Why The In Trust Network Is So Important to You and Your Family
Since the inception of the United States of America, our country has regularly confronted existential realities critical to the freedom and well-being of future generations.
Each time the citizens of America were forced to choose between business as usual and the best interests of preserving future blessing, they chose sacrificially, without concern for their present comfort, to protect a legacy of opportunity, hope, and freedom.
The first such occasion was the period leading to 1776. A self-interested king selfishly insisted we bow to his will and suppress the ideals of individual freedom and self-determination. He shackled, to the point of near-suffocation, a spirit sensitive to a call far higher than the king’s.
Risking the threat to their comfortable reality, they declared independence from the overlord nation that was beyond superior in military might. Great Britain was literally Goliath. Yet, they believed the price of war was worth the risk. In Common Sense, Thomas Paine wrote “business as usual will not work out well for the next generation.”
In the early 1800’s European elites were still perplexed why American colonists would risk taking on the greatest military power of the time when their lives were not that miserable. The answer given was novus ordo seclorum (a new order for the next generation). This exposition became the motto on the dollar bill underneath the all-seeing eye, the purpose of the United States of America.
In the years leading up to 1860, America faced another check on reality. Was due process a right of all Americans or just a select few? How could rights denied be acceptable based upon the original risk taken by the colonists to declare that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
In accepting his nomination for U.S. Senate, Abraham Lincoln borrowed a verse from Mark 3 when he said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” He continued, “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free … It will become all one thing, or all the other.”
Lincoln knew that no republic of states could endure when they were so divided on the meaning of the truth explicitly stated in their founding document: that we are endowed with unalienable rights. For Lincoln, to claim “unalienable rights” for yourself while denying them to another was to blaspheme the author of rights.
Like the war for independence, the Civil War required a great and terrible price. But it was a price required and justified to advance the founder’s extraordinary aspiration that equality of rights was a gift to all from a loving and benevolent creator. It was the satisfaction of a promise, passed from one generation to another, that if sacrifice was required to ensure a better destiny, then regardless of the threat to the reality of current comfort, sacrifice they would.
America finds herself today with new existential realities forcing a confrontation between business as usual and our obligations to the future. This threat builds without the pressure of every day pain. It is a narcotic that invades the normal regimen of a healthy society. This threat has become so integrated into the acceptance of our people’s relationship with government that the public is unaware of its ultimate destructive nature. I’m talking here of our cataclysmic federal debt and the government’s ongoing deficit spending.
Accumulated debt and habitual deficits by the U.S. federal government are reaching a point of crisis. Simply stated, the debt has grown to such a mass, coupled with ongoing deficit spending, that the structural budget is now unsustainable. Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Phillip L. Swagel, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, and Jamie Dimon, Chairman of the Board of the largest bank in America, have all declared that ongoing deficits by the federal government are unsustainable and must be addressed.
In his inaugural address as California’s new governor, Ronald Reagan said we had been shushed like children and told there is no simple answer to our complex problems. “Well, the truth is, there are simple answers, there just are no easy answers.” The answers to the existential dilemma our economy is facing now are indeed simple, but they are not easy.
Will America balance its budget, or will it carry on with business as usual until the dollar, the U.S. economy, and the world pay severely for our imprudence? Will we make the right choice to face our national problem or will we continue, as a country, risking reality by denying it?
In 1776, the colonists declared independence to secure a better future for the next generation. In 1860, the United States engaged in Civil War to protect the present for the next generation. In 2025, America has come full circle as it once again is pressed to decide whether the price we owe for tolerating the reckless habits of our politicians is one we’re willing to pay in order to keep faith with our children and their children?
The coming economic downturn may be severe and harsh, or only biting. It may come next week or next year. But no matter what or when, it will require a degree of austerity to which most of us are not accustomed.
As we’ve learned in other disasters, both natural and man-made, our communities not only survive, but thrive and grow stronger when our people join to face hardship together.
That’s why I’ve founded the In Trust Network. It’s a platform that allows the disparate members of our communities to plan and prepare so that we, our families, and our neighbors can stay strong whatever may come.
Business owners, church leaders, NGO activists, locally elected officials, law enforcement and engaged individuals ready to participate are invited to sign up at our website, InTrustNetwork.com.
It’s all free and you’ll find a great many valuable resources to help.
- Templates on how your business, church, or NGO can get prepared.
- Surveys you can fill out so others in your community know how your interests and talents can best be employed.
- A messaging feature that provides you the opportunity to communicate with other members: by community, by interest, or one-on-one in private.
- Regular “Briefings,” webinars, and invitations about what’s really happening behind the scenes in our economy, culture, and elections and what it all means.
- A free business directory so customers can work with and purchase from businesses that share your values.
- And there will be much more to come, so sign up and stay tuned.
I’m convinced this generation has the strength to honor the legacy we’ve inherited, not only by living for ourselves, but by committing sacrificially to keep the bond we owe future generations.
It won’t be easy, but if we work together, keep faith, and get prepared; we’ll come out stronger.
Thanks for reading. I look forward to seeing you at InTrustNetwork.com.
