by Allen West
When it comes to fiscal, tax, regulatory, and monetary policy, we must choose between policies that will grow the private sector economy and those that will grow the public sector economy. While the stock market seems to be doing well for the moment, what would happen if the Federal Reserve stopped printing money? Furthermore, what does an exploding Dow Jones really mean for a struggling small business owner who cannot get a loan from his local small community bank because of the onerous regulatory mandates of Dodd-Frank?
When we choose between the opportunity society and the dependency society, we also choose between wealth redistribution (through an expanded government) and wealth creation. Progressive socialists think it’s unfair that some have more than others and that in the name of economic fairness and social justice, we must force people to pay their fair share. But the reality is that we need policies that enable all to achieve prosperity and success. Constitutional conservatives believe in helping those less fortunate, but doing it by giving a hand up, not a handout. As I’ve mentioned before, we believe the safety net is there to catch those who may fall while climbing the American ladder of success. The net should help them bounce back up and continue to climb, not encourage them to lie there as if swinging in a hammock. Conservatives believe the best safety-net policy is simply to allow tax-exempt charitable contributions. As our “brothers’ keepers,” we can best determine how to help by assisting the local community, church, and charitable organizations of our choice. Instead we have the government in the business of expanding distress, despair, despondency, and destitution for its own political gain, and it becomes an insatiable consumer of individual and private sector capital to feed its social safety-net policies. The failure of Detroit and other inner cities demonstrates the ineptitude and inadequacy of central government welfare policies.
The opportunity society encourages exceptionalism. The dependency society encourages relativism and a necessary subjugation of the individual will to that of the state. The dependency society is about making everyone’s success and ability relative to everyone else’s. In the end the dependency society produces a graduating class of C students. The opportunity society produced two brothers who flew twenty feet in the air in 1903 and a man who flew to the moon and back just sixty-six years later.
The opportunity society tells individuals that their rights, as granted by their Creator, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The dependency society confuses privileges with rights and sells everything as a right: the right to own a home, rights based on sexuality, a right to birth control—that one I can’t really understand. What prevents manufactured women’s rights advocate Sandra Fluke or anyone else from walking into CVS or Walgreens and picking up a pack of Trojans for the weekend?
When the state tells individuals everything is their right, eventually they will have no rights. It’s a tactic employed by poll-driven hucksters to enable politicians to organize Americans into collective herds and drive them to their eventual slaughter. The herd mentality overtaking the American electorate will be its downfall. When we no longer see ourselves as individuals, we surrender the power granted by our Creator and fall for political gimmicks.
Such political gimmickry is part of the other dilemma confronting the American republic: the choice between politics and policy.
The republic cannot continue without policies promoting the fundamental governing principles established in our Constitution. We can’t guarantee happiness, but we can promote policies that allow each of us to pursue happiness. Policy means telling people the truth and not pandering to collective groups. Unfortunately what we have now is politics full of insidious gimmicks.
For example, during the 2012 election cycle, we were bombarded with the idea of the 1 percent versus the 99 percent. We’re all Americans, so aren’t we all in the 100 percent? But Saul Alinsky’s twelfth rule for radicals (isolate the target) works so well, why should the Left change tactics? And since the American electorate is so misinformed and so easily manipulated with the help of a complicit media, is it any wonder they fall for the Left’s gimmicks? But America isn’t about where you were born or where you’re from. After all, how is it that thousands of refugees who arrived from war-torn Vietnam with literally nothing now have successful businesses and second-generation Ivy League–educated children? The whole 1 percent chant was just a political tactic with one aim: divide and conquer.
I’m sick of hearing politicians say, “I’m for the middle class, everything I do is for the middle class.” I’m waiting for the leader who stands up and says, “I’m for America and all her citizens.” There’s no such thing as a fixed middle class in America. There’s no caste system here preventing citizens from rising to whatever level of achievement they desire.
But through political gamesmanship, barriers to success are created, with the only solution being government-driven guarantees of achievement, outcomes, and results. Then social engineering usurps individual will and replaces it with the statist goal of turning people into “sheeple.”
Politics gave us the abject insanity of the “War on Women” in the 2012 election cycle. I will never forget Sandra Fluke taking the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, to talk about women’s rights, followed by that celebrated serial adulterer, former president Bill Clinton. Hypocrisy, anyone?
That’s the nature of politics. Through microtargeting and divisive segmentation, the political machine figures out what buttons to push to maintain power. And voters fall for it over and over again. They reward the impostors and charlatans.
This dilemma, between politics and policy, is what Americans must overcome to safeguard the future of our republic. Do we want to elect statesmen or pop culture icons? Do we now believe all it takes to lead is to be fun and cool? Statesmen recognize the issues and provide solutions—not sound bites, but principle-based results that will benefit the safety and security of this nation. I fear national-level elections have become nothing more than a version of American Idol.
It always makes me laugh when someone comes up to me and says, “You’re Allen West, right? Well, I don’t agree with anything you stand for.” When I ask them, “Exactly what is it you disagree with?” they’re always unprepared, and their response is always, “Well, I don’t want to get into that here.” I love being able to respond, “C’mon, what is it, you don’t think we need tax reform to promote small business economic growth? You don’t think we need to develop our own energy resources in order to stop sending taxpayer dollars to those who want to kill us? Don’t you believe in getting away from occupation-style warfare to more strike-oriented operations?” And on and on, as they stand bewildered.
Too many Americans are no longer paying attention, and so they too stand bewildered. Yet we must all answer the question ourselves or have it answered for us: what do we want for the future of our American republic?
Do we want an opportunity society, or a dependency society?
Do we prioritize preeminence of the individual, or dominance of the state?
Will we choose individual exceptionalism, or collective relativism?
Do we value wealth creation and expansion, or wealth redistribution?
Will we bet on economic freedom, or economic enslavement?
Do we stand for principle, or for party?
Do we want policy, or politics?
After you answer for yourself, think about the legacy you’ll leave your children and grandchildren. Will it be a legacy of liberty, or servitude?
I am constantly amazed that standing strong for liberty has made me an outcast, an American ronin, to so many. But I cannot believe I’m the only one who will step forward to be a guardian of this American republic. At least I hope I’m not.
Chapter 13
SERVANT LEADERSHIP VERSUS SELF-SERVICE
If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to preve
nt its ruin.
—SAMUEL ADAMS
If there is to be a long and healthy future for our republic, there must be a restoration of servant leadership. At the time of this writing, our nation is embroiled in countless political scandals.
In Benghazi, on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, our embassy in Libya came under attack. The greatest and most powerful nation in the world did nothing. Two former US Navy SEALs fought to defend sovereign American soil against Islamic terrorists, and they too were abandoned. They were ultimately killed, along with the ambassador and one other American. Many more were seriously injured. Afterward, members of the Obama administration purposefully altered intelligence reports and misled the American people. Yet administration spokespeople and pundits say this is irrelevant, a joke, and a circus sideshow.
The Internal Revenue Service has been caught targeting certain Americans and groups based upon political ideology and other beliefs that happen to be contrary to those of the party in power. Tax records have been leaked. Nonprofit applications delayed. Yet once again we hear “there is no there, there” and this is all just a deception. Some progressive socialist pundits, such as Lawrence O’Donnell at MSNBC, even agree that Americans should be targeted and that the IRS acted appropriately. “Revered” individuals like Julian Bond, president emeritus of the NAACP, compare the constitutional conservative grassroots movement, the Tea Party, to the Taliban. We have an attorney general who manipulates the truth and has targeted members of the free press.
And yet there are no consequences, no ramifications, and no condemnations.
How did we come to this point? How is it that the arrogance of officialdom has become so blatant that someone like Lois Lerner of the IRS can plead the Fifth and be sent away on “paid leave” at a cost of $177,000 to American taxpayers?
We have become so enamored with the cult of personality in America that we wouldn’t recognize a servant leader if he or she walked up and shook our hand. We have accepted tyrannical demagoguery as the norm. Even worse, in the case of President Barack Hussein Obama, we have lowered the standard of leadership to having a nice smile, giving a good speech (with teleprompter), and being likable.
I believe the election and reelection of Obama were among the most conspicuous acts of denial in recent years. Voters just stopped paying attention. They accepted consistently bad behavior and rewarded it. Then they wonder why they get more bad behavior. Of course many in opposition dare not challenge the behavior because they’re too obsessed with race and political correctness.
In Obama’s case we’ve enabled affirmative action to find a home in the nation’s highest office. There you have it. I said it and I stand by it. America fell for the gimmick candidate, disregarding every fact and warning sign in the rush to have “the first African-American president.” We were told to shut up, and a complicit media became part of the scheme.
What’s next? What type of gimmick will we rush to accept as a leader regardless of qualification, leadership, or principles? The first Hispanic president? The first gay president? The first transgender president? The first Muslim president? (Oh, wait …) How long will we follow destructive cults of personality just to appease the gods of political correctness?
If there is to be a future for this republic, we must elect good leaders, not highly marketed, well-politicized petty usurpers and impostors. The nation has become so infatuated with the politics of personal attacks and character assassination that we sit back and allow political ads to drive our decision-making process.
Will we ever reclaim the sense of character found in those early patriots who gave us the great blessing of liberty?
We’re not being governed, we’re being ruled by incompetence. But everyone is still having fun, right? At least our president is. He hobnobs with pop stars and celebrities and plays lots of golf. His wife has nice clothes and a new hairstyle and gets lots of magazine covers.
You see, sometimes we get the government we want, but this time we got the government we deserve. We deserve this because we’ve stopped believing in holding elected officials to a higher standard. We deserve this because we’re too lazy to do due diligence and recognize when we’re being deceived. We deserve this because we reject the truth in order to accept the lie that makes us feel good. We have become comfortable with living selfishly in the now rather than ensuring a lasting legacy.
We’ve become a joke.
Why has our nation become lost? Lack of honor, integrity, and character in our elected officials is a bipartisan issue that has infected both sides. When did we start living in Bizarro World where up is down, right is wrong, everything is inverted, and nothing is as regular order would have it be?
It happened the day we started to devalue true leadership. Our nation’s leaders no longer seem to have a moral compass. Unlike the samurai—or even the ronin—they have no code of honor.
One of my top five favorite movies is The Last Samurai. While not historically accurate, the film portrays the late-nineteenth-century shift in Japanese culture and that country’s Westernization. Of course my favorite character was Lord Katsumoto, who embodies the essence of the samurai, one who serves. Katsumoto, along with all samurai, devoted his life to seven moral principles, the code of Bushido, which is the way of the warrior:
Rectitude (gi)—Principles of moral virtue
Courage (yu)—The ability to face difficulty, danger, or pain fearlessly
Benevolence (jin)—The desire to help others and prevent selfish arrogance
Respect (rei)—Esteem for excellence (Of course, I learned in the US Army that respect is earned, not given.)
Honesty (makoto)—Fairness and the attempt to do your best at all times
Honor (meiyo)—Integrity in your beliefs and actions
Loyalty (chugi)—For me that means loyalty to my family and the core principles of God and country
I loved that movie because of Lord Katsumoto’s selfless devotion to the principles of his code. I too am inspired by a code, to be all I can be and to always seek to improve. That is my code of Bushido.
I chose the title American ronin because I have been characterized as something of an outcast. There are those who try to dishonor me and my service to this republic. But I will forever pledge my sword to the defense of this great nation—not for myself, but for my country and for the legacy I can secure for my children. I have lived an imperfect life, but I have sought perfection in my service to this nation.
We need men and women who embody a code of service not to themselves but to this republic and its core principles. We need a citizenry that will not settle for the lesser of two or three evils but that will recognize and demand truly principled and selfless leadership.
We do not need more “political family royalty” in America, nor individuals who believe they are entitled to office. We need term limits in our federal elected offices, including the House of Representatives and the Senate. No one should stay a member of the House or Senate longer than twelve years. I believe the more time people spend in Washington, DC, the further removed they get from the people who sent them there. As Thomas Jefferson said, “Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.”
I know the future of this American republic is secure because we always seem to find a new generation of principled leaders at just the right time. We know something is amiss in America, and there are many who fear for the future. But I say fear not! Sometimes we have to hit rock bottom to learn the important lessons.
Ronald Reagan’s 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing” is often quoted, and there’s a reason why. He perfectly captured the uniqueness of this nation and how tenuous is our hold on what makes it so. Even now, a half century later, his words are relevant:
If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the mo
st unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man.
It is indeed our time to choose.
PART V
CONCLUSION
Chapter 14
BRAVO-FOXTROT-OSCAR
I belong to the warrior in whom the old ways have joined the new.
—LORD KATSUMOTO IN The Last Samurai
In the military we truly love acronyms—some folks even get achievement medals just for coming up with new ones. Some of the acronyms that will never get an award are MRE—Meals Rejected by Everyone; CRS—Can’t Remember “Stuff” (we actually use a different word for stuff, but this is after all a G-rated book); FUBAR—“Messed” Up Beyond All Recognition (ditto); and MSH—Make “Stuff” Happen (ditto again).
BFO stands for a Blinding Flash of the Obvious—which is what I intended you to take away from this book. Through my life story and my commitment to this country, I want to challenge Americans to think about what our nation was, what it is now, and what it shall be. I believe the answers are right before our eyes. We just have to take the time to make an informed choice.
We have to turn off the brain-draining reality TV shows for a few hours and read, think, assess, and challenge ourselves to be better.
My last duty assignment in the US Army was at Fort Hood, Texas, in the Fourth Infantry Division. The division has a long-standing and heroic history of service in combat to our nation, and I was honored to serve in the “4ID” in combat as a battalion commander in Iraq. The division’s motto comes from its theme song:
