Being a believer in republican government, capitalism, and free markets is starting to get very frustrating. Every day, we patriots watch our government grasp a little more power, spend a little more money (or . . . a lot more money), and move us further down a very, very dangerous road. Most of my fellow countrymen don’t seem to see it happening—”after all,” they say, “the government has to do something.”

Maybe it does, though I’m not even sure about that. If the government has to do something though, this certainly isn’t the right something.

Presidents Bush (R) and Obama (D) have spent the last six months on the same mindless economic path, throwing insane amounts of money into the partial nationalization of banks, car companies, insurance companies, and more. This has not stopped our economic slide and, in fact, the slide has accelerated every time the government makes one of these unconstitutional, socialist ‘investments’ in what used to be a free market economy.

To fund this idiocy, the Federal Reserve has had to significantly increase ‘injection’ of new money into the banking system. In other words, we’re printing new money out of thin air to ‘pay’ for it all. Of course, when Germany did this in the early 1920s it led to inflation, followed by hyperflation, followed by a massive economic collapse, the collapse of the Weimar Republic, and the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Yeah . . . let’s do that.

Meanwhile, Obama is seeking to give the Dept. of the Treasury even more unconstitutional power than it has already been granted under Bush’s ‘bailout’ and Obama’s ‘stimulus’. Now, if Congress passes this ludicrous legislation, the Treasury Department will have unilateral power to seize pretty much any business they think needs to be seized to ‘keep’ the economy is ‘stable’. How have the nationalizations of AIG, GM, Lehman Brothers, CitiBank, and so on done so far? You know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

We have been very lucky that we have only once let things get so bad that it put the United States at serious risk of collapse—the Civil War in the 1860s. The Great Depression in the 1930s, had things gone differently, might have ended with a nation teetering on collapse too, but World War II intervened, reunified us as a nation, and reinvigorated our economy. I am not one to begin spouting ‘fire and brimstone’ talk about the end of America, but, on the other hand, I’m not so naive to think that the United States could never fall apart. It can.

If we continue walking the road to socialism, if we continue blithely nationalizing industries, if we continue operating outside of the bounds of the U.S. Constitution, and if we permit inflation to take hold and eventually lead to hyperinflation . . . well . . . that might be the end of it. Mark my words.

I weep for the republic.