As every element of modern life moves towards more customization and individual empowerment, government stands alone as the only major entity moving in the opposite direction.  And liberals, (i.e., Democrats and some Republicans), are its only salesmen.

Innovation and new technologies have led to increasingly rapid advances in products and services that are centered around consumers and their personal preferences.  These changes in turn have upended existing industries and business models and created new ones, the result being that many of today’s biggest and most innovative companies or services, (such as Facebook, Google, i-Tunes, YouTube, etc.), didn’t even exist (or just barely) when the War on Terror began in 2001.

Computers continue to get better, smaller, faster and cheaper, with multitudes of customizable options.  Phones have evolved into a combination of phone, stereo, camera, camcorder, TV and hand-held computer – all at a fraction of what only one of those individual devices used to cost, much less all of them.

The winner in this sea change is of course the consumer, who gains access to more choice and better quality at a lower cost.

But then there’s government, which continues to become more expensive, bloated and uniform, rather than innovative, primarily because it has what it doesn’t allow businesses to have: a monopoly.

Granted, there are many things that, due to finances, can’t be customized for everyone.  Roads come to mind, (despite the delusions of some drivers).  But the point is that choice benefits consumers and weakens any monopoly.  If your services are no longer the only game in town, and if people don’t need what you’re selling, then they don’t need you – which is why government tends to outlaw its competition.  read more »

It has become fashionable lately for those in the media as well as the political class to ponder over the question of whether or not our political system is “broken”.  Most recently we have seen this in the course of the debate over whether or not (and by how much) to raise our country’s national debt ceiling.  From the lowliest scribe all the way up to Obama himself, references to “broken” or “dysfunctional” government have been everywhere.

But are they right?  Is government truly broken?  In short, the answer is yes, but not in the sense that liberals would have everyone to believe.

Our federal government is not broken because of any recent events or failure to compromise and “get things done” on anyone’s part.  The breakage came under the crush of everything that has been heaped upon a system that wasn’t designed to carry its present load.

For the last sixty to eighty years liberals have worked to make Washington the epicenter of American political life and the arbiter of whether or not and how anything and everything can be done.  In the process the federal government has appropriated power to itself that it wasn’t constructed to handle, and that is why it is broken.

As far as our Constitution is concerned, the vast majority of what the federal government currently does was never intended to be handled by a single government.  Most of those functions were meant to be handled more locally, that is on a state by state basis.  It is worth pointing out that if the people who wrote our Constitution, living in a country of less than four million people, didn’t trust a single government to handle that much power, why would anyone trust it to do so for a nation of over three hundred million, (let alone think it could do a good job)?  read more »

Just as we spend time every July 4th to celebrate our nation’s independence and remember what our founding fathers accomplished, we should also stop to consider our current situation and ask ourselves if it truly represents the principles they fought for.

With each passing year it seems that those who appreciate liberty are fighting a continual rear-guard action to maintain those principles.  And, more often than not, those battles are waged against the very government the founders created in order to secure our liberty.  Just as it had for them, government has become the problem.

This is no accidental occurrence.  Government has become the problem because it has metastasized like a cancer due to the overt actions of those who want to use government to command the rest of us to live as they see fit.  To, as Jefferson put it, “press us at last into one consolidated mass”, with them of course creating the mold into which we are all to be pressed.  It is the antithesis of liberty.

By and large, the people responsible for this have a name: liberals.

They have accomplished this by building an entire political apparatus (the Democrat Party) around pandering to the selfish part of human nature that would rather receive than contribute; that leaves people satisfied to let someone else run their lives so long as they are given a base existence.  They work to frighten that selfish nature with charges that conservatives want to deprive us of the fruits of the labor of others.  read more »

Military strategy dictates that if you decide “where” a fight will take place, then you will be able to choose the ground that is most favorable to you.  The same holds true in politics.

As debate in Washington rages over the deficit, the debt and the debt limit, Republicans in Congress need to keep in mind that the table for the 2012 election is being set – and a fight over big, expensive government offers the GOP the perfect opportunity to choose their own ground.

The 2010 midterm elections offer some instruction on this point.  According to a Gallup poll, that election set a modern day record for the highest percentage of people who claimed that they were “more enthusiastic” about voting just prior to election day, (53%).  Further, it represented the largest “enthusiasm” gap between self-identified Republicans vs. Democrats – with 63% of Republicans saying they were more enthusiastic, vs. 44% of Democrats.

This begs the question, what were they excited about (or not)?  Of course the answer is government – the new Obama brand of bigger, more intrusive and expensive government, to be specific.  Republicans couldn’t wait to kick it in the teeth, and far fewer Democrats were interested in defending the policies of the man they so enthusiastically put in office just two years earlier.

In other words, the party whose voters are more enthusiastic is likely to win, which is all the more reason to stay focused on the conservative issues that excite our base.  read more »

The Obama version of the military is kicking around the idea of banning smoking by all US military personell.  As you can guess, their rationale is financial...as in any health costs that taxpayers bear as a result of smoking in the military.

It also serves as a perfect example of things to come, if Obamacare becomes a reality.

Via USA Today:

Pentagon health experts are urging Defense Secretary Robert Gates to ban the use of tobacco by troops and end its sale on military property, a change that could dramatically alter a culture intertwined with smoking.

Jack Smith, head of the Pentagon’s office of clinical and program policy, says he will recommend that Gates adopt proposals by a federal study that cites rising tobacco use and higher costs for the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs as reasons for the ban.

The study by the Institute of Medicine, requested by the VA and Pentagon, calls for a phased-in ban over a period of years, perhaps up to 20. “We’ll certainly be taking that recommendation forward,” Smith says. ...

Now think about that same story in the light of Obama-care.  How hard is it for you to imagine that same story, with just a few words changed around, reporting on a statement by somene in the leadership of a nationalized health care system about the idea of banning smoking nationwide because it costs taxpayers money...since they would then be paying the freight for a nationalized health system.  read more »