The Hidden War

 Krayton Kerns
10.31.07

There is nothing charitable or compassionate about committing someone to a life of dependency.  Thank God for the 156 Congressional patriots who bravely sustained the President’s veto of the SCHIP expansion.  We are a nation at war but, unlike the far-away conflict in the Middle East, the battle that threatens our freedom most is fought in Helena, and Washington DC.  Sadly, freedom is losing the war against creeping socialism. 

The socialist democrats are attacking on two fronts:  Climate change and socialized health care.  I’ve written ad nauseam about global warming, so let’s look at government controlled health care.  Recent national data promoted by democrat pollsters states that 40% of voters support “free health care”, and the left is beating that drum incessantly.  Be careful with “free” offers.  Through out this nation’s history many people have been offered this illusion of getting something for nothing; trading freedom for security. One of the most famous bait-and-switch swaps occurred 130 years ago in Montana. 

It is October 5th, 1877.  In the foothills of the Bear Paw Mountains, Nez Perce Chief Joseph emerges from surrender talks with the General Miles and declares, “From where the sun now stands I will fight no more, forever!”  

With that proclamation and the wave of his arm he traded the liberty of himself and his people for land, housing, food, and universal healthcare.  No creeping socialism here, he swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.  Thinking he was headed home to his beloved Wallowa Valley, Chief Joseph instead was shipped to Kansas and he spent the rest of his life desperately trying to negotiate his peoples’ return to Idaho. 

A slave poses no threat to his master so Chief Joseph’s travels to Washington DC to argue his case, proved more carnival than confrontational.  He was a spectacle. Without freedom you are left to negotiate from a position of weakness.  This is called begging.  The great Nez Perce chief died in 1904 a prisoner of the socialist life to which he surrendered.   

Look around.  Montana’s seven Indian reservations are plagued by high unemployment, substance abuse, poverty, and illegitimacy.  You must either believe Montana’s native people are genetically predisposed to the aforementioned ills or they have been made that way by 100 years of socialism.  I believe the latter.  Once proud and self-reliant, their prosperity is now dependent upon their ability to beg from their government masters. 

Chief Joseph yielded to the strength of the US Army because so many of his chiefs and warriors had been killed.  He had no choice.  Honorably, he spilled his blood and the blood of his people to remain free, yet in the end, they lost it all.  With that thought in mind, why are we Americans so willing to surrender our freedom without firing a shot?   

Last week’s attempt to pass an enormous expansion of the SCHIP program was a test prodding by the socialist controlled congress to measure voter willingness to accept “free” government controlled health care.  There is no free.  The government has no job; they can only give you what they have first taken from someone else.  The SCHIP expansion was socialism on the installment plan to see how far we will let them go. 

 “For the children” was their battle cry. “To the children” is the reality.  Once we commit our young to the bondage of socialist government control they will never regain the freedom we surrendered.  The Nez Perce descendants of Chief Joseph learned that the hard way and, “from where the sun now stands” they will pay that price forever.  Let’s not repeat their mistake.  In my mind it is freedom beyond all else.