The Assumption Behind the Question

As my readers know, I have been very supportive of Gov. Walker's attempts to balance WI's budget and reduce government spending. This has created a bit of tension between myself and some friends/family who oppose those measures. I'm sure I am not the only one to face this challenge in the past weeks.

One of my family members, who opposes Gov. Walker, asked me a question today on facebook. The question was a relatively straightforward one of " How will the republican agenda help our families?". The thing is, that the assumption behind the question is the real heart of the matter in the battle for America.(Beyond the assumption that I am a republican, that is. I am not a republican, I am a conservative.)

The assumption behind the question is that the government exists to help us. To say that the government is here to help us is like telling a small child that a police officer is there to help them and never refining that statement as they got older.

While the statement is broadly true, in that government exists to create and maintain a stable society, which is indubitably helpful to individuals as well as families, it is not true in a specific sense. The government is not here to take care of you. (Just as a police officer's job is to enforce the law, not "to help you". They don't help robbers and murderers to steal and kill do they?)

We are not supposed to be looking to the government to "help us". We are supposed to be taking care of ourselves. To be depending upon the principles of self reliance and personal responsibility. That is why our founders put specific limits on the power and authority of government. To rely upon the government for the basic necessities of life is degrading to the character of the nation as a whole.

What business does government have telling us what toilets or light bulbs to use? What business does the government have using the tax code to manipulate the populace? What business does the government have making life and death decisions over my and my family's health care? What business does the government have in declaring what foods we may or may not eat?

NONE.

We are not to go running and crying to the government, willing to sacrifice our freedom for security, every time we face a challenge. We are to use our own personal responsibility and self control to live our lives as we see fit within the natural limits of our self evident, God given and Constitutionally affirmed rights. This is the true spirit of America. Let us grasp it fully, restore the Constitutional limits upon our governments, national, state and local, restore fiscal sanity to the nation and move on with our lives.

Let us set the example of a self reliant, free people for the rest of the world. Let us be the ones to show the world that this is how freedom is done. Let us accept the risks and embrace the personal responsibility necessary to be a free people. And, while we're at it, may we never forget the Creator who made this possible.

Here are a few choice quotes from our founders for you to consider.

"No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange, then, and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means and to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to so plainly." ~George Washington

"...reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." ~George Washington

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day. But a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly proves a deliberate systematic plan of reducing us to slavery." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." ~John Adams

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government,so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."Thomas Jefferson

"And I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts. "~ Psalm 119:45