What Would our Founding Fathers Say?

GOVERNMENT REDUCES OUR FREEDOM “IN AN INSIDIOUS DRIP”

by Bob MacGuffie

(Oct. 31) — As the political campaigns enter their final week, I would urge my fellow citizens to consider just what is at stake in this election.  The campaign messages waged in the mass media have consisted largely of bluster, distortions of opponents’ positions, and the reminder of benefits and goodies bestowed, or protected by the incumbents.  But the sorry facts of the matter are that both federal incumbents and the state majority in their never-ending quest for our approval and votes have legislated us to the doorstep of bankruptcy in both Washington and Hartford.  Anyone who can do the math knows that our current fiscal situation cannot be sustained on either the national or state level.  Our current national leadership continues trying to seduce us into thinking it can.  Our state leadership largely ignores the severity of the problem, even as the state’s bond rating declines.

Meanwhile federal legislation is coming at us like a fire hose.  For the skeptics among us, the federal government is most certainly reducing our freedom in an insidious drip by drip fashion.  Each new swell-sounding law or regulation packaged to appear as safety-focused or good for us often comes with a financial cost, but always with a reduction of personal choice and responsibility, and yes, a loss of individual freedom.  As these add up, the picture becomes clear and inescapable – government at all levels is inexorable in its march to rule as many aspects of our lives as possible.  That is the nature of government.  The only question for discussion is when to join the effort to reclaim our choices and freedoms for ourselves.  Millions of Americans in tens of thousands of towns and cities across the country have seen enough, realize the time is now, and have taken to the public square to be counted.

These good, patriotic fellow citizens realize that continual and increased government regulation and control infantilizes us.  It removes financial responsibility and, most importantly, mental responsibility for our own lives; we look to government to pay for our needs and solve our problems – needs and problems free American citizens have always solved for themselves.  It erodes personal character and makes us a nation of government dependents.  This is not the American spirit which built our country, but it is a civic attitude which will most assuredly usher our country into decline.  In the extreme we saw where it led the Soviet Union.  Today, we see where it’s leading Greece  France, Germany and Great Britain.  Europe clearly is trying to reverse the catastrophic financial effects of the social welfare state.  France this very week has been throwing a temper tantrum in the streets at the very suggestion that the retirement age merely be raised two years because there’s simply no more money.  This is what dependency does to a citizenry – we in the U.S. must see this as a lesson and cautionary tale.

America was built on a foundation of limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and fiscal restraint.  The Constitution is a limiting and restraining force on federal power, designed that way by our founders so we would remain a free people.  Please come out on Election Day to cast your votes against those who would extend governmental power and for those who commit to go to Washington and Hartford to constrain it.  And if you have any doubt about making your stand today, ask yourself:  do you really think that if our founding fathers are calling out to us from their graves, they are calling for more government involvement in our lives?

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Editor’s Note: Bob MacGuffie is a resident of Fairfield, CT and founder of Right Principles.