This week both Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama ramped up things in Crimea. However, Obama merely dialed up the rhetoric, while Putin edged his troops into Ukraine, fortifying the Crimea.
Late last week, the United States issued a warning to Putin: go through with the elections and annex Crimea and we are going take serious economic sanctions against you.
Putin, who knows we are 17 trillion in debt — and to the wrong people — merely ignored that red line.
As it turned out, these “economic sanctions” turned out to be nothing more than seizing individuals’ western assets belonging to some of the leaders working with Putin.
It is hardly a deterrent since most of the Russian leaders had moved their assets out of the West long before this invasion. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin simply called Obama a “prankster” and laughed in his face.
Impotence.
World leaders laugh at Obama’s weakness because they know you can’t go to war with a monumental debt and dwindling military resources. You can have the most sophisticated armed forces in the world, but that can’t outmatch the proper application and leadership of those same forces. A low tech, pre-planned Russian invasion is demonstrating that to our government.
This is America’s reckoning for developing a reckless foreign policy and continued self-destructive spending. Our leaders in Congress are ingratiating themselves at the taxpayer’s expense.
They are growing wealthy on our hard labor and putting the nation’s security at risk. They are destroying everything America has stood for and has made us great, in a bacchanal feast of greed and excessive vices.
We have come to the point in which people are realizing they can vote to empty the granaries and are ignoring the real world implications of doing so. We refuse to accept the reality that monumental debt leads to more than just exhausted entitlements.
How very characteristic of the American people that they see matters only in how they affect themselves.
Unfortunately, we can’t go back now. Once the ideology of a republic has been compromised in this manner and people have grown reliant on their entitlements, then there is no going back.
Our enemies have now recognized this fundamental problem in America and exploited it for their own gain. They laugh in our face at our weakness, while running amok in the lands we shed blood to free.
Some of you are trying to fight this trend, but it is mere teaspoons of water in an ocean of poor education and personal immorality.
The only hope for this nation is to elect and stand by leaders that do things on a personal belief that small government governs best, and a willingness to accept less so that future generations can get more. We must educate our children that it is immoral not to work and accept money from government. We must make them understand that taxes are not investments, nor are entitlements charity.
So far, efforts by more rational-thinking adults have been nothing more than yelling into the wind.
Thomas Purcell is a nationally syndicated columnist and host of the Liberty Never Sleeps podcast hour and author of “Shotgun Republic.”
If you would like to read more about Thomas Purcell’s thoughts on this issue you can read more at LibertyNeverSleeps.com
