Dear Charlotte – You Are Bankrupt

By J.J. Jackson

Dear Charlotte,

Even though you are far too young yet to understand this letter, and you are rightfully more interested in seeing how much noise you can make by throwing all of our pots and pans on the floor, I wanted to let you know that I am sorry. I am sorry at what has happened to you. For you see, you are bankrupt.

I know that this will come as a shock to you once you are old enough to read these words considering that you have never held a job, earned a wage or incurred a single debt to your name. But it is true and I am sorry that I was not able to stop this from happening. Believe me, your mother and I tried and tried hard to not have you placed in such a situation. We have worked hard, paid our bills and lived within our means.

It is not because of us, your parents, that you are bankrupt however. Ask your mother when you are older about how every week I toiled at the computer and wrote numerous articles and blog postings about the misbegotten economic ideas of our nation. These are the ideas and practices which are the real reason why, before you can even think about needing to earn a wage to support yourself, you will be tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars in debt to the federal government.

I am sad for you. I am sad for you because these are not burdens that someone who is not yet even two years old should be saddled with. It is not right that the people of this once great nation have stripped you of so much at such a young age and sold you, without permission or without you having committed any crime, into slavery and bound you to serve them and their greed.

A lot of citizens have mortgaged your future for their own present comfort and security. Knowing how it feels to have my own future mortgaged by these same greedy, and dare I say unrighteous, souls I understand that it will only get worse for you as you grow up. Your mother and I already have a heavy weight on our own shoulders in which thousands of our hard earned dollars are taken by the government at the behest of the greedy who did not care enough about their own future to save for their own retirement and believe they are entitled to such at our expense. We are burdened with the heavy cost of other greedy folks who believe that we should pay for their health care because of the virtue of our success while they have not cared one bit to better their own lots in life and acquire that which they desire. And then there are the myriad of other thieves that have compiled agencies of government to demand from us to pay the other debts that they could not pay themselves.

My dear Charlotte, I know it will only get worse for you because it has only gotten worse for us. Already in the past year the government has issued hundreds of billions of dollars in debt certificates, paper money with no substantive backing simply printed on a whim, to line the pockets of people that have made more bad choices in ten minutes than you will make in your lifetime and who believe that they are “too big to fail.” The government calls these debt certificates “money,” but they are nothing more than I.O.U.s which are being financed by foreign governments that will demand the interest we are promising them in return for taking on this debt. Yes, you, my dear, will be tasked to repay these “loans” and all the other spiraling costs of a government run amok beyond sound limits.

For now you will not have to worry much about this looming crisis. There is so much that is of greater importance to you at this moment and for the next few years. You will thrill in chasing the dogs around the living room as they try to escape your all encompassing love and simple desire for just a hug and a sloppy doggie kiss from them. You will be learning your ABC’s and your 123’s and discovering new words. You will be busy trying to mimic new actions you see your mother and I doing and continue trying to sweep the floor, dust the table and clumsily sop up spills with paper towels. You will soon be learning how to ride a bike and to roller-skate. You will undoubtedly revel in enjoying the thrills of the first snow each year and then the first blossoms of spring that will follow. You will eagerly anticipate Christmas morning for many years and what Saint Nicolas has brought for you as a reward for being a good little girl.

I do not write this letter to you in order to strip you of the childish joy you will be filled with over the coming years. I do not expect you to even understand the severity of the situation in which you have been placed even when you are able to read these words, probably asking how to pronounce certain new and unfamiliar ones that you will come across in doing so. I do however write this letter to you hoping that someday, when you are older and wiser and buried by the avalanche of public debt that is bearing down on you, you will find it in your heart to forgive me for not being able to stop the pending disaster which will doom you to a life of servitude to the slothful and the greedy. I hope that you will forgive me for not being able to stop the bad policies of our government that will invariably force you to have to work even harder to support not only yourself but also support all those that the bureaucracy has decided that you must, in addition to yourself, while pursuing the American Dream.

I know that you will be able to succeed in bettering yourself and taking care of yourself but I am sad and disappointed in myself that I have not been able to make it easier on you to live free and experience a greater sense of liberty than the generation before you. I hope and pray that you will not hold it against us, your parents. And I want you to know that I will continue to do everything in my power so that I will, hopefully, one day be able to tear up this letter and never have you read it.

Love eternally,

Your Father