Pogo

A Cartoon character many years ago, Pogo, said "We have met the enemy and they are us."

It seems that this comment is no truer than it is today. The United States is apparently its own worst enemy.

As a student of history I have studied the Roman Empire. Many historians believe that the Empire fell because of events inside the empire instead of because it was beseiged by barbarians. One historian, Ferdinand Lot, believed that the Roman Empire fell because the productive capacity of the Empire could no longer support the Roman beauracracy. Others believe that it fell because of moral decay. Although there is no denial that there were threats outside the empire, the real problem was its own weakness.

The lessons of history repeat themselves. Our society inside the U.S. is following a similar pattern. Drugs have corrupted the moral character of many of our sons and daughters and have enslaved them. No wonder that militant Islam in Afghanistan supports the manufacture but not the use of drugs. The drugs provide income to the new barbarians and corrupt European society. Our drugs come from the South plus they, especially synthetic drugs, are manufactured within our own borders.

Media has hastened the decay by proclaiming titillating values which they sell through music, video, movies and CDs. And for those who desire hardcore, they can deliver through hotel channels, x-rated video stores and through the internet. It is big business. The prostitution trade and exotic dancing businesses are also there to pick up their fair share of the cash.

It is no wonder that Islamic countries view the U.S. and Western Civilization as being demonic and being the "Great Satan."

Now vice and drugs are not newcomers on the historical scene. Modern civilization has made it easier to succumb and has pioneered the delivery of vice to itself. Instead of depending on natural hallucinogentic drugs we have technologically improved them making them more addictive, powerful and easier to get.

But enough of internal decay.

As a society we are becoming less productive. Many of our best minds go into law. Half of our attorneys spend time coming up with complex regulations, the other half spend their lives trying to get around the regulations or litigating to destroy the regulations. We pass legislation called "tax simplification" and then find that we only have more and more rules. However, the accountants and tax experts get richer and richer and the common man is left still not knowing how to figure his taxes. If we depend on the IRS and get advice from them, we find that we can not later rely upon the advice. Think of the loss of productive minds just in the legal area.

In the name of integrity, U.S. businesses must comply with Sarbanes-Oxley internal controls, whereas our competitors in other countries do not. We compete in the world market place with one arm tied behind our back and then find ourselves surprised when our own U.S. companies buy airplanes from Airbus in Europe instead of from Boeing in the U.S. We find that we are held hostage to Mideast oil whereas France the home of the wonderful French wines and Perrier has the majority of its energy supplied by nuclear. From a manufacturing viewpoint, our hard manufacturing is being shut down in this country one plant after another and is moving overseas where manufacturing is cheap and raw materials are being subsidized.

The beauracracy in our country continues to grow with state and federal employment ever growing and independent business being increasingly regulated. The regulations continue to grow as well. Compensation is now the big target by government against business. Recently there has been 400 pages of regulations promulgated so that you the shareholder can understand the compensation programs of companies. SEC regulators have piously proclaimed that these regulations will clarify everything. Ha! I challenge you to pick up any major company's proxy statement in April 2007 and tell me that you now understand this clarification. Meanwhile, a multitude of SEC people will continue to work to make things clearer, a multitude of attorneys, accountants and staff will work to comply and a multitude of non-U.S. companies will reap riches in the world market place knowing that they do not have to bear these costs.

Islamic militants try to blow up our planes, their efforts have engendered a vast security effort to keep us safe. Think of the number of homeland security employees and the new industry of people that check you before you enter the planes. At the end, people are employed but there is no positive production but we must have them for our protection and safety. Think of the amount of non-productive costs that the terrorists have burdened our civilization with and this fits right into their plan. Likewise, we have wonderful computers today. One group, hackers, attack our computers and electronic security and the other half of the computer people try to keep them out of our systems. Today computer security keeps us from taking full advantage of the computer revolution. Government computers in secret agencies must be closed loop systems. Wow. One half trying to get in, one half trying to keep them from getting in. Not very productive is it; but necessary because of hackers who can cause damages thousands of times greater than a robery and serve only a fraction of the prison time if any. And the worms and viruses multiply.

Meanwhile our new barbarians, militant Islam, wait at the gate knowing that we have become morally rotten inside and that we are our own worst enemy.

We have "cleansed" God from our schools, society and lives and are left with ourselves, our drugs and our pornographies.

You see Pogo was right: "We have looked at the enemy and they are us."