Why is our govt doing to us what we encouraged it to feel free to do?

Why is our govt doing this to us? People across the nation (and the world) have been asking this question, more frequently and more loudly. The answer is, because we have allowed govt to think of itself as something more than power organized for the defense of our property, rights and lives.. It is not. And if it is allowed to stray from that narrow purpose, it cannot help but to spiral downwards into ever greater depredations upon our property, rights and lives. My friend Patch, from Po'ed Patriot & "The Bell News", wrote a rare and moving post, about his own circumstances, how the expansion of govt has brought turmoil into his and his family's lives. His title, "Obamacare: It May Have Destroyed My Life, But We All Have Lost Our Liberty" encapsulates the nature of our current condition, as the closing paragraph points up:

POSTPONED – Saturday “Wheel In” Protest Postponed Due to Snow Sen. McCaskill saved by flake - Wheel-In protest postponed to next week due to glowbull warming snowstorm.

"So before you drag out the decorations and throw a pity party for me.. just remember…. even in this nightmare we call an economy it will be far easier for me to replace the things I have lost….. than it will be for all of us to replace the Liberty which was taken from us through Obamacare.

And that my friends.. is the real tragedy to this story…."

Our mutual friend, Jim Hoft of The Gateway Pundit, recently experienced the miracles of modern medicine, and soon afterwards the horrors of modern government. When a persistent 'cold' led to loss of vision in one eye, Jim, taking advantage of his personal insurance plan, went to the hospital and discovered that what he thought was a cold, was actually a deadly infection and he was days away from death. As he describes it:

"The bacteria blinded my left eye, ate a hole through my heart, caused five strokes on both sides of my brain and forced the removal of my prosthetic left knee.

Dr. Lee was the surgeon assigned to perform open heart surgery. What was originally scheduled to last four hours ended up lasting twelve. My heart was severely damaged. Dr. Lee later told me the surgery was one of the most difficult of his career. He also said I only had a few days to live without the surgery.

Thanks to the excellent insurance I carried I was able to receive life-saving medical treatment at St. Louis University."

Truly, Jim experienced the miracles of modern medicine. But that miracle didn't arise only from the medical arts, it owed just as much to the industry which produced the diagnostic machinery, the implements of medical technology, and the financial techniques of the insurance industry (though ever more hamstrung by each  passing administration of the last 50+ years) which made it possible to regularly apply relatively small portions of your wealth on a monthly basis, against future medical needs and disasters.

And even more fundamental to that, what made such miracles possible, was the system of laws designed to uphold and defend the property, rights and lives of the American people, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and through the liberty which flowed from that - which really means each person being able to act on their own best judgment, to live their own lives and follow their own pursuits, they've enabled, paradoxically to those who haven't attempted to understand it, the most interconnected, wealthy, successful society in history.

But such miracles of modern society are being imperiled by the very thing which originally led the way to their becoming a reality in our time, our government, and specifically ObamaCare has led Jim, and millions of others, to go from experience miracles, to experiencing the horrifying effects of the modern regulatory state.

If you think that's hyperbole, imagine yourself, recently saved in the nick of time, and still heavily dependent upon medical care, and consider Jim's closing comments:

"This week I found out I am going to lose my insurance. The company that carried me is leaving the Missouri market. I will have to find something else.

I am one of the millions who will be looking for new insurance. God willing, I will be able to keep my doctors at St. Louis University. I trust them. They saved my life. Please pray for me and the millions of working Americans who are going through this same ordeal.

Why is our government doing this to us?"

This weekend, Saturday the 11th, from 11:00 am to Noon,

"Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit, plans Wheel-In Rally at Senator Claire McCaskill’s St. Louis Office- Asks “Why is Our Government Punishing the American People-Give Us Back Our Healthcare!”

Saturday December 14, 2013 / 11 AM CT until Noon
– Wheel-In Location:
Senator Claire McCaskill’s St. Louis Office
5850 Delmar Blvd, Ste. A
St. Louis, Missouri 63112
From 11 AM CT to Noon"

It is important to ask this question, 'Why is our government doing this to us?", and it is particularly important to ask it of our representatives.

But it is equally important to remember that our government is doing what it is doing to us, and those potentially dark things that are yet to come, because we, with the best of intentions, we have allowed our collective power, gathered together in the form of our government, to stray from that narrow purpose it was designed to serve; we have allowed us to seduce ourselves into thinking that we could command prosperity, rather than to simply enable it, we've allowed ourselves to think that we could impose (teensie-weensie) evils upon the lives of some of us, for the supposed benefit of others. But though we might fool ourselves into thinking that there would be no penalty for such violations, such actions could not help but spiral downwards into ever greater depredations upon all of our property, rights and lives.

As I was recently reminded, Henry Hazlitt, in "Man vs. The Welfare State", warned us long ago, in discussing that gateway drug of ever greater 'greater goods', the progressive income tax, that whenever a society allows those seemingly 'teensie' evils, when they could still be imagined to be small, to roam free of the iron manacles of the Rule of Law, that:

"The graduated personal income tax should be abandoned in favor of a strictly proportional income tax. The argument against the "progressive" tax rate was conclusively stated as long ago as 1833 by the Scottish economist J. R. McCulloch: "The moment you abandon the cardinal principle of exacting from all individuals the same proportion of their income or of their property, you are at sea without rudder or compass, and there is no amount of injustice and folly you may not commit."

Or in other words, if you allow the power you've organized into a government, for the defense of everyone's property, rights and lives, to stray from that narrow purpose, breaking its bonds through the power of your best wishes, then it cannot help but spiral downwards into ever greater depredations upon the property, rights and lives of everyone of us.

We have got to say "No More!" See you there Saturday.