People like to say, "we never learn from the past".  So how about learning from the present?  With the US national debt approaching 16 trillion dollars and the US borrowing forty cents of every dollar that it receives from China there is no need to look to the past to learn lessons for the present.

Take a look at the situation right now in Ireland where reckless socialist economic policies, like those in Greece, Italy and Spain, have the Irish looking to Germany for a financial bailout to prevent the country from going bankrupt.

The only problem is that Germany isn't going to give its hard earned money away for free.  And why should they?

As a result they're asking Ireland, just as they did Greece, to submit to a series of rigid austerity measures.  But Germany is no fool and they’re not going to accept the exchange on good faith alone.  They’re asking Ireland to literally rewrite their constitution to include an “Austerity Pact”.

The Irish constitution is less than 100 years old and was paid for in blood to free themselves from the oppressive rule of Britain.

As Irish politicians debate wether changing the constitution to placate Germany’s demands undermines the freedom they fought so hard to win it would be easy to view Germany as the new oppressor; the new Britain.

But what gets lost in the conversation is how Ireland, or Greece for that matter, got themselves into this mess in the first place.

It wasn’t Germany that forced them to adopt the reckless policies that saw them spending beyond their financial means.  Nor is it Germany that is asking them to borrow money so that they can continue to spend beyond their means.

Ireland did this to Ireland.

Or more specifically, Socialism did this to Ireland.

Just as Socialism has weakened Greece, Italy, and Spain with the attractive economic policy of “buy now, pay later” it now threatens even the greatest economic engine the world has ever known--the United States of America.

So while the Socialist promise of an egalitarian society with prosperity for all is pleasing to the ear and may even look feasible on paper the actual evidence tells a different.

This isn't about looking into the far-distant past to understand where we are headed today.  Just open your eyes and look around at what is happening right now around the world and ask yourselves how long before America succumbs to the same fate?

Would we, as Americans, accept China telling us to rewrite our constitution?  A constitution our forefathers fought so hard to establish?  Doing so would undermine all of the sacrifices that this country has made to get it to where it is today.

But if we're not careful, if we refuse to learn from the lessons of the present we may not have a choice.