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Maybe another of my neighbors has been doing stupid things and I don’t want to help him. Perhaps I think it’s best that he suffer the consequences of his actions. If my government forces me to help out my boneheaded neighbor when I would not otherwise choose to, I’d resent that as most would. That resentment would be contagious and would weaken communities - may even destroy them ultimately.
Our country was founded on the idea that we’re endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights including: “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” We need government to safeguard our right to life by hiring sheriffs, creating courts and prisons for those who might take our lives - and to raise a military that would protect against foreign invaders.
We also need a constitution that protects us from that government because it’s the biggest threat to our liberty. The founding fathers recognized this and structured our constitution to limit government power. We don’t have the right to happiness - only the right to pursue it. Whether we catch any or not is strictly up to us.
That’s how we started out in these United States. However, Americans in the mid to late twentieth century started believing they had a right to free food, housing, health care, a college education, a pension, and they didn’t even believe they should have to pursue it. It should be given to them whether they work for it or not and - there are enough of them to influence elections at all levels - federal, state and local. Now both the White House and Congress are under the firm control of the “redistributionists.”
How did we get here? How did we go from the land of opportunity to the land of entitlement? The government we made to safeguard our God-given rights has grown so big it’s bestowing “rights” not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence or in the Constitution. It’s granting those “rights” to some groups of Americans and forcing others to pay for them. Americans who pay their own mortgages now have to help pay for those who don’t.
Charles Kesler, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, suggests we got here through what he calls the “grand liberal project” begun during the Progressive Era, continuing during the New Deal, the Great Society, and culminating in the Obama Administration, whatever it may come to be called. Hopenchange? Maybe.”
President Wilson believed ours is a “living Constitution” which could be changed when “progressives” deemed it necessary without the cumbersome and time-consuming amendment process outlined in Article V. President Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court with judges who would rubber-stamp his stretching of the Constitution to provide his new “Economic Bill of Rights.
With President Johnson’s “War on Poverty” in the 1960s, government grew even bigger. President Obama is growing it so big it’ll soon outweigh the private sector. With national health care a possibility this summer, government spending will be at about 49% of our Gross Domestic Product - well within the realm of socialism by anyone’s measure. As columnist Mark Steyn wrote on Monday, “Once big government’s in place, it’s very hard to go back.”
We all know a neighbor or a brother-in-law who’s been using his equity as an ATM machine and is now in danger of foreclosure. None of us are going to be happy about picking up part of his mortgage payment under Obama’s mortgage bailout program. As Patrick.net puts it, it’s a “plan to reward debtors at the expense of savers.” President Obama can make as many speeches as he wants about “unscrupulous” lenders who “forced” our irresponsible relatives and neighbors to borrow money, but we know better. A fool and his money are soon parted.
Democrats are struggling to prop up housing prices that have to drop. They’re patching the housing bubble with trillions of our grandchildren’s dollars. Before long that bubble and the Democrat bubble will burst simultaneously and the rest of us will have to pick up the pieces if we can.
9 comments:
All I can say is "Amen to that". What has happened to our elected representatives who could, if they wished, deliver your clear and succint message? I supopose it would be political suicide to do so. I have been around in England long enough to know without a doubt that a national health scheme DOES NOT WORK.
All I can say is "Amen to that". What has happened to our elected representatives who could, if they wished, deliver your clear and succinct message? I suppose it would be political suicide to do so. I have been around long enough in England to know without a doubt that a National Health Service DOES NOT WORK.
Beautiful! I don't know what part of all of this is so hard for libs to understand. Can we please help the helpless and not the clueless??? The pride of taking personal responsibility for one's actions and life just does not exist anymore. It makes me quite ill to think of what these hacks are doing to our country, and the tatters they are going to leave for our children and grandchildren.
I have to say that I love the pictures you used in this one, LOL.
~Jenn~
It is so easy to blame the liberals for all our problems, but it was Mr Bush's administration that allowed the Wall Street Crash and then started giving money away to the bankers and financiers whose greed started it all. And there was no accountability, that was my money also.
CB
Unfortunately, our paid prostitutes, progressives on both sides of the aisle, are much too absorbed in the Cloward-Piven Strategy to pay much attention to such a simplistic idea of being a good neighbor. DC remains just as advertised, Hollywood for ugly people, both in appearance & spirit.
CB,
Your comment shows you lack of historical knowledge. The Clinton Administration pushed the "lending reforms" of the late 90's that losened credit regulations allowing banks to write loans to people who could not repay them. Then the use of discrimination laws made it very difficult for banks to deny loans.
Anonymous of 4:10 am (can't you guys at least use anonymous NAMES??)
Google the "Community Reinvestment Act".
The government did not "losen credit regulations allowing banks to write loans to people who could not repay them".
They REQUIRED banks to extend credit to people who could not repay them! It was (and is) all about garnering votes from "minorities"!
The Carter and Clinton adminstrations came up with the laws and regulations and the Republicans (spit!) never did anything against it!
It was not only difficult for banks to deny loans. ACORN agents sued banks who denied them under provisions of the Community Reinvestment Act.
It was government meddling in decisions of private financial institutions that got us into this economic debacle. More meddling of the sort Obama now envisions will make it worse.
...ACORN started off as a seed. Unfortunately it has grown to an unmanageable weed and the next step is a gigantic ugly tree.
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