Fiscal Cliff / Moral Abyss

Fiscal cliff

First a word about the looming ‘fiscal cliff:’  This politically-imposed day-of-fiscal reckoning will, I predict, be just another kick-the-can-down-the-road date that will come and go (probably extended) as our lawmakers continue to play out what has become a personal and political national habit.  That habit is, of course, to postpone, borrow, mortgage, take, or steal from the future or from those who still have some resources, so one can get what he (or the liberal element in our government or body politic) wants now.  That is the crux of the problem. 

It is the issue, on the political/industrial front, that Ayn Rand’s 1957 book Atlas Shrugged so ably explored.  

The ultimate reality, the real cliff, will be when the national well actually runs dry and the other guy’s well, who the political Robin-Hoods were counting on, also runs dry.  Extending or expanding the debt will not do for our credibility will by then also have run dry. Then will come the severe belt-tightening, the political austerity ‘solution’ and the historical knee-jerk-lets-find-a-scapegoat revolutionary response that is likely to follow.  One thing leads to another. 

   

My view is that much of our fiscal problem—personal and national—is trying to buy or otherwise procure what we can’t afford or need, or have no right to. It is to spend what we don’t have: the too big or too expensive house, the expensive car when a more modest one would do, or the newest electronic acquisition we think we can’t do without.  It is also caused by trying to buy or demand what is, by then, much needed health care once we have squandered our health by acquiring poor health habits—overeating, smoking and drinking, not exercising, taking drugs.  Vices (a word no longer in our national vocabulary) cost money.

Our problem is caused by our increasing entitlement mentality.  It is caused by the takers not knowing what it costs the givers to provide—or not caring. It is a lack of moral understanding and self-discipline.

 Moral Abyss

It is the moral abyss so many of us have fallen into that causes/contributes greatly to the above problems as well as our nation’s many other social problems.  It is, for example, the attack on the sanctity of marriage and the family, the practicing of unhealthy ‘relationships’ in and out of marriage, it is pornography, the killing of unborn babies, a lack of respect for and disobedience to the laws of the land, and most of all, a disregard, even a repudiation of God, His commandments and the eternal principles that lead to happiness. 

“For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.” (Henry David Thoreau) We have not struck at the root.  The root is moral weakness.  

We have become morally bankrupt and we are being forsaken by God.  He has to, because He is a God of justice. 

  

It is no wonder we have these problems.