Are We to Bow and Scrape Before Washington Politicians?

"Government, like fire, is a dangerous servant." George Washington

Ayn Rand wrote something profoundly pertinent to today's degradation of our economic system and the increasing loss of our freedoms by caused by government. She reminds us of what our basic right is and that without it there can be no other rights.

"The right to life is the source of all rights - and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave."

"To violate man's rights means to compel him to act against his own judgment, or to expropriate his values. Basically, there is only one way to do it: by the use of physical force. There are two potential violators of man's rights: the criminals and the government. The great achievement of the United States was to draw a distinction between these two - by forbidding to the second the legalized version of the activities of the first." (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal - pg 322-23).

What the government has been doing for the past 100 years but at an alarmingly rapid rate today is destroying our right to our own lives. How? By denying us the right work, earn our money as we see fit and to keep it. In so many ways today the government dictates to us where we can live (zoning laws), how much we can earn (minimum wage laws and now denying industry leaders the right to set the terms of their salaries), using our tax dollars to fund the lives of anointed or favorite groups, forcing us to send our children to public schools that actually turn out damaged goods, and on and on. Let's face it we do NOT live in the "LAND OF THE FREE AND THE BRAVE". We live in a quasi controlled economy which every day gets closer and closer to totalitarianism.

The Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago. But my question is - are we building our own Berlin Wall? The wall between those that comply and curry favor with the government and those that stand tall and free...there are fewer and fewer of the latter because we don't truly understand the ideal that our country was founded on.

We slave and toil to pay tribute to Big Government in Washington, to our state capitals and to our local governments. And there is no end in sight unless we do something about it. Our politicians act like the Lords and Ladies of yesterday, demanding tribute - our bowing and our scraping (Madame Pelosi comes to mind). And there's no end in sight...When will enough be enough? Are we so comfortable that we have no more will to defend our principles? I hope not.