Opening Salvo on a Great New Blog

. . . and the blogger is none other than my elder son, Rob (or "R.F.", as he goes by on his blog) Fleming. The name of the blog is Life, Liberty and Property, and the first post is titled The Bedrock of America. The future of our country and the civilized world will soon be in the hands of his generation, and it's most encouraging to see more of them coming to the realization that America is now confronting the most important crossroad in its history, at least since the Civil War--a choice between the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, or the Land of the Bound and Home of the Helpless. God--and young people like Rob--help us to make the right decision!

Rob actually made his first foray into the world of online commentary in a post on Facebook a day or two before opening his blog. Just to display the sharpness of his insight, here is that post in full, courtesy of Rob:

Retrench America
by Rob Fleming

So as an engineering student I tend to spend at least 75% of my study time just doing math. Since I have been without class for a few weeks I thought I would brush up a bit and do some simple algebra. In 1965 the national debt was $317,273,898,983.64, and we had national revenue of about $650,000,000.00. So to make things easy the national debt roughly equaled 1/2 of the national revenue, not great but manageable. In 2009 the national debt is set to top $12,000,000,000,000.00, and national revenue is estimated at $2,200,000,000,000.00. Roughly said the national debt is 6 times the national revenue. It is estimated that the Federal government will spend roughly $500 billion on interest payments (roughly 25% of its income), this equates to an average interest rate of 4.17%. This being said if national debt and national revenue continue to rise at their current rates sometime in the mid 2060's interest payments on national debt will be larger than national revenue.

Not to worry though, the point when interest payments are higher than income will never happen. Why? The same reason I cannot afford a million dollar house, I couldn't possibly even make the interest payments. Lenders and investors will stop supplying money to the Fed long before this happens. Generally speaking we all like to point a finger at the guilty party, but unfortunately it’s not just one person or even a handful of people, its nearly ALL politicians. Our society thinks so much of itself that we forget there are limits. Maybe our congressmen don’t need to tour foreign countries to understand their problems, maybe understanding our own problems is more important. Maybe we don't need to fund that new football stadium, or the new mega mall. Maybe people who make bad financial decisions will have to learn from their mistakes the hard way, and stop trying to play the victim. Maybe we just cannot afford to overhaul health care right now, or to bail out every failing company with good lobbyists.

I think one of our biggest follies right now is trying to care for everyone. We have become the caring mother who is always doing for others, but stresses herself to death by age 40. We need to eliminate the notion of "credit" from politics, and instill the idea of "savings." Sooner or later we will have to pay back our debts, and yes we will have to make huge changes to do so. We will have to do without many things, but it is an unfair to place an insurmountable burden on future generations (as it is we need to spend no money for about 8 years to pay off our debt). This country has grown used to the government caring for us, some more than others. We need to look back to the days when hard work and Industry were the only ways to survive. You don't work, you die. You can't work, you do what you can and rely on the grace of others. We need to stop asking what can the government do for me and ask what can I do for myself and others. God gave us the ability to do amazing things, and I for one think it is time that we stand up and take care of America for a change!