| Letters
to the editor from this week's Chronicle Redneck Review! No. 364 - 4/17/22 Backtrack #1! For a quick change of pace, today's RNR and a couple more in the future, topics found here will be a repeat of some of the first RNR's printed! The following goes back to #10, in the Chronicle 6/29/15. Two reasons for this! First, because of the timely nature of the topic in view of conditions found in our country today, and second, because only a handful of you were reading the Chronicle or my emails at the time! The lead in topic being discussed was the power of a single individual to change events at the time! Quoted from that 2015 article: "For our first historical example of what one individual can accomplish, we take a look back in history to the time of Davy Crockett, whose fame was forever immortalized in the ballad, 'Killed himself a bear, when he was only three!' In addition to his fame as a frontier's man, Crockett also served as a representative in the U.S. House of Representatives. As reported in a historic account entitled 'Not Yours to Give' the following incident occurred while Crockett was there!. "Seems that Congressman Crockett, in a burst of compassion, had joined a majority of other representatives in appropriating $20,000 for the relief of some burned out families in the George town area. A fire had occurred in the winter and had left many totally homeless and without food and clothing. Campaigning for reelection later on in his own district, Crockett ran into a polite but irate constituent named Horatio Bunce. In the lecture which followed, Crockett was bluntly told that the money given 'Was not yours to give!' "A brief summary of this historical lecture follows: 'It is not the amount, Colonel Crockett, that I object to. It is the principle!' Bunce goes on to say 'Government should never have in the first place, excess money to give. Only that which is budgeted for specific purposes. But more important, the power of collecting and disbursing money as you choose, is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man...Taxes...reach every man in the country no matter how poor he may be. So you see, while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing from others who are possibly worse off than he. If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give to all...and thus are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe...is a charity, and any amount you may think is proper. You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and favoritism on the one hand, and robbing the people on the other.' "Bunce continued, 'No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of public money that IS NOT YOURS TO GIVE!' (In complete agreement! I remember several "Burned out families, including my own on the Prairie that received no help from our national legislature!) So Bunce concluded, 'So Colonel, I cannot vote for you!' "So needless to day, Crockett was stunned by the lecture and the logic behind it! Reading on in the account of this incidence published years ago, we are told Crockett convinced Bunce to get his neighbors together, at which time he would admit his mistake and promise not to repeat it! Elected again in the following election, Crockett very soon had his promise put to the test. A bill before the legislature proposed a substantial pension for the widow of a deceased war hero! Rising in opposition, Crockett repeated the Bunce argument, and proposed instead that each member of the House donate to a fund about the same size! You guessed it! The men who were willing to donate out of the public treasury were not willing to donate themselves, though wealthy and could easily have done so with no problem!" Hmmm! Do we find this strange, or does it make sense? And is there a valuable lesson here? Jake Wren
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