Trying to be a government and walk the line of a free citizenry is a difficult task, one this nation has done for over two hundred years, sometimes successfully and sometimes not so much. We as a nation are still looking for the best mix of government and freedom I feel and at the moment we are tending to lean more toward the socialist then free, which of course is to say more toward government involvement than personal responsibility. Placing these ideas on each end of the spectrum it would seem that our government should always fall at the middle of the line, like a fulcrum balancing the two gently in the air. A step to either side, the line collapses down leaning toward either personal responsibility and ultimate freedom or the other a totalitarian government.
It seems that President Obama is pushing and tugging this nation toward the socialist side of the line and slowly, methodically he has been successful. He has pushed and scratched the fulcrum so it has moved to the left and now we can barely see the right side from where we stand. Now he has a long way to go but it will not be his journey to complete, whoever comes next will move that fulcrum to fit their beliefs. Throughout our history it has moved to and fro as Presidents change but I might argue never as drastically as it has under Obama.
The real question left for the American people is this, do we want it to move back toward the middle, where freedom and government share responsibility or do we want to continue the slide down the left where government becomes responsible for us as citizens and in so doing we are less responsible for ourselves. Another thought is there someone out there capable of moving the fulcrum closer to personal responsibility and away from government all together?
I have heard some use the idea of the Pendulum as the pointer on the line and for much of my youth being a fan of Edger Allen Poe I agreed with this analogy but I found as I grew older and hopefully wiser that this analogy was incorrect. In this analogy the Pendulum will of its own accord swing back toward center and correct itself under its own weight and leverage, which politically is just not true. If one looks at the rise of the Nazi’s in Germany during the early 20th century you see a dramatic swing to the left away from personal responsibility and toward the state with no return as the movement destroys itself and a new fulcrum is built. Having shown that as an example I must remind my readers, that is conceivably possible for the USA, a swing to socialism that utterly destroys this nation with a new government built up from the wreckage instead of a move back and change.
So we are back to the basic question of what do we want to have happen as a collective group of citizens, the slow movement toward the left to continue, which in the end will bring Big Brother and all that entails or a correction back to personal freedom? I am one man and I my opinion means very little to most but for what it is worth my choice will always be with personal responsibility, you see it is only dealing with the good and the bad, making mistakes and taking responsibility that we truly make things better for all of us. Freedom means having to do for oneself and respecting others and that is why the current administration cannot seem to ever feel right, no matter how I try, or want them to. The farther from the middle the fulcrum goes, the less freedom we as citizens of a free nation have which creates a lie, one in which no matter what we tell ourselves we cannot escape. Ask yourself a simple question before you go to sleep tonight; Is the current government acting in your best interest or in its own? Yes you already know the answer.