On Election Day …
Don't Encourage the Bastards By Jeff D. Opdyke, Editor, The Sovereign Individual Dear Sovereign Investor, I had just popped the cork on a highly regarded 2006 Domaine du Pegau when my dinner companion popped his own cork. He was furious with the state of American politics, the comical inanity of the nominating process, and the direction our country has taken in the last three or four decades.
"Too hell with 'em all," he blurted out. "That's why I've never voted in my 63 years. If you vote for 'em, you just encourage the bastards. And the bastards have already done enough to [screw] up this country." I leave it to you, dear reader, to fill in his actual word inside those brackets.
It was one of those moments when you don't know whether to laugh because it's so true – or cry … because it's so true.
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America is no longer the country we learned about in civics class.
We go through the motions to make it look like we're running a democracy where one vote/one person matters. But on some level, we know that's not true anymore. America's political class has become America's political cliques. They exist for the enrichment of their members, rarely the betterment of the country.
If they really cared about the U.S. of A., we wouldn't be a nation weakened by a debt approaching $140,000 per taxpayer. We wouldn't be a nation where governmental policies discourage personal savings, yet encourage destructive consumption.
Neither would we be a nation where a sense of entitlement permeates, while personal responsibility goes missing. And we wouldn't be a nation where politicians encourage entitlement through reckless and costly social-engineering programs that garnish the wealth of doers and transfer it to sluggards.
And so I say to you … on November 6, stay away from the polling booth. Because a vote for any presidential candidate in America today … is a vote wasted. Where is the Government We Deserve? You might feel incensed that I would tell anyone not to vote. You might think my words unpatriotic.
I argue the opposite.
Refusing to vote is, in fact, a real vote – it's a vote for yourself and for what you want America to return to. Patriotism never was about blind adherence to your government, simply because it's your government – which, alas, is the spurious definition that has emerged in post-9/11 America.
Patriotism is championing the ideals that undergird your country. And today, more than ever, America needs you and me to champion what she used to be … and what she can become again – with the right leadership.
Unfortunate for We the People, the right leaders are not to be found in American politics today.
Our political culture is divisive, exclusive, deeply partisan and factious. In a burning house, the two political parties couldn't decide whether to save the homeowners by pulling them out the window or pushing them out the door. Instead, they quarrel and puff up their chests like cocks of the walk – and all the while the house burns and the homeowners suffer.
Americans are an easy lot to understand, though modern politicians miss that. Our values run smack down the middle of Main Street.
We deeply value personal liberties and personal responsibilities. We value fiscal conservatism. We want a small government that protects our borders, clings to our Constitution to protect our rights, secures the blessings of liberty – and does little more. We want government far removed from our personal affairs, and we seek politicians who recognize and are humbled by the fact that they derive all their power from us, the governed.
Dear reader, we are not so blessed.
What we've come to in modern America are two political parties acting on behalf of zealots who are throwing rocks at one another from opposite sides of the street. And the great bulk of us stand in the middle, getting pelted, with no one to represent our views. The Right Choices will Protect Your Future Alas, I am not so naïve that I believe 200-plus million Americans will skip the polling booth in November. I know we will end up with a 45th president of the United States – and that regardless of party affiliation, he will continue the same tiresome tactics that have dumped us as a country onto the road to perdition.
But I also know you and I don't have to follow that road. As Sovereign thinkers, we have choices.
For many years now, I've been preparing for the possibility that America's arrogant political class ruins our country. They've already trashed the once-vaunted dollar. For much of the past 30 years, the greenback has been on a long, downward slide against major world currencies.
I want to protect my family from what I know will be a long continuation of that trend. There are only two ways to do that – put a large portion of my wealth outside the U.S. dollar, and own gold. And I've done both.
Gold, as I wrote in a recent Sovereign Investor dispatch, is a pure antidote to a weakening dollar. The two move in close opposition, so that as the dollar falls in value, gold rises, helping protect your standard of living. The gold I own is in its purest form – gold bars and collectible coins. In an emergency, physical gold will save your day … electronic gold in the form of ETFs will not.
Foreign assets work much the same as gold, when it comes to protecting you from what America's politicians are doing to the currency. When the dollar declines, it declines against other currencies. By definition, that means that values rise for any asset priced in the foreign currencies moving up relative to the dollar.
I have the bulk of my family's stock-market investments – including my IRA – dispatched around the world, at work in places like Denmark, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, Canada and various parts of Africa and Europe. For my family's future, I want our savings exposed blue-chip economies like Singapore, Denmark and Hong Kong, strong-commodity currencies like Canada and Australia, and fast-growth economies of tomorrow like those in Africa. There's More to Preparation than Money I have worries about declining personal freedoms and shrinking liberties. I fear the likelihood that Washington's easy answer to financing the fiscal disaster it has created will be to raid our wallets through increased taxes, and by felling forests to print gargantuan sums of dollars.
Having busted my butt to move up from my lower-middle-class childhood, I do not want to subject myself and my family to the declining standard-of-living that those choices will deliver to America.
I've begun researching residency options in selected countries, as well as opportunities for obtaining a second passport. As much as I love America, my tolerance is ebbing for the politics of debt. And I have zero interest in funding Washington's ongoing waste through my sweat equity… and, honestly, I'm not sure I want to be in the neighborhood if increasingly angry Americans revolt, as I fear they might.
Such concerns, you might be thinking, are precisely why Americans must vote – to fix all that's wrong with our country. And maybe you're right …
But given the rhetoric I'm hearing on both sides of the street, the zealots remain in charge, and I see no exit signs yet on our road to perdition.
The only person who can protect you now … is you.
Until next time, keep a global view... 
Jeff D. Opdyke P.S. Here at Sovereign Investor, we are constantly on the look out for new trends for new places and important, new investment opportunities in places few others are looking. One such opportunity is the advent of digital currency. My in-depth research reveals this economic phenomenon has created a number of extraordinary investment opportunities. For access to my unique research report, click here. | |
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Keep a civil tongue.