America's Last Mistake?

Edmund Burke said "Constitute government how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state."

Simply put, our government is really no better than the men we elect to run it. And now, we have elected a usurper.

That the American public has made a mistake in electing a man that has never run any organization, and about whom we actually know very little, is something that can be chalked up to happenstance. However, having already assumed extra-constitutional powers in a way never dreamed of by any of his predecessors, having busted the budget in a way that has led to the greatest national debt in our history, with no end in sight and with nationalized healthcare looming, Obama’s popularity seems to show little sign of abating.

We peasants should be storming the gates. We should be gathering in Washington, torches ablaze and pitchforks aloft, by the tens of millions. The government is not only stealing our money, they are stealing our liberty. But instead, whatever is left of the American spirit threatens our President with only this: a "decline" in approval ratings to the low 60’s, and a Strongly Approve/Disapprove differential of 10%, making Obama still hugely popular.

With blind media complicity, the government has twisted, contorted and then finally simply shredded the constitution; "delineated powers" meaning whatever a particular branch of government decides it should mean on that particular day in order to accomplish its policy goals. Rule of law is lost – examples abound everywhere, from GM’s boardroom to a Supreme Court chair being readied for a Justice who promises to rule with “empathy.”

We like to think that the American public is made of sterner stuff – indeed, it used to be so. It wasn't too long ago that voters took Bill Clinton out behind the woodshed in his first mid-term election, giving us the Gingrich Congress and the Contract With America, a Congress that ultimately dragged Clinton kicking and screaming into economic prosperity, a prosperity for which Democrats take credit even to this day.

I would like to believe that the day of reckoning is coming for Barack Obama, too. I would like to believe that the current Congress will be swept from power in 2010, replaced with men who possess more…sanity. I would like to believe that the American people will embrace rugged individualism once again, that we will yearn to take care of ourselves and our families, and reject the government’s offer to be the milk-engorged mother of us all.

I’m just not sure I can believe it. And I wonder, when will that "offer" become an insistence?