Our Dawning New Age...

On CNN tonight, they talked about the "new electorate", the young, minorities, etc.  About the same time, I stumbled on this tidbit from an NCAAP poll:

95% blacks say Feds should provide jobs 

Paul Bedard - November 6, 2012 - 2:33 pm  

Providing an 11th hour clue to how blacks will vote on the presidential stage, 95 percent of African Americans believe that the federal government should be the nation's jobs creator...

I think this is representative of this "new electorate"...  The only way to win them is to buy them.  I don't know why, and I don't know how, but my generation and younger have somehow convinced themselves that government, not individual initiative, is the engine of civilization, prosperity, and progress.

There's a quote attributed to Ben Franklin that sums up the dawning new age that this philosophy will bring:

"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."

When democracy becomes a tool to expropriate what you want from others, we are all slaves.

What does it mean for you and me today? Maybe nothing... but the long, inexorable decline has truly begun.

Still true today...

This is exactly what I posted to Facebook four years ago on the Monday before the 2008 election:

To any who remain undecided, or who might be swayed in the final hours:

Here are two relevant definitions of "freedom" from dictionary.com:

"2. exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc.  

3. the power to determine action without restraint."

And a couple of quotes from Ben Franklin:

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

"In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, — if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people, if well administered; and I believe, farther, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other."

It may be tempting to cede freedom to government in exchange for the promise of "universal" health insurance, or a tax system where only the "rich" pay taxes, or "protection" from Chinese/Japanese/Mexican companies, but, ultimately, it won't work.

If anything, the last century has demonstrated that government control and government planning always do worse than freedom. (See the end of the cold war.)

Barack Obama has many high hopes for and eloquent words about government. But at the end of the day, he honestly believes that government control is better than freedom. Education, taxes, trade, domestic economics, labor relations--on all of these issues, his faith lies in central government control and central government planning.

I honestly believe that this is completely wrong, and that his leadership would be a disaster for our nation....

 This is at least as true today. Maybe even more so, as Obama has nothing to offer but more of the same divisive, punitive, central-planning, government-centered ideas.  I cannot support such a philosophy.