On Tuesday, we all get to make a
decision. Sure this election is about a lot of important issues that pertain to
things that affect our daily lives but, it really is about something much
bigger. This election is about how we view the influence and power of the
federal government going forward in the future. There have only been a few
times in history when a presidential election really changed the direction of
federal power and ultimately our own personal freedom.
The election of FDR certainly had a profound
influence in the scope and reach of the federal influence. Most people view
things like social security as a positive influence of the federal government:
forgetting the tradeoff that for your whole life, the federal government takes
over 12% of your income to administer the program and the program is still
headed for insolvency without greater financial input from the citizens. What
would our standard of living be like if we had the trillions of dollars to
invest or spend rather than the federal government? No one can argue that at the end of almost 12
years of FDR control, the federal government had grabbed power in numerous
areas it never was involved in before. And with it, we Americans lost numbers
of individual liberties we had up to that time taken for granted.
Ronald Reagan’s overwhelming
victory in 1980 lead to a swing back to smaller federal government but his
attempts to rebuild our military and his inability to force Congress to stick
to spending cuts in other areas lead the country to the first large budget
deficit increases since the end on WWII. Returning the US Military was important,
but the precedent set was that the federal government could live with massive
debt and has led to the 16 trillion dollar debt under this President.
My point is some elections, more
than others, have larger consequences. The federal government never gets
smaller. Its power and control of our lives almost never decreases. Slowly, year after year, we trade away
more of our personal and economic freedom in the name of “security” or
“fairness” or “compassion” and more times than not the federal power grab is not
in the least bit “fair” or “compassionate”. Someone may in the short term benefit for this
bestowing of federal tax dollars on a chosen group, but someone else must
certainly pay for that gift. Using federal tax dollars to bail out a failing
business might seem “compassionate” except to that businesses competitor who behaved
responsible and does not need a government hand out. For example - workers at
Ford pay taxes and those tax dollars were used to bail out a mis-managed General
Motors just so GM can come back stronger with federal government backing and
potentially take away some market share from Ford, potentially costing the Ford
workers their jobs. This is not in any way “fair” or “compassionate”.
I remember reading about the
devastating heat wave in Europe in 2003 that caused over 14 thousand mostly
elderly deaths in France. Many died in government run retirement homes that had
no air conditioning. Most waiting in
tiny un-air conditioned apartments. When
I heard this, my first thought was, after decades of socialist central
government control, these people could not afford air conditioning? Here in the
US, over 90% of houses are air conditioned. Then the article went on to say
that the French federal government was setting up a data base so government
workers could check on the elderly in times of extreme heat. No thoughts of why?
Why after a life time of work, the vast majority of retires can’t afford A/C, No
outrage that government run retirement homes were not air conditioned? Just another government solution started at
the top that by the time is gets to where it needs to be is useless. A solution
that grows the size of their government and really would not help reduce the
suffering of their elder population at all.
During this crisis where were the
local governments in France? Where were the citizens? Where were the families?
Unfortunately the worse of the heat wave hit during the two weeks the French
take their annual holiday, most people were at the beach. I am sure they were
having a good time and depending on the government to make sure everything was
OK. After decades of the government solving every problem, the ability for the
French to help their neighbors or even the families has been bred out of them.
To people living with such an over bearing federal government there is no
solution that is not a government solution.
As a lady in NJ said two days
after the recent hurricane strike in the North East “no one has come to help
us”. The settlers that crossed the country to settle the west did not wait for
the federal government to help, the survivors of the Johnstown flood did not
sit and wait for federal government “help”. We are becoming a nation sheep
being lead to the feed troth provided by the government.
So the big question we will
answer in this election is do we support Obama’s version of America? One where the federal government
consumes more and more of this country’s financial resources? One where the federal government makes
more and more of our personal decisions? One where the
federal government takes more and more power from the states and local
governments and dictates more and more decisions that were once freedoms we all
enjoyed?
Did the founding fathers envision
a nation of sheep being herded by the federal government shepherd? If you think
so then Obama is your man. If you think the country was founded on a very
different ideal then you had best pick the other guy.
