"The back nine"...

Yes, Ryan, I am on my own, personal "back nine" when it comes to the state of this nation.

I don't think there is a single, solitary man or woman in the entire United States Congress that will actually do ANYTHING to change the current paradigm or spend, spend, spend.  The only question on any of their minds is how to spend the most tax-payer money they possibly can on the special "interests" that best represent their lobbyists and supporters.

No man or woman that is in any way a "contender" to the White House will do ANYTHING to change the fact that the President of the United States is a spokesman for those same special interests.  Once the word was out that every President since Reagan... and I am curious to hear someone (ahem) defend Ronnie now that it is common knowledge that he was fully aware and condoned the warrant-less collection of phone records by the DEA, and that every single President since has done the same or expanded the program... has completely ignored the limitations and protections promised by the Constitution, I really can't imagine what it is going to take to get me to trust someone in that office ever again.

There was a time when I was upset over the fact that I had to dip into my 401k retirement account to finish repairing and then selling my home in MS after Katrina.  Time was, I was worried that I didn't have a 401k plan in place since that time, either.  Now, I'm actually thankful that I don't have any of my money in an account where the Fed can simply force my provider to invest in government bonds rather than cash funds, practically forcing Americans to invest trillions more into already overblown government debt.  I have since used my earnings to pay down my own debt and live a much more sustainable lifestyle.  With any luck, my family will be able to support ourselves with only a fraction of the money that I was spending on daily living costs only 6 years ago.

Our government seems hell-bent on perpetuating what I consider to be a lie of horrific magnitude... that the United States is the "leader" and "peacekeeper" of the world.  We have (and still do) lead the world in many areas... the average standard of living being the most obvious... but the cost is unsustainable in the extreme.  The greatest generation that Ryan described in his last post was exactly that, not because they won WWII or survived the greatest global economic crisis in the last century, but because they learned (through necessity) that what was going to get them through the "crisis" (whatever it might have been) was individual effort and sacrifice, not government intervention and support.

What gave us all that universal "warm and fuzzy" feeling after we all witnessed the tragedies of 9-11, or Katrina, or Sandy, or any other disaster in the last 20 years?  It wasn't "government"... it was individual efforts and sacrifice.  That gives us faith in our country and our fellow man... not images of the Boston police breaking into private homes after the marathon bombing in search of a suspect.  Not news that every single email-text-cell call-blog post-URL visit is being recorded and saved by the NSA in an effort to win the War on Terror.

War on Poverty.  War on Drugs.  War on Terror.  In this regard, Ron Paul is 100% correct:  there is no winning this sort of war, and watching our freedoms and liberties slowly but surely disappear in the effort to win these un-winnable "conflicts" is the exact same was watching the slow and agonizing death of the United States itself.

As Ryan put it so well, I'll repeat what he said:

I will not comply!