The predicament that the United States and the world finds itself in is the result of prevalent wishful thinking. It is honestly and sincerely believed that you can avoid the inevitable consequences of behaviors and beliefs. God cannot be mocked: You reap what you sow. This applies in religion, morality, politics, and economy. It is a general principle: there are rules that govern the world. You defy them at your own peril.  

Many people are pointing to what has happened to Greece and warned that the same thing could happen here in America.  One need not pin the whole argument on Greece's situation.  America has seen its share of economic disasters.   Unfortunately, many Americans don't know that.  Either they didn't experience it (ie, they were born after 1970) or they don't know their history.  The general feeling in America is:  "That can't happen here.  Preposterous."  But it has happened, and it can happen again.

I have read some analysis about the Greece situation but I haven't seen anyone touch on this particular point:  As Greece attempted to figure out what to do with the burden that their some $500 billion dollars in debt was putting on their society, nobody proposed the simplest and easiest solution:  wiggle your nose, spin around three times and throw salt in the air, and then consider your work done.

This wasn't proposed, I suppose, because even Europe couldn't deny the intractable circumstances that they had found themselves in.  You see, in the real world, certain behaviors and attitudes will inexorably lead to certain consequences.  Case in point:  if you jam a knife into someone's eye, that person will die.  You can cry about it, and whine, and say you didn't mean it, but the dude is still quite dead.  Similarly, you can run up a huge debt building a socialistic society, and eventually, as has been famously said, you run out of other people's money.  In light of the promised bailout, Greece has not yet run out of other people's money, but rest assured, barring a change in behaviors or attitudes, they will.  Then they will all wring their hands in the streets wondering what on earth happened.  And what exactly happened?

They tried to cheat reality, that's what.

I was a pretty liberal fellow for most of my upbringing.  Being liberal has all sorts of advantages, chief among them is the warm and fuzzy feeling one gets when spreading the love around.  I became a conservative when I realized that it was more important to ground my beliefs and behaviors in reality.  I would be a liberal if only reality would let me.  Alas, it will not.

In America today, there are broad swaths of individuals who remain as I was:  they have all the highest of intentions but are under the sincere delusion that one can engage in activities with predictable results but, this time, not get those results.  The real liberals try and try again.  A case in point is in order.

Consider the massive taxes that citizens of New York City have to pay.  The rich especially have been hit, as they are asked to pay a disproportionate share.  (For perfectly good reasons, too!  They are selfish pigs and deserve to be gouged and their earnings given to the exploited class!)  What has been the result? A migration of rich people out of New York City.  When finally all the rich people decide they've had quite enough, the government will have no one else to tax except the millions of people who have come to expect the government to provide them service upon service.  And what will happen then?  Do we need to guess?  What happened in Greece when 'austerity measures' were proposed?  Riots, my friends.  Riots.

Now, the idealistic liberals know this full well, and they have a solution.  They are working very hard to implement it.  It is very simple:  create a situation where the rich people have no place they can migrate to to escape the tax burden put on them.  Indeed, this is why Obama and his administration is taking such pains to nationalize everything they can get their greasy palms on- they mean to make it so that no one has any city or state to retreat to.

Now, Greece has $500 billion in debt.  The United States is closing on 14 trillion dollars in debt.  (Debt clock)  Granted, we are bigger and have a stronger economy.  However, the laws of reality are what they are-  if our behaviors and attitudes towards this debt do not change, and we keep wracking it up, the fact that we are bigger only means that we will fall harder.  Have you heard any politicians propose really dealing with the issue?  The clamor from the people has been mild, although it is true that many people are waking up.  The simple fact is this:  this debt is just a number on a page for most Americans.  They believe it will never cause a problem.  Not really.  And if something comes up, we can always wiggle our nose.

That is the problem of America:  we really think we can do whatever feels good and all the bad things that people warn us might happen, never will.

This describes most of the liberals and quite a few who describe themselves as moderates.  The true blue liberals, like Obama and his crew, absolutely know that these things could happen, but they are operating on a different premise.  They know that the current track will bankrupt any individual country, so long as people can take their resources and go elsewhere- and this applies to the US as well.  So, they believe that if they can make it impossible to escape anywhere in the world, they might finally have the solution for pesky realities about humans (ie, they aren't going to stand around while someone guts their wealth).  This is the same ultimate solution sought by the Nazis, Communists, and Islamicists.  But perhaps this whole paragraph is an aside.

My point is that what happened in Greece absolutely will happen in the United States if nothing changes.    When?  Well, I don't know.  I'm not sure it really matters.  I mean, is it really good policy to tap dance with destruction for as long as you think you can get away with it?  Perhaps it would be wiser to pursue the longer, more difficult path that does not attempt to fly in the face of reality but nonetheless yields safety, security, prosperity, and liberty.

My friends, God cannot be mocked.  The laws of the universe are what they are.  the laws of human relations are what they are.  You cannot change them.  You cannot defy them.  Not really.  You can only delay the inevitable.  If you plant a corn seed you get a corn plant.  It is that simple.  This applies in every sphere of human experience- political, moral, economic, sexual, marital, relational, etc, etc.

Why am I telling you this?  I am hoping that you and me can get together and persuade the other 300 million Americans to change course, fast.  While we still can.