Friday, January 1, 2016

WE SEEM TO HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW IT IS THAT GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM, NOT THE SOLUTION…


Along with our entering this presidential election year there comes a recent Gallup poll that makes it very obvious how it is the most Americans feel toward their government.  You see, it’s this poll that reveals how a majority of Americans, 69 percent of us in fact, think that big government is now “the biggest threat to the country in the future.”  Those taking part in the poll were asked to choose among big government, big labor and big business, that Americans overwhelmingly named big government as being the biggest threat to the country in the future.

And I am quite sure that it comes as no surprise to find out how it was that things broke down by party affiliation.  According to Gallup almost nine in 10 Republicans (88%) said big government is the biggest threat to the future of the country.  Meanwhile, it was 53% of Democrats and 67% of independents who said the same.  While I’m not surprised that 88 percent of Republicans feel this way, I have to say that I’m a little shocked that 53 percent of Democrats actually feel that way and mildly surprised that 67 percent of Independents also feel that way.

And I think it safe to say that this poll makes it pretty clear why it is that those Republican candidates often considered as being part of the ‘GOP Establishment”, aka the RINOs, are doing so poorly in our current presidential contest.  After all, when a substantial percentage of voters view certain candidates as having, for a good part of their political career, extolled the virtues conservatism while at the same time working very hard to undermine or circumvent the tenets of said conservatism at every opportunity, they tend to be reluctant to support those candidates.   

I think we can all pretty much agree that we’ve now gotten to the point in this country where ‘government’, at least as it is currently comprised, actually feels that it has the right, even the duty, to grow and to provide all manner of ‘benefits’ to those whom it deems as having been treated ‘unfairly’.  Our supposed ‘leaders’, on both sides of the aisle, have become so out of touch with the people that we have become barely more than an afterthought as we are forced to cover the ever-increasing cost of their rapidly ballooning largesse in their effort to buy votes.

Instead it’s the professional lobbyists who, day in and day out, have the ear of the incumbents and the newly elected that the incumbents lord over.  The only time we ever hear from any of our ‘elected leaders’ is around election time when they are out doing their best to blow smoke up our collective ass.  And sadly, you would think that by now such a tactic would no longer work so well, but between the politicians getting much more skillful at lying so convincingly and the public being even more gullible or, dare I say, more ignorant, the ploy continues works rather well.

And I don’t suppose that there is cause for much surprise in the results of this poll.  After all, let’s not forget that it was Ronald Reagan who said over 35 years ago that, "GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM, NOT THE SOLUTION".  But corrupt, unaccountable government at the local, state, and especially the federal level, continues to demand more for itself in the form of salary and benefits while providing less and less in the form of actual services.  There was a recent article at American Thinker, about this very issue. The article is titled "When the Takers Make More than the Makers". 

What needs to take place, and it would be nice if we could begin the process by putting a Republican in the White House, is for there to a be a significant reduction in the size of our government, back at least to where things were when Ronald Reagan first came into office back in 1980.  But to have any hope of being able to succeed in such an endeavor would require the very active participation of individuals from all across the political spectrum, not just the 88 percent of Republicans who say that it’s government that threatens the future.  But I fear not enough people are interested.

As it is, we are now rapidly approaching what can safely be referred to as being that point of no return, which we may have already crossed moved well beyond.  That point where all hope of ever being able to rein in our government is simply lost forever.  The time has come for ‘We the People’ to reassert ourselves, not as Republican or Democrats, but as Americans. To make clear to those whom we have put into power that they are only there because we have consented to put them there.  To remind them that they work for us, it’s not the other way around.

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