Stealing Dreams, Creating Nightmares

In my lifetime, I’ve had more dreams than I care to think about stolen from me. Well, perhaps they weren’t stolen, perhaps just postponed. The most significant occurrence was probably when my first publisher went out of business due to embezzlement. The owner and his son managed to lose several million dollars. Though they spent several years in prison, the money was never recovered. Several creditors were never repaid. The company’s assets were sold and the money split amongst them. My contract was never fulfilled and I was denied any chance to further promote my book unless I wished to self publish. In short, my dreams of becoming a best selling fantasy author, or even one who could make a decent living at it, were dashed upon the rocks of a cruel publishing industry.

This, however, was just one dream. I’m sure that many others disappeared in the same fashion when this publisher went under. There were likely several dozen authors in the same boat as I was. Indeed, I was better off than many since at least a thousand of my books were printed before the publisher went under. In fact, my book was one of the last to come out. I’m willing to bet that there are many other authors involved with that publisher who had been promised publication and never saw even one of their books in print. At least my dream had partially materialized.

Those lost dreams, however, are but a drop in the bucket compared to the dreams government has dashed. My dream was a rather lofty one. There are dreams out there that are less ostentatious. There are millions of dreams government has stolen and millions more that will be lost in the years to come. Why? Mostly because government demands a piece of every dream one of its “governed” might have.

Many a story I have heard about the authoritarians destroying the dreams of the less fortunate as they try to make a better life for themselves. There’s the story of homeless man in California who dreamed of getting an apartment by shining shoes. After he obtained a shoe shining kit he decided to provide a service to others rather than beg in order to make a living. He was just about to make his dream come true, he had nearly saved enough to remove himself from the homeless lists, when the government stepped in and turned his dream into a nightmare. They had found out about his industriousness and they wanted their share in the form of a $400 small business registration fee, or license, or some such thing.

Then there’s a story out of South Carolina about a business which provided a service where girls who were particularly proficient at a practice known as “African hair styling” were paid to braid customers’ hair at the request of the customer. These girls were harming no one, had no complaints from clients, and were providing a valuable service, yet the government deigned it necessary to crush their dreams when it decided they had to be licensed to braid hair. They even went as far as creating a nightmare by fighting the business in their (stacked against the public) court where it was decided these girls either had to pay up and become licensed or quit braiding hair and earning money.

From shutting down bars for allowing smoking to harassing delivery men for bringing biscuits to your home, there is no shortage of stories of over reaching government changing the dreams of hard working folk into nightmarish scenarios. Most of these licensing and regulation stories have nothing to do with keeping the public safe and everything to do with legalized extortion. Mostly they prove that the laws and regulations put in place are not there so much to protect the people as they are to keep the poor from improving their lot in life and prevent competition from challenging the already wealthy and established businesses in the community. It’s a protection scheme designed to keep the rich and powerful safe and the poor dependent on them for work.

Despite these obstacles, there are still some who manage to make their dreams reality. There is still opportunity in this country, albeit mostly opportunity for those who already have at least a little bit of wherewithal. Yet as one tries to gaze into the future, as one listens to those who claim to have some form of insight, one may ask oneself how long this might last. The laws and regulations keep piling up on each other. It becomes increasingly difficult to afford the dream or even know what it takes to buy it. It becomes increasingly likely that soon only those who are already well off or already have large, corporate businesses will be able to pay the bureaucracy its protection money. Until the massive government is curtailed, its agencies cut and the money it wastes given back to the people it was stolen from to spend as they see fit, the future looks bleak, the dreams continue to fade and a nightmarish reality pervades our waking hours.

Then there’s the Federal Reserve. The elites who run this business, the business of creating debt money from nothing, have an extraordinary power to destroy the dreams of millions. They have the power to inflate by putting trillions into circulation or to deflate by removing trillions from circulation. They decide which big banks will remain in business by giving them billions in bailouts and which will fail by refusing to grant them money. They do so without proper oversight from the elected officials the public trusted to do just that.

This group of spiteful elites believes they have the power to decimate the simple dreams of a vast majority of the common folk in the United States of America. Indeed, central banks across the globe hold similar beliefs for the people they supposedly service. This world wide fiat system created by the wealthy elite was designed to enslave the populace, not free up men to pursue their dreams. It is set up to make everyone dependent on them and to create a system where nothing is privately owned and all private property is collateralized to the banks so that when their money becomes worthless they will have all the real wealth already created.

The common folk now serve the central banks that were supposedly set up to serve them. The taxes they pay go mostly to pay off interest on government debt rather than going to something productive in society. It should come as no surprise, then, that the Federal Reserve fights to maintain secrecy. The push to audit the Fed creeps along slowly and is kept hidden in a bill that would give more power to this monstrosity that has been forced upon the American people. Despite the increased power it would be granted, the Fed fights to remove the amendment that would require an audit. They claim that such an audit would threaten its independence. One might ask, why should they be independent? Aren’t they supposed to be held accountable to the people or their representatives? Shouldn’t they be at least as transparent as any other government organization? This attitude they hold reeks of secrecy. Secrecy suggests deception. Deception suggests criminal activity. It seems to me the Fed is afraid of being audited because they’re afraid of their dirty deeds being discovered. They’re afraid the American people will discover just how they’ve destroyed so many dreams.

The Fed needs to be audited, their fraud discovered, and then their institution abolished. The federal government needs to be scaled back, its spending curtailed and its functions limited to those enumerated in the Constitution. State and local governments need to recognize the value of private property and private business and stop believing they own it all and demanding tribute from those who simply wish for peaceful human interaction. This is how liberty flourishes. This is how dreams are realized. This is how we wake up from the nightmare to a bright new dawn.