrowing or printing 40 ¢ of every dollar it spends to give people “stuff” and yet all these rich, self-engrossed actors/actresses want people to suggest what more they want.

No longer is it, “Ask not what I can do for my country,” but in direct contradiction to one of the Democratic Party’s heroes we are being egged on to ask, “What more can my country do for me?” Are DiCaprio and Company so ignorant as to suggest that elections and government exist to fulfill the whims of the people and to give them everything they need or desire rather than to get it themselves?

Might I remind Mr. DiCaprio, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” What rights? “…certain unalienable Rights…” endowed by our Creator including “…Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” No less…no more! I’ve stated this before and it bears repeating, there is no guarantee to happiness there, only the promise that the government will get out of the way as well as guarantee your right to pursue what you find needful to obtain happiness; whether you ever gain that happiness is not part of the equation.

Consider this my friends…"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."

Boy, that quote about the demise of our once great constitutional republic as it collapses into democracy and rule by the masses from one of our Founding Fathers was dead on. Who said that?

That quote, my friends, has been attributed by some to one Alexander Tyler (Scottish lawyer, writer, professor, and historian writing well over 100 years ago) and, no, he wasn’t writing in regard to the United States, he was writing in retrospect about the fall of the once great Athenian Republic. Whoever wrote it, the truth of it seems to be self-evident. With regards to its application to the United States of America, does the shoe fit? I'd venture to say that we're in the final stages of the "selfishness to complacency" stage and heading for the apathy and dependency stages.

I’ve been to the “Vote4Stuff” Facebook page, and although I find talk of a video that “might include your submission,” I am unable to find any place where that final collage of young people talking about what they wanted from the election exists. I would have loved to have seen the final result of the campaign so if anybody can point me there, please do.

In the end, I need to ask, do these people understand that our government is what we make it? If you give no support to that government what do you really expect to get back? While DiCaprio and Company are urging people to base their vote on the candidate whom they think will give them the stuff that they want, does DiCaprio ever pause to consider that some of these kids actually think that getting what they want is what it’s all about? Who’s paying for all this stuff, the rich; the “one-per-centers,” aka DiCaprio and Maguire and Friends?

We now live in a country that is on the brink of fiscal collapse and we are encouraging young people to get what they want through the vote. Have our public schools dumbed down our children so much that this is what we have come to?

Witness this post: “Vote4Stuff” – October 19…“It's the weekend! What fun weekend things would you vote for in 2012?”

An uneducated electorate promotes what? You answer the question, I’m all ears.