WE NEED TO STOP THIS RELIANCE ON GOVERNMENT

Too many Americans have come to rely on government to take care of them, and government has passed the point where it cannot do so any longer.

Politicians, whose sole aim is re-election, behave like enabling parents, giving the children whatever they want hoping for "love" in return, or in this case votes. The obituary of Sen. Robert Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat, said he served more time in Congress than anyone else. That, too, is an obscenity. The Founders did not intend public service to become self-service.

The definition of "addiction" best describes our increasing reliance on government: "Complete physiological need for and use of a habit-forming substance (heroin, nicotine or alcohol), characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal." Just substitute "government" for the drugs and "psychological" for "physiological" and you have characterized our addiction to government. There are toll-free hot lines for drug addicts who wish to get clean. Who do you call to break free of an addiction to government? Certainly not the politicians; they're the pushers.

This is classic co-dependency. Politicians tell people what they want to hear, and voters elect them out of a sense of entitlement to other people's money. If you are successful and resist, you are called greedy, uncaring and a Republican! This class warfare has enriched the politicians who practice it, but it is impoverishing America.

Too many expect too much from government and too little from themselves. It used to be the other way around, but concepts such as initiative, self-control, frugality, persistence, honor, integrity and virtue went out about the time baby boomers began their cultural counterinsurgency.

The reason so few jobs are being created in the private sector (the labor force is shrinking and unemployment is more than 10 percent, if those who have given up looking for work are included) is because government has grown too big and is strangling the private sector, which is uncertain about the cost of ObamaCare and tax hikes.

The progressives want more reliance on government and less self-reliance. But this is not what America needs. Republicans, should they regain a majority in Congress this fall, and the White House in 2012, must have a serious talk with their fellow countrymen. We can't go on like this. We can't keep spending and taxing. We must stop asking our country to do more for us and begin doing more for ourselves.

Is there a visionary who will say and then do such things, regardless of the political consequences? He (or she) could quote Thomas Jefferson: "To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude."
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