The Bahamans had a slogan “Expulsis Piratis, Restituia Commercia” that meant “Give Up Piracy, Take Up Commerce.” These Latin words were emblazoned in a circle just inside a ring of fig leaves with a three masted sailing ship in the center and a king’s crown at the top. In the days of tall sailing vessels, the Bahamans were notorious for waylaying ships in one way or another. Their most popular tactic was to put false lights by shipping lanes and lure these ships into shallow waters where they would founder on sand spits or rocks.

We should adopt this national slogan, changing it only by the substitution of “probitas” so that it reads “Give up piracy, take up honesty.” And there’s a lot more we could learn from these seafaring people who live off the sea.

The Bahamas have not been in debt and have been financially responsible, in the black, since receiving their independence from the British in 1973, something you cannot say for the United States .

They are also well educated since the British continued to maintain and staff schools throughout the more than 700 islands. They don’t have a school on every one of these rocks, but enough of the schools are reachable so that no child is left behind.

A lot of their economic survival depends on tourism, but they’ve also taken very positive steps to preserve their fishing and trapping waters, keeping these resources for themselves, and limiting exploitation without much in the way of a military or navy and no air force whatsoever.

Today, the Chinese are building the world’s largest container port on the Island of Grand Bahama which ought to further help their economy.

Pretty soon, there may be a car under every palm tree. Although the last I heard the duty on bringing an automobile into the Bahamas permanently was still fifty percent of its value.

The Bahamans also have some very strict rules on immigration. It’s almost impossible to get citizenship and even work permits are very hard to come by. Most British teachers, who have been there for years, are denied citizenship and will not get a work permit unless they’re still teaching. The CIA Fact Book reports legal immigration at minus 2 percent.

Small as this negative number is amongst a population of about 300,000 people, it means more people are leaving the islands than taking up residence. A lot of this can be seen in the “beach boys” who ask American women to “marry me” and take me to the land of opportunity. Also, the behavior of visiting women “on the loose” in the islands is a story in itself and in some ways it’s small wonder the drugstore cowboys vigorously chase women.

I had a friend named Jack who lived on his 60 foot wood cruising boat, developed computer software that he periodically sent back to his partner in Boston , ran a low wattage FM radio station from his boat that we all enjoyed in the anchorage, was also a good mechanic and started a youth program similar to sea scouts. He applied for a work permit over and over and was constantly denied until one day Prime Minister Pindling sailed into the island with a broken generator. Everybody said “Jack can fix it” but Jack said he didn’t have a work permit. He was given a temporary in no time.

This does not mean that the Bahamas are inaccessible to visitors. A I said, a good part of their revenue depends on tourism, people coming to enjoy the sun and beaches, casinos, and hotels. And it’s not difficult to get a “transire” that will allow you to stay up to six months. We would often cheat on these by not going back to the States but sailing into Nassau , Freeport , or Cat Cay (the old Rockefeller owned casino island) early in the morning, flying our yellow “Q” (quarantine) flag and clearing customs again. How were they to know that we hadn’t sailed across the Gulf Stream that night, it’s about a 12 hour sail from South Florida . Then we’d buy groceries, watch the cruise boat tourists wander to the straw market, maybe visit the casino and shops on Paradise Island , and take off for the “out islands” for another six months.

Everybody goes to Nassau once in awhile. It’s the hub of activity and trade between the islands. All the “mail boats”start from there, bringing people and trading in food grown and harvested on the different islands. It’s also where the Queen Anne Hospital is located, along with a number of dentists, optometrists, and the like that you will not find on many other islands. The natives get around by boat the way Americans drive cars and the mail boats are the taxis.

Even natives from the “family islands” don’t like to stay in Nassau too long. They call it “ Teevin Town ” where too many drug dealers, street walkers, and purse snatchers are thought to be doing their thing. Most have the trepidations all country folk have of big cities. Nassau is a big city on New Providence Island just across the bridge from Paradise Island and Mier Lansky’s former house.

The Bahamas have always been a playground for the rich, famous, and notorious from the United States . Fifty nautical miles as the crow flies from Ft. Lauderdale and Miami , the islands begin at Bimini where Ozzie’s Hemingway Bar sports pictures of the author and showing huge marlin caught right off the coast. And Brown’s Hotel has a stone citation to Adam Clayton Powell thanking him for all the things he did for Bimini while spending more time there than in Congress.

Privateers from the days of Henry Morgan to the rum runners of the Twenties and today’s narcotics smugglers have always used the Bahama passages as routes to the market, to the world’s major consumers. And the islands themselves were often used as the final resting place, a place to screw up their nerve, a transfer point, or sometimes storage space while they wait for their customers to come to them.

If you ask the natives how they feel about this, they’ll just shrug their shoulders and say “what’s new?” Planes trying to find small landing strips in the dead of night may be a little different, but overall it’s the same kind of buccaneers that have always plagued the islands. Expulsis Piratis.   

At least, that’s the way it was in the old days before organized crime took over the narcotics business and it all became vacuum packed in various brand container shipping. Back home, not long ago, I was playing golf with one of my “connected” friends who had just returned from a meeting in Las Vegas . Between putts, he said; “My God Ed, did you know that the cocaine business is worth $500 billion a year?” I said; “Gee Guido, that much. Is that before it’s whacked or at the end user?”

If the government had any common sense, and if they truly wanted to fight the war on drugs, they would hire some of these smugglers to tell them how it’s done. Tons of illegal drugs enter the U.S. every day. And it’s only because the people smuggling them in are smarter than the people trying to catch them. How else do you explain it away?

But what incentive do these guys have to cooperate with the government? You can’t offer them money or safe passage. They’ve already got that. Besides, we can’t find them any more than we can find Osama bin Laden, and we know what he looks like.

We’ve got problems with our borders that go much deeper than drugs. We’ve got illegal aliens pouring across our borders daily that we can’t even find and identify once they’re inside.

And if you can’t stop drug smugglers or aliens breaking our laws, how are you ever going to stop terrorists who have already hurt us once? It just doesn’t make sense.

When do the American people start to take a serious look at their government? When do we start asking what we’re getting for our money. In many ways, it seems we’ve got a government that may be just as crooked as others breaking the law and may even be part of their operations? A government that appoints a former Enron lieutenant to head the Securities & Exchange Commission and a government that’s walking off with our retirement money to support an unjust war for no other reason than to expand their military Empire.

Expulsis Piratis, Restituta Probitas. Give up piracy, take up honesty.