Politics

While we're a young country, we've had some bad things happen to us.  Some early wars, civil war, terrorist attacks, natural and economic disasters have all been experienced throughout our history.  And as bad as some of these things are, they're not the worst things that have happened to the country.  The worst things were seemingly unrelated and not very bad.  In fact, at the time, they were heralded as improvements on what we had.  Put the three things together and one might contend they were the events that have created the current messy socio-economic-political situation we're in now.

The Law of Unintended Consequences states that there will be unintended results for every human action.  It doesn't take much to see this law's effects.  Prohibition is a great example.  A law designed to improve the morality of the country instead made us a country of law breakers; the increasing disrespect for law and order that we've seen over the last century can be traced to this event.  Giving welfare checks to unwed mothers has produced more children to more unwed mothers, making the problem worse.  The examples are endless.

Almost a full century ago, a few cancer cells were introduced into our body politic.  Early on, it might have been easy to kill them, but a diet of oligarchy, fear and the introduction of communist/socialist ideas made for an unhealthy body politic.  These cells have grown and metastasized and will be very painful to remove.

One particular year in our history shows what happens when the populace becomes complacent and jealous, doesn't pay attention, is manipulated by the media, or is lied to by those in power.  What happened in 1913 that was so bad?

• The Constitution was amended to permit the federal government to levy an income tax
• The Constitution was amended so that senators were elected by the citizens of each state rather than being appointed by the state legislatures
• The Federal Reserve Bank was introduced

The articles in this series will explain why each of these "innovations" was such a disaster for our nation.

To be continued...