Home again.
We were up around two in the morning and the night before I was swamped with the worst feeling of abysmal loneliness I have ever experienced. It was partly due to living in a trailer. We'd been living in a trailer for the three or four days and my feelings toward the trailer swung back and forth considerably during that time.
Coming in from the damp, sharp cold of the Minnesota wilderness, I felt cozy within the trailer despite the pervasive plastic smell and the general drapery of clothing and bedding. However, shortly thereafter another feeling would creep in; that of vulnerability.
We were located on Wilderness drive, but it felt more like Wilderness Central and the thin walls of the trailer seemed only to heighten the cold outside, the wind, the miles and miles of marshland and forests all around, dotted with deer stands and hunting shacks.
I felt this isolation keenly the night before we left. My brother described the wind in Minnesota as "old." It felt that way, an ancient, cold wind driven across the northern plains, the vast empty spaces before getting entangled in the pines and hardwoods that surrounded us.
"Water sublimates," Dad said, during the visit, when we realized the dryer didn't work.
Keith and I paused.
"Even I don't know what that means," I replied dryly.
"What does it sound like?" was his response.
I wandered down the narrow hallway with an armful of damp clothing, pondering. Drop "sub-"clearly a prefix indicating below and "-ate" clearly a suffix indicating a process and that leaves "lim." Lim was not ringing any bells.
"I don't get it," I confessed, when Dad wandered through, book in hand, reading glasses perched low on the bridge of his nose.
"To transform," he explained, 'but in leaps. To go from the mundane to the sublime is to sublimate."
"Oh. You're saying the water will experience transfiguration by evaporation."
(Actually, I didn't say that, it being so clever. I came up with it later. I said something far more banal at the time.)
"Will someone please speak English?" loudly complained Keith. "How did you all learn those words?"
"We read a lot," I explained, draping the damp clothing over the dining room chairs. "And then we banter," I concluded with a little grin.
He gave me the evil eye.
The parents of my brother's wife life on a farm straight out of a faerie tale. It has gables, eaves and windows in unexpected places and gardens on all sides, spilling out of old wheelbarrows and buckets. It's heated by a wood stove, has a huge library that holds the musty smell of old books and a Sewing Parlor.
Outside it was just as magical, with tiny sheds and houses and barns everywhere, like a town for elves. In the back pasture countless cars slowly die from rust, some upside down, some sinking into the rich, black Minnesota soil.
They appear ghostly from between trees, they lie shoulder to shoulder in solidarity under the grey and lowering sky. There are also stoves, axles, snow mobiles, deer stands and shovel heads. They spill out into the field like the foam on a wave and cattle wander between them.
Our first night I talked with one of the sisters. She and her husband run a dairy farm, thirty head, seventeen replacement cows, one bull. They own over a hundred acres which are devoted to corn and winter wheat for feed, they buy soy and minerals to supplement that.
They can't make a living; what they bring in for the milk doesn't cover the expenses. The government dictates to them how much cows to milk in order to artificially manipulate supply and demand. As a small dairy farm, they can't absorb the prescribed losses as well as the larger farms. They are throwing the towel in.
I wanted to weep. I hate the way my government works right now, for many, many reasons. Hate is a strong word, but it's true.
We drove up through South Dakota into North Dakota and the rolling farm lands sunk deep into my soul. The beauty of the land, the strong imprint of American hard work, sacrifice, it all evoked such a strong response from me. Those early farmers worked from dawn to dusk, they pitted their own strength against the land. They didn't ask for hand outs.
They expected that everything they worked for would be passed down to their children. The idea that the government would take a portion of what they worked so hard for and then give it away would have been unthinkable. If someone in their community needed help, the community helped, each according to their ability.
It makes me so angry. We are looking at one of the largest redistribution of wealth in the history of this country, but the primary purpose of government is to protect private property.
"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist." -John Adams.
"Property is the fruit of labor. Property is desirable, is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich and hence is just encouragement it industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently to build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence...I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good." -Abraham Lincoln
But decade after decade, we have voted in a Congress that voted against these principles. We can't even afford the entitlement programs we have now. We accrue five hundred million in debt every single day. Our deficit this year alone, at 1.4 trillion dollars, is a number greater than there are stars in the Milky Way. This year alone. Our total debt, near twelve trillion, is equal to the economies of Great Britain, Australia and China combined. (Defeatthedebt.com)
What about helping one's neighbor? I hear some of the talking heads on the left mention how we are a stingy country, how providing health care is a moral issue and why can't we, the wealthiest nation in the world, not provide it for our citizens?
Perhaps we could, (though I think that the rationing and poor care so evident in other countries who have adopted this system show clearly that no nation is wealthy enough to support this self imposed burden) but more importantly, to ensure health care is not the role of our government, that is not the way our Republic was set up. That is the role of a Nanny state. Is that what we want? Do we really want to trade our individualism, our liberties for the percieved securities of an overseeing, all providing government?
When we endow the government with the power to provide a service or a perceived right, we also endow it with the power to take that service or right away. It ceases to be an individual right. We have traded our individual responsibilities for dependence upon the government.
We risk either way. Individually, we risk not providing ourselves with something we need. But handing it over to the government means that we risk the government not being able to provide it and we relinquish control.
Our founders, they risked. They risked their lives, their livelihood. There was no safety net. They laid a foundation for us to move forward on. And we, I can't help but conclude, have squandered it. Are we industrious, are we thrifty? Hell no. We want it all, we want it now. We've waved our open hands to the government and piled on our own personal debt. We say it is someone else's fault, we say the system is stacked against us. I have been as guilty of this as anyone else.
But no more, damn it. I no longer feel that my children will have a better future than I. I feel that unless I act, unless I take accountability, they will have it worse and they will have it worse because of my selfishness, my apathy.
I have wept more times than I can count this late summer and fall, thinking about my country and what it's come to. I'm infuriated by the arrogance of Congress. I feel like my country is slowly being eaten alive.
The government created the problems in health care affordability, by the mandates and regulations already in place. It refuses to consider actual solutions. Instead, it demonizes, distracts and makes deals behind closed doors in order to put more of the same in place. I cannot wait for 2010.
I was going to write more about the wedding, but I've run out of time; I have to start cleaning. But here is one last quote, from the Supreme Court of 1936:
"No man would become a member of a community in which he could not enjoy the fruits of his honest labor and industry. The preservation of property, then, is a primary object of the social compact... The legislature, therefore, had no authority to make an act divesting one citizen of his freehold, and vesting it in another, without a just compensation. It is inconsistent with the principles of reason, justice and moral rectitude; it is incompatible with the comfort, peace and happiness of mankind; it is contrary to the principles of social alliance in every free government; and lastly, it is contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution."
