The Crime of the Century

Throughout history, there have been dozens of illegal activities that were labeled “The Crime of the Century” at the time. Aside from those involving political assassinations and serial killers, the purported “Crimes of the 20th Century” included the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911, the Lindbergh kidnapping in 1932, the Black Dahlia in 1947, the Great Brinks Job in 1950, the Great Train Robbery in 1963, the Patty Hearst Kidnapping in 1974, the O.J. Simpson Case in 1994, the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995, and the Columbine High School Massacre in 1999.

However, as headline-grabbing as those crimes were, I would assert that the most notorious crime committed from 1900 to 1999 was the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 that legalized abortion during the first trimester and opened the floodgates to an estimated 70 million abortions.

Since the turn of the century, there have been scores of mass killings from the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting in 2012 to the Boston Marathon Bombing in 2013. But to me, the greatest crime perpetrated against the American people in the 21st century is the $38 trillion of national debt that our federal government has accumulated.

To help put that figure in perspective, one trillion seconds is over 31,688 years. Our national debt is now 38 times that number or 1,204,144 years.

The national debt was $37 trillion just two months ago, meaning that our federal debt load is gathering momentum like a snowball rolling downhill. This surge is being largely driven by increasing enrollment in entitlement programs, primarily Social Security and Medicare, as our population ages. Rapidly escalating interest payments due to higher interest rates are also contributing to the growing problem. In fact, we now spend more on interest payments on the national debt than we do on national defense.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Analysts now project that the cost of servicing our national debt will jump from $4 trillion to $14 trillion over the next decade, with the debt reaching up to 120% of GDP by 2035. That, my friends, is simply unsustainable.

According to John Stonestreet and Dr. Glenn Sunshine of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, “Out-of-control debt has been a significant factor in the collapse of every major world power in history. For example, the French Revolution was triggered by a fiscal crisis, which sparked civil war and left between 300,000 and 500,000 dead, not including those killed abroad in foreign wars.”

Could the United States be next, crumbling from within like a house of cards because of our smothering debt?

The reason I selected America’s $38 trillion debt as the “Greatest Crime of the 21st Century” is because we – the United States Congress and the voters who elect the people that serve there – are robbing our children, our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren of their futures because we are unwilling to live within our means and to make the necessary sacrifices now. Our collective selfishness is saddling them with a mountain of debt that will make them the first generations of Americans to enjoy a lower quality of life than their parents. We already see that in record low home ownership rates among young people.

Divide $38 trillion by 340 million Americans and you come up with $111,764. That’s how much every American man, woman, and child owes because the cowards on Capitol Hill can’t stop spending money that we don’t have.

And do you know why they keep spending money like drunken sailors? Because voters allow them to. Politicians who are brave enough to try to stop the monetary madness get booted out of office while the ones who keep handing out freebies get re-elected ad nauseum.

It’s time we grow up, demand fiscal responsibility in Washington, and start making sacrifices for the sake of future generations. Otherwise, we are simply accomplices to the Crime of the Century ourselves.