Warehousing Humans
by Rick Fisk The words "The United States of America" carries different meanings depending on who you ask for definitions. One common thread is found in U.S. institutions. Social Security, the Military, The Supreme Court, prisons, hospitals, welfare. These institutions define what it is to be in the United States for better or for worse. Some, like family, public school and daycare are not necessarily government institutions, but they tend to define Americans both figuratively and literally. One cannot help but be shaped by institutions if one is associated with those institutions during formative years. Public schools were marketed to the electorate of the several states as a way to provide a superior education, yet the promise hasn't been met. The literacy rate has plummeted, private property has essentially been abolished and what we've really been given is warehouses for our children. Children do not learn much at government schools but at least somebody is taking care of them while we go to work to pay our property taxes, income taxes and sales taxes.
Since the 70's when the two-income family began to be the rule rather than the exception, a new institution has become part of our lexicon: daycare. Where we used to whisk away children to kindergarten, we now send them away as early as 4 months so that mommy can go back to work. The single-parent household has also increased the demand for this institution, facilitated by another defining institution – the no-fault, State divorce. Let's not forget the rejection of marriage. Many children are born to single mothers who have rejected marriage as a religious or state institution. So they sometimes rely on another institution: welfare. Over time, this warehousing of children has had several downstream effects. Now we are warehousing our old people. Why not? Like our refuse which just goes away somewhere to some nondescript and out-of-sight location, state-run and private "senior care" facilities have enjoyed a boom and become the refuse heap of the wisest in our societies. This not only represents our degraded level of respect toward the elderly, it separates our children from the elderly, thereby increasing the dehumanizing effects of these human warehouses. It is a natural consequence of being warehoused as children. The bond built by families that spent most of their waking hours together has been severed by our reliance on social institutions and programs – daycare, public schools, social security and elderly care facilities. The Amish are one of the few groups that stood against Public Schools and Social Security; arguing against the latter for the reason that it was their moral duty to care for their own elderly. Allowing the Federal Government authority in this matter would be a corruptive influence and weaken their own social and moral obligations to their own families and the God they worshiped. The Congress in 1965, when creating Lyndon Johnson's Medicare, exempted the Amish from paying into Social Security after a long and embarrassing battle between the IRS and Valentine Byler. The Amish take care of both young and elderly without the aid of warehousing or government handouts. By and large, their culture and society has remained strong while those who have succumbed to the modern conveniences (connivances) and "benefits" doled out by our new parental guardians are shuffling off children and old-folks into warehouses and ironically, generally perplexed by the social decline they witness. The weakened family bond created by our social institutions and government handouts has resulted in weak families. In turn, this has resulted in weak communities, weak states and a very strong central government which controls virtually everything we do while promoting the claim that we are the freest nation on earth. By now, a large majority of us have experienced an elderly care facility. With no real purpose left in life but to play bingo and sign over their benefit checks to the facility's fiduciaries, the elderly do not last long once they've been admitted, at least, not in my experience. My own grandparents lasted about 2 years. Thankfully, my grandparents were 99 and 88 at the time of their admittance and had already lived long and fruitful lives. When my grandfather died, he was just shy of his 101st birthday. But to give you an idea of the breathtaking quickness of his demise, at 99 he had taken both the written and the driving test in his state and passed with flying colors. That might scare you but he was quite a good driver. He surprised me. Less than a year after he entered the nursing home he could barely walk, much less drive. I have heard the claim time and time again that people really want to go into nursing homes. The care is good, or so they say, and this eliminates the burden on families. After all, when both parents have to work in order to keep paying their income taxes, credit card, mortgages, car loans, college loans and property taxes, there's no time left to keep the family together and there's certainly no place for an elderly relative. It would be easy to just write this off as the result of a generally debased morality. However, there's more to this than meets the eye. Not only do our government institutions corrupt our morals, there is a corruption of our currency which not only makes these institutions possible to finance, but virtually impossible to avoid if you are part of the middle class or working poor. It's ironic then that our belief in these systems has been based upon the premise that they are part of our collective moral obligation. Nothing could be further from the truth. These institutions corrupt our morals and restrict our rights to self-determination and practice of our religions. The realm of faith has been passed to government. Do you lack faith that your God will help you? Turn to the one true God that can: government. You aren't instructed that by turning to these institutions, you have to give up any rights to direct your child's moral development, give up your rights to own property, know for certain the value of your money and how long you may practice your profession. Furthermore, if you are a U.S. Citizen who relies upon social security payments, you can rest assured that the inflationary increases in your benefits will never keep up with the true inflation that is occurring due to a Federal Reserve and a Congress which won't ever give up its golden goose: The Federal Reserve. Retirees now are leaving the country in order that their dollars will actually buy them the goods and services required to provide them shelter, food and medical care. Contrary to what some say about the wonderful nursing facilities in this country, the elderly are tending to opt out. They don't want to be warehoused. We are losing one of our most valuable resources. Forced to drop out of society, the elderly can sit around and wait to die, or move somewhere they are appreciated and valued. Many are going to Mexico and South America rather than Florida or some nursing home close to their families only to get a visit once a month. At one time, our elderly lived with us, we cared for them and our children and communities reaped the benefits of their wisdom. Those who were institutionalized as children have been taught by example that this is the normal way to handle humans who are hard to deal with. Just look at our drug laws. We throw non-violent drug offenders into our prisons more often than we throw violent criminals there. Huge corporations have grown up to provide management of our institutions. It's a very big business and if we do not do something to break the cycle, we may find that there is no space between high school and the nursing home where we are not warehoused somewhere. Perhaps we'll all be working for the Post Office or the Ministry of Peace in Iraq during those years. Our institutions have been forced upon us. Nobody from this generation was given the option of avoiding them or rejecting their validity. The government and old media keep trying to placate us by claiming that we are incapable of planning for our futures or educating our children, but I don't recall anyone ever telling us that the price would be far more than the phony federal reserve notes withheld from our paychecks each pay period. The true costs, in both figurative and literal terms, were never disclosed. The whole system is corrupt and immoral and is built to trap all of us. It has been about seven generations since public schools were instituted. It only took one generation before the Federal Reserve and the Income Tax were enacted. Within the second generation of our public school system, the FDA, FCC, Social Security and a federal gun ban passed. It is my belief that these never would have become reality were it not for public schools. Karl Marx was a member of the first generation of Prussian public school graduates. It should be no surprise then that the same system in the U.S. would produce similar results. It's obviously possible to raise children with strong moral values in spite of their public schooling. Look at Ron Paul's family for instance. However, this is the exception rather than the rule. We are told that public schools preserve our "future." But perhaps the people pushing this idea envision a future much darker than is implied by the propaganda. We need to envision a future that sees public institutions as the exception rather than the rule. I see that future in the candidacy of Ron Paul. Ron Paul has been one of the few to even suggest that our public institutions, especially the Federal Reserve and the Income tax restrict our rights and are both philosophically and morally bankrupt. The rest of the field do not even acknowledge the corrupt nature of these institutions much less suggest that they be abolished. In fact, on the Republican side of the isle, we are told that more government regulation is required to protect the institution of marriage and family. Any more protection of family and marriage might just be the death of both. November 6, 2007 Rick Fisk [send him mail] is a 45-year-old software developer and entrepreneur. He is married, has 3 children and resides in Austin, TX. Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com |
