My generosity is real, but it is not infinite—and its limits have been reached. Let no one mistake my words for cruelty. I am not without compassion, and I am not without understanding. But I will no longer consent to being treated as an indentured servant in my own country—obligated to fund benefits for foreign nationals that are quietly withheld from me, the citizen who earned them. That is not charity. That is not justice. It is a quiet inversion of both, and I will not apologize for naming it plainly.
Frederick R. Smith
Words 1,629 | Read Time 7 min | Enjoy
Foreword
This is an open letter, addressed to my elected representatives at every level of government—local, state, and federal—and to any official, of either party, who holds a measure of authority over the laws under which I live. I write it openly and publish it openly because the matters it concerns are not private grievances to be whispered in a back room. They belong in the public square, where every citizen may read them and where every official may be held to account for the answer he gives.
I do not write as a partisan, nor on behalf of any organization, movement, or cause beyond the simple cause of the American citizen. I write only as one man—a lifelong resident, a faithful taxpayer, and a voter—who has watched promises made to people like himself grow thinner with each passing year, while assurances are extended freely to those who never asked permission to enter. I have addressed this letter to many, because the responsibility is shared among many. Whether you serve in a township office, a state house, or the halls of Congress, some part of what follows falls within your power to remedy. I ask that you read it not as an attack, but as the honest testimony of a constituent who has earned the right to be heard.
What follows is that testimony.
My name is Frederick R. Smith. I was born and raised in the Philadelphia area, and I stand before you today not as a stranger or a visitor, but as a lifelong resident, a neighbor, and a taxpayer of this community. My roots here run the full length of my life. I have watched this city and this region change across the decades, and I have remained—paying what was asked of me, abiding by what was required of me, and asking for very little in return.
It is with a very heavy heart that I must set these words down at this particular moment in our history. We stand at the two hundred and fiftieth birthday of our nation—a quarter of a millennium since this country declared, in this very region, that a free people would govern themselves. That anniversary ought to be an occasion of unguarded pride. Instead, I am moved to buttress the date with a warning, because the milestone arrives in a season of decay. An abounding leftist infestation has taken hold of our institutions, and through its infatuations it is steadily stealing my money and the money of every citizen who still works and saves. The chief instrument of that theft is inflation—a quiet tax no one votes for, levied on the prudent to pay for the schemes of the reckless. And let me be clear that I do not lay this charge at one doorstep alone. The same indictment falls upon the neo-conservatives, who feed the insatiable appetite of the military-industrial complex and call it security. Left and right alike have learned to spend what is not theirs and to debase the dollar in my pocket to do it. On the eve of our nation’s great anniversary, that is the bitter truth I am compelled to record.
I recognize that many who have spoken here hold views different from my own, and that they have expressed those views with eloquence and civility. I respect them for it. I will not pretend to the same restraint. I have no polished detachment to offer, because I am not speaking about an abstraction. I am the very taxpayer so often invoked in these discussions and so rarely actually consulted—the one who bears the burden, follows the rules, keeps his word, and quietly funds the system that everyone else debates in the comfort of theory.
At its heart, this moment demands a clear and honest declaration of allegiance. The question is not complicated, however much it is dressed up to seem so. To whom do we owe our first loyalty? To the American citizen—the legal, law-abiding, tax-paying individual who built this nation and sustains it still with his labor and his earnings—or to those who have entered it in defiance of its laws? I believe the answer should be obvious. Yet too many are being imported and counted for reasons that have nothing to do with compassion and everything to do with arithmetic: to inflate census figures, to secure additional congressional seats, to consolidate political power, and to extract ever-higher revenues from the working Americans who can least afford to give more.
I am exhausted by the ceaseless demand that I subsidize this arrangement. I am weary—truly weary—of the lectures on compassion, patience, and understanding delivered by those who appear entirely blind to the quiet struggles of the citizens already here. I am tired of the false mantra of “inclusion,” repeated like a catechism by people who include everyone except the citizen who pays the bill. And I am sick and tired of the gaslighting—of being told that my concern for my own country, my own laws, and my own future is some symptom of “xenophobia,” as though a man asking to be put first in his own home were guilty of a disease. It is not fear. It is not hatred. It is the plain expectation that the nation I have funded for seventy years should answer to me before it answers to those who never asked its permission to enter. For seventy years I have obeyed every law and honored every rule placed before me. I asked for no special treatment and received none. And what is my reward as I enter my later years? No guaranteed Social Security I can count on in the seasons ahead. No one knocking at my door offering to repair my aging home before it fails me. No one stepping forward to ease the crushing weight of my electric bill, my groceries, or the ordinary daily necessities that grow costlier by the month. The promises made to me have grown thin, even as new promises are extended freely to those who never paid into any of it.
And there is a further insult in it that stings all the more now that I am retired. My property taxes—heavy as they are, and rising still—do not buy me security or relief. They are poured instead into one of the worst education systems on the planet, a system that takes my money with one hand and, with the other, instructs the young in a false view of the world: that open borders are a virtue rather than a surrender, and that the steady normalizing of debauchery is a mark of progress rather than decline. I am made to fund the very instruction that teaches the next generation to scorn the principles I have lived by. That is not education. It is the purchase of my own disinheritance, paid for with my own money, and I am right to resent it.
My generosity is real, but it is not infinite—and its limits have been reached. Let no one mistake my words for cruelty. I am not without compassion, and I am not without understanding. But I will no longer consent to being treated as an indentured servant in my own country—obligated to fund benefits for foreign nationals that are quietly withheld from me, the citizen who earned them. That is not charity. That is not justice. It is a quiet inversion of both, and I will not apologize for naming it plainly.
Let me offer one final observation, drawn not from theory but from experience. When I traveled abroad, I was required to carry extensive documentation at all times, to produce it on demand, and to prove again and again that I belonged where I stood. I understood that had I broken their laws, the consequences would have been swift, certain, and severe. I did not resent this. I respected their sovereignty as a guest in their land, because that is what a decent person does. I ask only this: that we have the courage to expect the very same respect for our own borders, our own laws, and our own people that the rest of the world expects of us.
I have given this nation seventy years of obedience, labor, and faith. I am not asking for privilege. I am asking only that the citizen be placed first in his own country—and I do not believe that is too much to ask. And I make this appeal now, at the dawn of our nation’s two hundred and fiftieth year, in the hope that the next quarter-millennium will honor the citizen the first one was founded to serve.
Respectfully,
Frederick R. Smith
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You can speak for the entire Western world: the observation is the same everywhere.
These are the honorable words of a man who speaks without hatred and without fear.
May they find attentive ears... or resonate until no one can ignore them anymore, even among the "masters" whom our elected officials serve.
Sounds succinct, to the point, Frederick. I would have added toward the end, I am not an isolationist, but I want all coming in here to be objectively vetted and told in no uncertain terms they will be US citizens first and formost...of course, keep your heritage, your culture - but not to the point where it pushes the USA into the backround. No "fundamentally transforming the United States of America" No. Though you did not expressly mention it, it seems you implied you are also not an isolationist, though I don't want to assume that. Find out what a full page in the New York Post would cost to print your letter; perhaps we can take an offering to have it printed there at the time it would do the most good.