A vote for Obama counts, but maybe not how you think.

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.