Our government is turning us all into guilt-ridden idiots. Can anyone truly believe that the way we are going to come out of this recession is by the government borrowing massive amounts of money and throwing it around? The government says they are injecting capital but capital is the same as savings. Capital is supposed to be what you have left over after producing all that you need to consume. But our government is broke. Therefore, they have no capital to invest. What they are investing is debt, no matter what they might choose to call it. Do reasonable people believe this makes sense, especially when it was excessive debt that got us into the problem? Of course not!
Why then do so many people seem to support the Barack Obama plan? We seem to go along even though we feel guilty and stupid. Why? Because we all want stuff and, if the government is willing to steal stuff from someone else (via borrowing and taxation) and give it to us and our friends, then we go along.
We are routinely encouraged to do so when we look around and see that everyone else is going along with these ideas. We are, thereby, encouraged to do the same thing. We know in our hearts that this “rob Peter to pay Paul” philosophy is wrong but, nevertheless, we go along. Meanwhile, our own government is telling us that this is the only way to prosperity. We are reminded of that comment by Ronald Reagan in the presidential campaign against Jimmy Carter, following a Carter remark that he loved a cold shower every morning. Reagan’s response was that “anyone who will tell you that he likes a cold shower in the morning will lie about other things too.” Our government is lying to us about the solution to the crisis and they will lie about other things too.
Feeling guilty for accepting the stolen property and feeling like idiots for going along with the ridiculous concepts that justify such actions today seems insufficient to jolt us back to reality. This is tragic all by itself but its real harm is that it deadens our minds from being on the lookout for other similarly incredible things that our government preaches. Such actions on our part will inevitably lead to an even more tragic outcome, for example, the one predicted by Alexis de Tocquevlle when he reminded us that “The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”