As the United States prepares to celebrate its 233rd year of independence, we are forced to take note of this dismaying reality: our new president is no friend of freedom. This isn't intended to be unfair, unproductive Barack-bashing. Instead, it is simply the culminating, irrefutable conclusion any observer comes to after evaluating his first six months in office. Allow me to explain.
American greatness was achieved through the unrelenting power of a free people pursuing their dreams. Whether it was Pilgrims in a hostile new world, teachers and farmers armed with muskets, pioneers facing a treacherous wilderness, inventors enduring setbacks, volunteers storming beaches, or citizens rushing into smoldering towers to save their fellow countrymen, the glory of America has never been defined by its government, but rather its people.
The American people have cured diseases, constructed skyscrapers, explored the ocean depths, and walked on the moon. And we did these things because we were free - free to create, free to innovate, and free to pursue goals once thought unimaginable by man. That is what has set this civilization apart.
Ours is a history marked by individualism, responsibility, and self-reliance...not government-reliance. Yet, all that seems lost on our 44th president who startlingly declared in his inaugural address, "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified."
To any fair-minded observers, those words should have resounded through the halls of our consciences and awakened us from the media-induced trance of Obama-obsession we might have been suffering. For these are not the words of individualism and self reliance. They are the siren song of government dependence that both belittles and underestimates the ingenuity and creativity of the American people in a way that would have appalled the Founding Fathers.
That's not to say that our forefathers didn't care about families making a decent wage, getting good healthcare, or having a happy retirement. To the contrary, they cared so much about those things that they offered up their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to bless us with the liberty necessary to earn them for ourselves.
But now the assumption of our political leadership is that we need the government to help us pay our mortgage, to find us jobs, to set our wages and salaries, to keep our businesses afloat, to give us healthcare, to pay our credit card debt, to finance our college tuition and to fund our retirement. And as we ignorantly shrug and submit to such a proposition, we are blind to the shadow of slavery that is creeping over us. As we foolishly screech about such things being our "rights," we drown out the sound of our own chains that are being fitted for us.
For when we accept the increased role of government that Obama proposes - one intended to prevent our failure - we necessarily grant it the power to prevent our success and prosperity. How?
In order to prevent the failure of its people, the American government must begin making decisions for them. They must begin controlling them. Give people freedom and they might screw up, invest poorly, or purchase the wrong product. So the government makes the decisions - they choose your healthcare plan, they choose your retirement investments, and they set your salary and wages.
Am I making this up? Look at the bank bailouts, the home mortgage bailouts, or the bailout of the auto industry. In each instance, the government steps in to prevent failure and then sets new rules, determines new interest rates, determines investments, determines product lines, takes over finances, and hires and fires officials at its will. The government usurps control - all in the name of protecting you.
Call it loans, call it restructuring, call it security, call it stabilization, call it compassion...call it whatever you want. But one thing it's not: it's not freedom.
The Founding Fathers, the very architects of our great success, would have rejected Obama's fundamental disregard for the power of liberty. How do I know? Compare their words. While the 44th president says that the question of the size of the government is not the important question, the 4th president and Father of the Constitution, James Madison, saw it differently. He wrote in the Federalist Papers, "Is the power of the government greater than ought to have been vested in it? This is the first question."
And why was it the first question? Because Madison and his fellow patriots understood that increasing the size of government meant decreasing the freedom of the people. Barack Obama is no friend of freedom.
