Gunner Quinn
Editor’s Introductory Note: This young man is prayerfully seeking a wife. He is offering an after-marriage gift of up to $50,000 to whoever introduces him to his bride with $18,000 after their marriage and another $16,000 to the individual who provided the introduction after the first two births of healthy children born to him and his wife, for a total potential gift of $50,000. For further details, see this link to his article posted on February 24th, 2025: My Quest For a Wife.
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(Continued from Part 1.)
We are not a wealthy society and it is doubtful that we are on the cusp of a golden age. We are a dying republic likely at the stage of “twilight’s last gleaming” before descending into 1,000 years of darkness unless it turns around really quickly. There is still time. When asked, what type of government we had in 1787 at the close of the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin remarked, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Our republic is currently riddled with corruption that it has been recently accused of being a “oligarchy” and this cancer is pervasive as a kleptocrats pilfer the rotting scraps on our nation’s bones. We owe more money than any country in human history. On average, our countrymen have lost much physical vigor compared to their counterparts of the 1960s with the average man being 30 pounds heavier composed of most likely not muscle and are the most medicated our nation has ever been. Morality is dying with a miniscule population of morally upright, virtuous people. Civic virtue is gasping for air: In the Second World War, boys would try to get into war and many succeeded. Within a generation, legions of grown men would dodge their civic duties starting in Vietnam. Even the smallest things reflect our decline: the currency in circulation has very little intrinsic value.
I absolutely hated writing that paragraph, but would you rather someone tell you the truth or feed you propaganda? Since some speculate we are on the verge of a “golden age,” perhaps we should see where we are and then you can decide whether we are and what to do about it. Even if you believe that we are on the verge of a golden age of great prosperity, there will be some hints for you to use as eventually the greatness is squandered or the gilding wears away showing its tarnishing base layer.
There is a meme in which pokes fun at the idea of men thinking of the Roman Empire. Rome provides many lessons for us: We should ask ourselves are we Rome? Will we go the way of the Romans? If you are not a scholar in antiquity, I will provide some brief vignettes of Rome sprinkled throughout this series and you can decide for yourself whether and at what stage we are at.
Rome was maintained for centuries through civic virtue of people dedicating themselves to a system of laws, rules, and responsibilities for the greater good. You can study the decline of Rome in many ways including through its currency which declined in value through devaluations in the precious metal content where Gresham’s Law (of the bad money driving out good money) was first evidenced on a large scale. Societies are founded and maintained on civic virtue which begins with honesty. Everyone will say that they are honest, but so many are not and it is leading to the unraveling of our society where people will unfairly take advantage of others. Honesty is when you do the right thing when no one is watching: it is also giving the cashier back money if she somehow gave you extra or returning a wallet that was dropped. It is also just telling people the truth in relationships and not trying to use people for your own means in an unfair way. W.C. Fields said years ago “You can’t cheat an honest man. He has to have larceny in his heart in the first place.”
A dishonest man equates work with drudgery instead of what God has intended for man and the shirker is always looking for a way around work to get ill-gotten money. Con artists play on the greed of their marks which is why they are so effective as many times the individual being conned thinks he is getting the better of someone else. It is so unfortunate and symptomatic of our collapse as a virtuous society brimming with morality and charity as was so prevalent even in the recent past. Societies full of honest people have little need for locks, security, OPSEC, or anything other precaution as people of virtue. We are no longer in that society across the United States and only isolated pockets usually in rural areas where you are likely to find honest people where a handshake still means something.
The “First Rule of Holes” is to stop digging. It is also usually the first rule of bleeding is to stop the bleeding. Usually stopping something will lead to the slow eventual repair as the body begins to heal. The same can be said with our country. Over the last 4 years, over ten million (officially) and some people have said more than 20 million people have entered this country illegally or been invited in through various “refugee” resettlement programs. While I do understand the plight of people who live in bad circumstances around the world, we simply cannot afford to take on more people when our own citizens need help.
I keep my finger on the economic pulse: most American people who we know are not doing well. They have been suffering under the weight of increasing taxation (a special irony is that in many states if your property goes up in value not because you did some improvement, but because of inflation and then you get a higher property tax bill), regulations, unemployment due to the growth of technology or outsourcing (where you lose your job to a foreigner), inflation, and shrinkflation as manufactures decide to cut back on product sizes just to get you to purchase more often. People are suffering and at least some of the bleeding has stopped as the new Administration has promised to evaluate things that are in our own national best interest. Economically self-interest is actually a good thing because it allows people to concentrate on what is best for them and their own self-interest actually best benefit others when they honestly trade with each other developing greater efficiencies.
Now, that the bleeding has stopped and we have stopped digging holes, is it possible to return to a great past version of America? And what will be the necessary level of reform?
The Titanic: An Extended Analogy
My family has been in the preparedness movement for generations, so we do have a wide variety of experiences to draw from including an ability to put things into easily digestible formats. The “Titanic” has been part of history for over a hundred years, but the story has been seared into public consciousness so almost everyone alive in the world could recognize some basic facts that the “Titanic” was a ship that sunk a long time ago and many people died. Few people could name the captain, but many people could name at least one passenger as her name has become synonymous. There are few things that are vital takeaways from the Titanic for a beginning and seasoned prepper.
The Titanic was planned as a grand, luxurious ship boasting the latest in technology. Technology is something most people play with, but few understand the ramifications. Consider the Titanic passengers who probably would upon boarding think that this ship is incredibly safe given its all steel construction. It was not advertised as unsinkable, but there were some safety components including watertight compartments. Unfortunately, once the iceberg was struck the ship was mortally wounded and no matter how early they started boarding the lifeboats, many people would die as there were only lifeboat spaces for half of the people and rescue was far away. Only about a third of the passengers and crew ended up surviving the tragedy. Our “ship” is sinking and will founder unless dramatic changes are made. Minor progress is being made, but overall it is probably not enough to change the direction. We remain hopeful, but continue our preparations.
Once the iceberg had been sighted, one theory states that Titanic was doomed most likely unless the Captain had decided to make a hard turn to port continuing at full speed. He decided to try reversing the engines while trying to turn, but the forward momentum carried the ship into the iceberg. There is enough forward momentum right now to probably sink the United States. I use the “probably” very intentionally, so please don’t go in the streets saying the end is near because “Single Farmer” says so. Do your own research and come to your own conclusions. There are certain things that need to be done and hurdles that need to be cleared to thread the needle and bring the country back to fiscal sanity and allow healing to take place. Only time will tell if we should have even prepped more moving more off the proverbial table. Our family has been at this for three generations, so we can do and have done a lot more than most people who have either just became aware or who are not currently living on a productive farm.
The constant question among preppers who understand history is are we Rome destined to decline from the virtuous Roman Republic to a successful empire to an empire riddled with foreign invaders, intrigue, and inevitable decline? Many have said that we are a late-stage republic, but the question is how late the hour is. Is it a few years as many suspect, a few decades, or a century of decline? Rome took centuries to decline, but as the “meme” states we are just the “Roman Empire with Wifi and memes,” so this acceleration could be much faster.
The greatest threat to our “ship” both the collective one that we are all on board the “Western Civilization” and our personal ships is of debt. Personally, we keep our ships afloat through watching our spending to make sure that we do not sink by our own hand monitoring and pumping out the “bilge” water. However, there is not much we can do about national spending which you can think about as a great storm as no matter how well we control our personal economy, we cannot do much about the freewheeling spending party happening in Washington. Right now, they are spending our country into the sewer through a 1 trillion dollars (1,000,000,000,000) of new debt added to the national debt every 90 days or so with no end in sight.
Are we getting anything of lasting value for all of this spending? Some cite the military protecting us from foreign foes. One of the core purposes of the military is to protect us from “invasion.” Tens of millions of illegal immigrants crossing our borders and some even being flown in at taxpayer expense as “refugees” sounds like an invasion. Many individuals who have studied this issue have pointed out that besides being a financial burden these people who have been described as “geniuses” and “cultural enrichers” are also bringing crime and disease along with eventually all of their relatives. From the sample variety pack our nation has experienced over the last few years, native-born individuals wonder if as many people have stated if these people are so wonderful why did they not improve their own countries? Many Americans do hope that the return policy limits on time have not been exceeded for these foreign “imports” and they can be returned post haste to their countries of origin, so they can continue their enrichment activities in their own environs.
The national debt has become a festering wound probably gangrenous on the body politic. We are mired in a quicksand of debt even though our nation has a very large income of over 5 trillion, but unfortunately we are spending over 7 trillion a year and owe over 36 trillion. We do not have a revenue problem, but a spending problem. Is reform possible? Of course, but it will take a great effort in saying “no” to people who are used to feeding at the public trough. In the previous decade, it was suggested that removing a mere penny from every dollar would get us out of this mess within five years reducing spending by one percent per year and just allowing natural growth to take care of it. The problem is that in the “logic” of Washington politicians and the media who will bring sad stories of people who cry about a reduction on an increase, so instead of it going up by five percent it would be up four percent. Reducing the rate of increase is equivalent to a cut and any cut is simply unacceptable even if the number is higher the following year than the previous year as it was just not at the even higher anticipated level.
Cutting something or anything is easier said than done. There is no category in any budget of “waste” as like beauty it is in the eye of the beholder. Every dollar spent is actually someone’s job or benefit and this spending is what is keeping the “economy” going. Most of the federal spending is actual mandatory. While our nation is massively in debt and our own infrastructure is crumbling, we have been paying the salaries for all of the first responders in another country. Many families in our country struggle to pay property taxes to pay for first responders in their town, but our government has been supporting another country’s first responders.
There are some who say that we can raise taxes and many politicians for decades have ignored immutable laws of economics and our nation has been punished through crippling taxation and inflation as a result. At one time our country had over 90 percent taxation and growth was stagnant with little revenue as it is difficult to be productive if you were going to give over 90 percent to the government. Ronald Reagan as a movie actor limited how many movies he made yearly because he was not going to work for 9 cents on the dollar.
Back in 1990, there was a push for a luxury tax and it had disastrous and unintended effects. When most people think about taxing expensive cars (over $30,000 was considered “expensive” back then), jewelry furs, aircraft, and boats, you would think that people could afford the tax, so it would be just to raise money, but the tax actually damaged the country more than it raised in revenue as all people are economists (we all make choices in how we spend our time and money, so each one of us is an economist) making decisions that are best for them. Many people decided to not buy American-made boats, but to have them made elsewhere. East Coast boat manufacturers were affected and this led to American job losses of thousands of people employed building boats. The Founding Fathers were actually very concerned about the idea of taxing one group and giving benefits to another such that the Constitution originally only allowed a per capita (per person) tax (see Article I, Section 9, Clause 4), not based on income.
Every year for decades a politician with his eye on the future gives a report of the most egregious, outrageous, silliest, or some other adjective to describe programs that most people would not support. It usually gets people talking, but nothing usually happens. Years ago there were complaints about the government paying tens of millions of dollars for “psychics” to answer vital questions (This would be hilarious if it was not tax dollars going toward it) and these programs were ended because of a lack of results. Now, the waste is just as tragic as every wasteful tax dollar comes out of your family’s pocket either directly or indirectly through inflation and eventually everyone will suffer if hyperinflation occurs because of fiscal irresponsibility. I am sure every taxpayer can find better things to do if taxes were reduced, but finding the “will” to cut these programs is often difficult. Depending on how people define waste, it could be in the billions easily.
Everything starts somewhere: All of this spending started with the “internal improvement” debates in the 19th century of paying for a road in one state descended into the largest back-scratching operation in history.
(To be continued in Part 3.)
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