They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
— Benjamin Franklin
How true!
But even Ben Franklin may not have foreseen a nation prepared to give up essential liberty in exchange for a LOT of PERMANENT safety or security.
Obama may win the election. Even if he doesn’t, we already know he has at least 49 percent of the people behind him. To be behind Obama, you are without question, and on principle, committed to the massive transfer-of-wealth state as we know it. That’s because Obama is the Ben Franklin, or the Thomas Jefferson, of the wealth transfer / “spread the wealth” state, the opposite of what our Constitution established.
That state existed before Obama came to office, and Republicans contributed to its creation almost as much as Democrats. However, Obama represents the unblinking, unflinching and unending expansion of the welfare state. If he wins next week, it’s a green light to expand that state — with all its dependence, despair and (in the case of things like Obamacare) even death.
Do these 49 percent (or more) actually want dependence, despair and death? No; not most of them. But they do want what they see as the “security” and “safety” they think they’re fostering for themselves (and maybe others) by sustaining $16 trillion in debt (and counting) for the sake of unlimited “safety.”
You don’t ensure safety and security by stealing from others. Similarly, you don’t ensure safety and security by borrowing from people not yet born. Yet that’s precisely what the entitlement, transfer-of-wealth state (also known as Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security and all the other “goodies”) does.
Franklin could see what I’m saying here 250 years ago. In fact, he and the other founders of the American republic took it as self-evident. They worried that Americans might someday be tempted to give up a “little” liberty for a “little” safety. A little has turned into a lot. And Obama is here to say: MORE, MORE, MORE. Under Obama, we have less liberty than ever before, and this was precisely his intention.
Increasingly, Americans possess neither liberty nor safety. We know for sure that 49 percent — maybe more, come Election Day — have no grasp of this fact, or perhaps choose to evade it.
I do not expect Mitt Romney to save the country. Only the people can save themselves. But if a majority vote to reelect Obama, then the rest of us will have to face the fact that we’re living in a society with people who cannot, or will not, save themselves.
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