DEAR EDITOR:

It appears political parties are trying to entice voters to their side with promises of more entitlements. Over the years, both have continued to move to the left with the Democrats leading the way. So where has that left us? We are $25 trillion in debt with no real way to pay for it. This is lunacy! No country in the history of the world has successfully debased its currency to the extent we are doing without causing a total collapse of the economy. And we won’t either.

No one will lose even $1 that the government owes them. The problem is that it won’t buy much at all. Its value will approach that of the paper it is printed on. Here’s what has happened over the years. When the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, $1 could buy a considerable amount of goods. More than 100 years later, the buying power of that same dollar was down to just 4 cents. In the year 2000 a certain amount of goods cost $1. Today, those same goods cost $1.50. That is inflation. The rate of the devaluation of our dollar is increasing now almost exponentially.

So, I say this: We should not even be debating whether these new entitlements are needed or deserved. We simply cannot afford them. It is impossible to do this without destroying this nation’s wealth and lives of all of us, rich and poor alike.

Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813) was a Scottish advocate, judge, writer, historian and professor of universal history and Greek and Roman antiquities at the University of Edinburgh. He said:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”

Am I the only one that this absolutely frightens? Come on America, we’ve got to wake up before it’s too late!

KEITH McCOMB