SO WHOSE FAULT IS IT, ANYWAY?

Certainly the oddest feature of modern American culture has to be the notion that the government is supposed to take care of everything for us.

Is there a problem? The government has to fix it. Is there a challenge? The government has to meet it. Is there a risk? The government has to utterly and completely obliterate it.

If there are people without food, the government has to feed them. If there are people without medical care, the government has to provide coverage. Folks out of work? The government needs to create jobs – and pay unemployment compensation until they do.

Is there discrimination? The government has to stop it.  Identity theft?  Stop that, too. Credit card fraud, sleazy sub-prime mortgages. Stamp them out. Greedy bankers? Islamic terrorists? Stamp them out, too.

War on crime! War on terror! War on greed! War on drugs!

Oil spill in the gulf?  Mine disaster in Kentucky?  Athletes on steroids?  Wall Street … the deficit … mediocrity in education. War on them, too!

These things shouldn’t be happening. Why isn’t somebody stopping them? It must be the government’s fault.

That’s what most Americans think. If you ask them, they'll tell you …the problem is actually ... the government.  American icon, Ronald Reagan, said it in his first inaugural address:

“Government is not the SOLUTION to our problem; government is the PROBLEM.”

And Ronald Reagan ought to know. He doubled government spending and increased the national debt by 70% during his time in office. But that proves the point, doesn't it? For all his wit, charm and pomade, Reagan was a politician, too. And everybody knows, you can’t trust the politicians.

Because politicians run the government and “government is the problem.”

According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 59% of Americans agree with that statement,  40% of Democrats, 60% of Independents, and 83% of Republicans. They'll tell you. Government is the problem.

Well, that sentiment might fly in a dictatorship, but in a republic it’s more than a little bit idiotic. Because here in America, we have something called “elections”.  Politicians have to run for office. If we don’t like them, we need to start waging war on the idiots who elected them.

War on Us!

That's right, war on us!  War on the self-righteous, self-indulgent, emotionally adolescent, ever-increasingly-indebted American.
Where on earth did we get the notion that government – which is really nothing more than an aggregation of people just like ourselves – was supposed to solve our problems for us?  Our grandparents didn’t think so. The pioneers didn’t think so. And the founding fathers CERTAINLY didn't think so.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident," Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, "That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men ..."

Hear that?  Life, liberty and the PURSUIT of happiness. Our government was instituted to secure our right to PURSUE happiness.  It wasn't instituted to make sure we actually achieved it. 

That’s a big difference.  A difference we Americans seem to have forgotten.

If we decide there are things we need before we can be happy, it's up to US to get them.  If there are things we decide we need to get rid of before we can be happy, it's up to US to get rid of them. 

Oh, and one more thing for you tea party-ers out there.  When we decide to pursue our goals collectively -- in other words, as a nation? 

We need to be willing to pay for it.