Message from Romania

Amerika is changing.

We had a new fence built this summer.  It is the most beautiful wood fence I've ever seen.

A Romanian carpenter built the fence - he an extremely hard worker.  As it turned out, our house sits on some very large rocks - so big that the carpenter spent a day or two jackhammering the stone just to place posts.  Though his English was poor, we happened to converse a little.

Mr. R said that he came to America in 2002.  He said while Oregon is very beautiful, Romania is beautiful too.  He said he did not leave his home country because of geography, but the government there.  Romanian people were very controlled and he wanted to be free.

R's drive for freedom must have been great; for the first years he worked multiple jobs and slept only 4 hours a day.  This continued until he got a job that paid well enough so that he only had to have one job.  He is glad for the one job and extra sleep because while he is very skilled, he is getting older.

But then R's face took on a sad countenance and his tone became terse as he expressed that America was changing - more and more like Romanian socialist tyranny than the freedom he sought she explained.  He was beginning to wonder why he came to the United States at all.

I felt sad for him.  But I felt sad for the rest of us as well, especially the younger generation who will not know of the freedom from government previous generations enjoyed.  They are or will be taught that government interference and expanding control is still "freedom" because they are free to choose their leaders.  Most dictatorships are democracies, so that alone will not save us or them.  Socialism always moves in the direction of government gaining more power and control over citizens and industry.  It takes a revolution to regain individual freedom - like what is happening in Venezuela now.

R is right: It's easier to stop slipping deeper into a bigger governent hell, than return to liberty.  We have entered a period of mob rule.  On a happier note, R has another fence to build.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground."  

-- Thomas Jefferson 

"Government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough 

to take everything you have."

-- Barry Popik

"Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual."

-- Walter E. Williams