The most vociferous cheerleaders for bigger governments are government employees who want government jobs for their children. Such nepotism is always at work in governments, so providing jobs for relatives is a big reason behind the tax increases necessary to fund such growth.
As governments grow larger, the tax burden must increase. As that happens, those who don’t work for the government must automatically become poorer. As poverty increases, more people become willing agents for overthrow, and are susceptible to internal and foreign agencies. Governments fight the possibility of revolt by increasing their both internal and external security forces. That, too, increases taxes and makes the ever-wealthier tax recipients into a privileged class of people. Buttressed by unions and labor agreements, they are unified in their belief that they are “entitled” to their pay, benefits, and pensions.
While they get more automatic increases, taxes must be continually raised, and everyone grows progressively poorer. Soon, the only people who can get decent medical care are government workers and their most reliable protectors, all of them utterly dependent on taxing power to provide the various welfare benefits to which they believe themselves entitled.
Today, the once-free peoples of North America are sinking rapidly into slavery. Fewer and fewer are allowed to operate freely. More and more are controlled by the various agencies springing up to provide a degree of regulation desired only by those who look upon such activities as opportunities for their own employment and enrichment. Regulations, like more obvious forms of taxes, also make the government regulators richer and the regulated people poorer.
As poverty and regulations increase, a third form of taxation joins with the various direct taxes and regulations. Inflation sneaks in as lightly as a mosquito. Suddenly, there is the appearance of more money. That illusion turns to painful reality when the Zimbabwe $100.000.000.000.000.00 (one hundred trillion dollars) bill will barely buy a loaf of bread.
At some point, the security forces stop getting paid, turn to looting, and the impoverished peoples are usually conquered. Usually, slavery, imprisonment, and death are meted out among them. The entire process could have been easily stopped back in the beginning, but it is never stopped for long enough to keep The Culture of Death from taking over.
Oddly enough, The Culture of Death is rarely, if ever, brought to a halt by those who are going to be killed by it. The French Revolution, and Napoleon’s subsequent and pointless slaughter of a generation of Frenchmen, could have been stopped dead in its tracks if a few other Charlotte Cordays had assassinated a few more revolutionary leaders. The Communist Revolution could have been stopped, as well, by the assassination of Lenin and a handful of other people at the right time. The madness of WWII could have been averted by a couple of assassinations, as well.
Interestingly, many of the people knew that a few assassinations would save themselves and their families. Only Charlotte Corday, who murdered Marat, originator of the Reign of Terror, in his bathtub, had enough courage accompanying that understanding to actually do something about it.
The Culture of Death is stopped so infrequently by such simple things that we must consider that such attacks are so deserved that they reflect God’s will. Today’s readings, for instance, concern the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham argued with God, Who agreed not to destroy the cities if He could find ten innocent people within. He could not, because the cities were destroyed. We can but pray that we have enough good people to keep that from happening, here.
