Letter From Kerr Mudgeon

Dear Mr. [Think Tank President]:

         Although I appreciate your recent letter and the work done by and because of [your think tank] , I will no longer support it or the many other libertarian organizations to which I have contributed over the past six decades.

         As is indicated by the length of time that I have provided financial and other help to organizations promoting individual rights and liberties (along with the commensurate responsibilities), I am an aging codger.  As such, I continue enjoying my life, which has been and continues to be blessed with good health, many compatible friends, and satisfying family relationships.

         However, it is clear to me that the good work that has been and is being done by [your think tank] and similar organizations has failed to stem the expansion of the size and scope of government and the corresponding erosion of our liberties.  Promoting good ideas is a fine and worthy endeavor but our country today has a far more intrusive government and is far less free than in my earlier days.

         All the good works by intellectual adherents to Constitutional principles apparently only provide intellectual resources for rear guard actions that at best slow the rate of the retreat from, and abandonment and defeat of those principles.  Those resources go largely unused in any coherent way.  We desperately need but completely lack an effective organized active effort to advance -- or even merely to defend what remains of -- the values that the nation’s founders sought to enshrine in the Constitution.

         We thought but largely failed to fight a good and worthwhile fight and therefore have lost. 

Like a fish that has been kept too long, we rotted out from the head, with the corruption first having taking hold in, and then spreading from our leading institutions in government, academia, business and finance, organized labor, the press, and even our churches.  The virtuous citizenry required for maintenance of the republic no longer exists.

         In light of the foregoing, I have concluded that every society, nation, and civilization has a life cycle akin to that of all living organisms . . . and that ours (including all of what has been thought of as Western Civilization) is in a downward spiral.  I used to believe that I would be gone before the final collapse.  But that may not be the case as the decline, having already reached an inescapable point, is accelerating with breathtaking rapidity.