Why

One might wonder why I comment on U.S. politics, as I often do. Is it any of my business? Why do I even care? I live, after all, in Canada. I no longer have any U.S. business interests.

I responded to a comment on my last post with some of what I am writing below, but I thought it might be a good idea if I went into a little more detail about my thinking on what is going on in the United States, so here goes:

What happens in the U.S. affects us all, wherever we happen to live. As a child, then a teenager, then a young man I always admired the United States for being a bastion of freedom. I was particularly impressed by the foresight of the founding fathers and the Constitution they crafted. Now, as an older man, I am deeply troubled by what is happening in the States. When its empire collapses, as I believe it will, from the weight of its excesses, we will all suffer. I hope that the U.S. will regain its former status, and the respect of nations and individuals worldwide, but it will be a long and difficult (maybe impossible) struggle.

I love America as a country and I have many American friends that I am worried about. In the very unlikely event that Ron Paul should win the Republican nomination and actually be elected President, he would be but one lonely voice in any effort to make things better, but maybe if enough people (especially the young) got behind him, it would be a start. He may be running as a Republican, but his philosophy is libertarian and and us such he is the one and only candidate who would actually move to dismantle the excesses of the United States federal government and to restore some political and fiscal sanity.

Ron Paul would not be a miracle worker. The problems in the United States are so pronounced that it will take nothing less than a complete fiscal collapse to restore some sense of equilibrium. The United States is bankrupt and has been for years. Still, every year it spends even more money that it does not have, propped up by the printing presses at the Federal Reserve, and the fiscal hole that is being dug gets deeper and deeper. If anything, Ron Paul and his advisers would work to cut expenses, prune entanglements worldwide and work towards restoring self-respect and optimism in many millions of disillusioned Americans.

I used to operate a small trucking company in the United States. Would I open another business there? No. My wife and I planned, years ago, to build a home in the Carolinas somewhere and to spend a lot of our retirement years there. Will I still do that? No.

Why not? Because I am not a pawn. I don't like being told what to do by an overbearing government. I am not a criminal. I don't need the prying eyes of the alphabet soup of American super-agencies scrutinizing everything I say, everything I do, and monitoring my every movement. I am looking elsewhere to do the things I had hoped to do in the United States. Millions of other individuals are making the same decisions as I am. Should anyone in the United States care whether or not I invest there or spend any time there in years to come? Maybe, if you consider that I would never be a drain on the American economy, would always pay my own way, and would never cause anyone any worry about whether I appreciated the good things America had to offer. I would not be ungrateful. I would not attempt to do harm to my adopted home. Consider many of the immigrants that are arriving daily in The Land of The Free. Are they self-supporting? Will they work to help build up the United States or instead strive to tear it down?

Individuals like me could simply write off the U.S. and go on with our lives. The problem is that whenever the U.S. sneezes, the rest of the world catches cold. If the American Economy capsizes, the Canadian economy will tank too. The ripples will be felt in Europe, the mid-East and in China, Japan, Korea, even Russia. When there are no buyers, factories close. Services fold. People are unemployed, lose their possessions, their homes, their security. The United States carries on its shoulders a weight and a responsibility larger than that of any nation in the history of mankind.

That's why I care. I care about myself. I care about my family and relatives. I care about my friends. I care about all of the innocent people who will suffer because the American Empire spent itself into bankruptcy.

That's why I write about American politics from time to time.