The death of self-reliance

Did you hear about a recent comment by Barack Obama during a speech? It reveals so much about his mentality regarding American values and the role of government from his perspective. ABC News reported the following: "At a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser today, President Obama warned his recession-battered supporters that if he loses the 2012 election it could herald a new, painful era of self-reliance in America." I was amazed.

Obama has issued a dire warning. He is the only thing standing between us and having to rely on ourselves! This country has stood for many things, but one ideal has certainly been self-reliance. And now we are told this is a nightmare scenario.

Obama added more later in the speech to drive the point home. "The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we don't work even harder than we did in 2008, then we're going to have a government that tells the American people, 'you are on your own. If you get sick, you're on your own. If you can't afford college, you're on your own. If you don't like that some corporation is polluting your air or the air that your child breathes, then you're on your own. That's not the America I believe in. It's not the America you believe in."

What are we to make of this? Our President explicitly rejects the American ideal of self-reliance that has been so important throughout our history. He sees dependence on government not as an evil, if sometimes a necessary one, but as a goal to be pursued. The rest of the country is made up of childish, naive, lost souls in need of Obama and the Democrats to guide and protect them through the use of a huge central government.

I can still remember Bill Clinton and a question he got at a town meeting as he ran for re-election. A young man in the audience plaintively told the President that "we are your children" and asked what Clinton could do to protect him from all the abuses of life. Wow . . . a product of our school system . . . This guy saw government as the only way to help him survive the difficulties ahead. He sounded like a five-year old afraid of the dark.

This is not the America we all cherish. We need to grow up and tackle life head-on. The song of the liberals is one that sounds nice and rocks us to sleep, but there's a steep price to be paid. We give up our independence and our adulthood if we follow that siren's song.