I am not sure why my posts have begun to get further and further apart, other than to say it has been a busy holiday season. Hope everyone had an amazing Christmas and happy New Year. Personally, if we would have had some snow flying, it would have been a Top 5 Christmas for me.
So, post holiday and post inauguration. What do we do now?
I have said in the past that I am not crazy about Barack Obama's viewpoints. However he is my president, and I will support him and pray for him. But some of his inauguration prose has me very worried. "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works," Obama said. "Whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end."
Sorry, but the debate must always be if government is too big or too small. Must it work? Well sure; but there must be a limit on what government even tries to do. For example, if the government wanted to confiscate all of the citizens' legal firearms, they might do that task well or they might do it poorly -- I'd bank on the latter. But however they did it, it would be wrong to even attempt it, according to the Constitution. Mr. O must follow the Constitution -- which he swore to do (albeit poorly) on Inauguration Day. Millions swooned over O's speech. It worried the heck out of me. Because more than anything, O is a politician. A slick one? O yeah. But a politician none the less.
I offer these quotes to support my point:
"No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited," Edmund A. Opitz once said. "The words 'no' and 'not' employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights."
"I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts," said Ronald Reagan.
"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious," said Thomas Jefferson.
More quotes? I could go on all day. Hundreds are available from the Founding Fathers that Obama loves to talk about. Everyone knows limited government means more freedom, but O knows best, and he's our first African-American president, so don't question him. You might appear like you're not on the bandwagon, or worse. Obama's effort to switch the debate was clever but transparent. Only those who understand the Constitution will even question it. Those who do will run the risk of being called names and brushed aside. But we must never be silent.
For, as Thomas Paine said: "It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government."
So if Mr. O cuts some programs that aren't working, I'm all for it. Personally I would start with the IRS, but don't hold your breath on that one. I don't think things like a "dignified" retirement or finding jobs for people is the proper role for government, but hey, that's what lazy people want I suppose. As long as he cuts and doesn't replace, I'm cool with Mr. O. But even the most conservative Republican wouldn't do that; I don't see the most liberal Democrat doing it, either.
