With humor and a modern perspective, young conservative journalist Kristin Tate points out what’s broken in our government and shows readers how they can fix it.
Tate, a Breitbart News Alumnus, unveils her new book Government Gone Wild: How D.C. Politicians Are Taking You for a Ride – and What You Can Do About It with the same vitality and fervor with which she provides excellent opinion from a conservative point of view.
Passionate and politically involved 24 year-old Kristin Tate worries that her fellow millennials, and even 40-something elders, have become politically ambivalent and brainwashed into accepting big government ideology–instead of thinking for themselves. But it’s not too late to take on the status quo. Tate’s fresh political action handbook, GOVERNMENT GONE WILD, is for a new generation of voters who, like her, are irked that they will be paying for out-of-control government their entire working lives; and know that if America is to retain stability and liberty, it’s going to be up to them to make sure government is working again.
The first chapter of her new book has been shared exclusively with Breitbart News, which can be read below:
We’re Screwed…But We Can Get Un-Screwed
“Dude, this is pretty f*cked up right here.”
~ Stan Marsh ~
America, we have a weight problem. As our government grows faster than Justin Bieber’s criminal record and Kim Kardashian’s luscious badonkadonk, the freedoms that our once-great nation was built upon are being suffocated.
It sucks, right? And maybe you’ve felt some of the pressure. But that’s what we get for electing entrenched, out-of-touch blowhards who look out only for their own interests. They ship our friends and families overseas to fight wars we shouldn’t be fighting. They send police to break down our doors and haul us away to overcrowded prisons packed with people who never committed a single crime against anyone but themselves. They spend our hard-earned cash on things no disciplined family or company would buy, and manage to rack up millions—no, billions, no, trillions—of dollars in debt. They take lavish jaunts around the world, staying in five-star hotels and eating in Michelin-starred restaurants—and it comes straight out of our paychecks.
And how do they thank us? They spy on us by monitoring our e-mails, recording our phone calls, and peering into our bank statements. They tell us how to run our businesses, whom we’re allowed to marry, and what we can put in our own bodies, even if none of this has any impact on other people.
That, my friends, is no way to live. And it certainly isn’t the way to run a country.
The liberties established by our Founding Fathers have been defended, time and again, in war and peace, through protest and conflict. These are the paramount values in our society, and they shouldn’t be messed with. Our freedoms are sacred—yes, sacred, dammit—and must be above and beyond the reach of any intrusive government, even if that happens to be our own.
Freedom means the ability to live your life as you please, as long as you aren’t hurting anyone. Your life is your own damn business! Do whatever you want with it. Make that massive fortune and build a yacht so big that it’s visible from space, or live in your parents’ basement doing bong hits and watching South Park until your mom and dad are sent off to retirement homes.
“Wait, dude. Did she just mention bong hits?”
Yup, I did. And try to keep up, Smokey. Joints, spliffs, and bongs should be completely legal. If you’re over twenty-one and want to smoke up until your eyes roll into the back of your empty skull, who am I to tell you no? And it’s certainly not the government’s place to tell you that, either. Sure, that wouldn’t be the smartest path to take in life. But your path is yours to choose or to ruin if you wish. That’s the joy of freedom—sink or swim on your own terms.
Think of the millions of Americans who have drunk themselves to a slow death, and those who are busy doing it right now, at bars and in La-Z-Boys across America. Who cares if it’s a case of beer while watching the perils of Prohibition on Boardwalk Empire or a bottle of rotgut tequila in a dive bar or glass after glass of pricey Chardonnay on a Fifth Avenue terrace? We’re exercising our right to indulge to our heart’s content.
The big game changer here is if you then think you can drive or handle heavy machinery while you’re all liquored up. Do that, and I am all for sending your sorry ass to prison, because you’ve violated someone else’s freedom. You can ruin your life however you wish, but mess with others, infringe on their rights and liberties, endanger or harm them, and there will be consequences. Our society should be an open one for sure—but not anarchical.
Consider cigarettes. We all know they’re bad as hell for you. The nicotine, the carcinogens—they’re killers. But we still sell them, right? And the government rakes in all that dough from the taxes. This is how we should approach the issue of illegal drugs. It’s better to have them distributed safely in the open than via some trembling, strung-out, sleazeball dealer who might be selling you Drano instead of heroin (and who is probably armed and could just as easily rob or kill you instead). We’re starting to move in that direction when it comes to marijuana, with Colorado and Washington State leading the way.
But the issue is so much more than pot. The illegal narcotics industry as a whole—coke, heroin, meth, you name it—is one of the biggest on earth. The only ones that are bigger are petroleum and porn. And what does it produce? Hmm, let’s see: mafias, guerrillas, cartels, thieves, corrupt cops and soldiers, and billions of dollars a year in waste trying to fight them. It’s been proven time and again: the War on Drugs doesn’t work. As long as people want to get stoned, buzzed, or baked—as long as they seek that needle in the vein and the thrill of the high—nothing will stop other people from growing, harvesting, producing, smuggling, and selling the stuff. It’s simple supply and demand, and no amount of policing or lawmaking will change that dynamic.
Got your attention, huh? Good. I’ve got more about the futile War on Drugs later on (see chapter 1). Just don’t get too stoned and miss it.
Hey, you need to open your eyes! You need a wake-up call! Think big picture. You’re not anywhere near as free as you think you are—but you can be. We’re not as prosperous as we once were—but we can be prosperous again.
Both the Democrats and the Republicans have shown over and over, year in and year out, no matter who controls Congress or the White House, they’re not interested in us as individuals or in protecting our rights and freedoms. They prefer to call all the shots in Washington, D.C. They claim to know what’s best for us. But for them, it’s not about us. Instead it’s all about their power, their privilege, and doing just enough to make sure that they’re elected to another term. And another, and another…
You’d be amazed at how many of our “representatives” are way over the age the government tells us we can retire and collect Social Security. A congressman’s term is two years, and most have been in office for four, five, or even six terms. John Conyers (D, Michigan) is currently serving his twenty-fourth term as Congressman. At least John Dingell (D, Michigan—is there something in the water there?) announced that he will not be seeking reelection—for what would be his thirtieth term. Thirty terms! That’s sixty years! And let’s not forget old Strom Thurmond. He was in office until he was one hundred years old. These people are so entrenched that they care more about their status on various committees, about climbing the greasy pole of power, than doing what’s right for the people they were elected to serve.
That’s right: They are there to serve us—or at least they’re supposed to, if the Constitution is to be taken seriously. I can’t emphasize that enough. Don’t ever forget this, ever! Politicians are there because we send them there. Without our votes they are nothing. Nada. Big fat zeroes. Send them out to pasture if they don’t do what we ask.
Sadly, most of us are apathetic. A pathetic 57 percent of eligible voters turned out in 2012. We shrug our shoulders, crack open a beer, and, frankly, don’t care as much as we should. We pay more attention to the comings and goings of big-boobed airheads on reality TV, the dramas of Duck Dynasty, and Charlie Sheen’s nighttime antics than we do about the stuff that really matters. I should know. I’m a sucker for Bridalplasty. It’s a reality show about birdezillas fighting over nose jobs and boob lifts. (I know, I know, I should be reading a good book . . .)
So we put up our feet up at the end of the day, then every four years we wish away our problems with the false hope that some candidate—maybe Jeb Bush, maybe Hillary Clinton—will turn it all around this time. “Sure,” we think, “it’s bad right now. But it could be worse.”
The scariest thing about this—and it is scary—is that we are less free because of our apathy. A lot less free. And every day that passes under this status quo makes it worse. We can do better than this, guys. We’ve got to.
The fact is, our freedoms in the past twenty years have been squeezed harder than a stress ball on Wall Street. After the September 11 attacks, that lovable idiot who ran our country for eight years pushed through some of the most ineffective and expensive legislation since the New Deal, all under the guise of “homeland security.” Please. We all know the reasons behind that power grab and the two wars that followed, which, by the way, were colossal failures and are still costing us $10.5 million every hour.
This is nothing new. The big boys in Washington have long been getting away with blowing what you earned on things that don’t work. And they’re blowing money they don’t even have! Right now our federal government is operating with a $19 trilliondebt. That’s twelve zeroes. And if you really want to blow your mind, punch up http://www.usdebtclock.org. See what I mean? Their rampant spending has resulted in well over $150,000 of debt per U.S. taxpayer, and most of it is from programs and entire departments that we don’t even need.
I often wonder what Thomas Jefferson might think if he came back and saw the state of our Union. My guess is he’d be horrified and sick to his stomach. A lot of it makes me sick, too, and as you read on, you may start feeling ill yourself. And angry. Remember, we’re the dumbasses who are going to pay for it in the end if we keep rolling over and playing dead, wallowing in our own apathy. We already are paying for it to a degree, thanks to all the tax dollars we send to D.C. But I mean “pay for it” in a much bigger way—and I’ll show you why you should be upset and confused and maybe a little paranoid at what they’ve been up to.
But there is hope! The first step toward recovery and renewal is recognizing that things are bad and that change is still possible. There are ideas we can live by and things we can do to reverse this collapse and to reclaim our civil liberties, as individuals and as a nation. And by “things we can do,” I’m not talking about following any party platforms. I’ll show you why both the Democrats and the Republicans are screwing us.
I’m here to shake you from your way-too-relaxed slacker slumber so we can all face the music together and actually fix our government. Don’t worry, though—I won’t lecture you or pile facts on you until your eyes glaze over. If you’re like me, with the attention span of a circus monkey, you wouldn’t sit through anything too boring anyway. The journey within these pages will be easy to digest, though it may be difficult to stomach at times.
Wait—have I lost you already? Come on. Put down that iPhone. Unplug for a few minutes. Stay with me. You won’t regret it, even though you won’t like a lot of what I have to tell you.
In the words of Bender from Futurama, “We’re boned.” But it’s not too late to get ourselves out of this mess. We may have short attention spans, but we’re innovative as hell—and we’re tired of getting kicked around by those in power. It’s just a matter of recognizing the problem and then using our strengths to take action and fix them. The time is now to step in, step up, and win our freedoms and our nation back.
You ready? Buckle up, bitches.
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