Overbearing Government

American life is increasingly oppressed by an overbearing civil government that fosters a sense of entitlement instead of responsibility, that sanctions selfishness and undermines respect, and that encourages immediate gratification over long-term good, as it sucks the blood from family, church, and community to feed its own insatiable lust for power.

The paradox of human nature enables this misuse of power and makes it difficult to reverse. Most people desire to be virtuous, yet often relent to the daily temptations of vice. They are morally frail creatures, and easily subject to temptation, to encouragement and discouragement. In the war between virtue and vice that rages in every human heart, vice has the natural advantage: it’s easier; it feeds immediately felt desires, and the popular culture glorifies it.

Adding economic incentive buttresses this natural advantage. And that's what America's redistributionary tax-and-spend policies do. They discourage responsible behavior and promote vice and dependency.

Perverse fiscal policy is only one cause of America’s social down-spiral, yet it is an important one. Years of expecting and depending upon government provision have left Americans docilely remitting $10,000 apiece to various levels of government. In the place of a healthy distrust of power is now a heavy dependence on an insatiable federal leviathan. Fueled by higher and higher taxes, the U.S. government has shifted from establishing justice to overturning it, from ensuring domestic tranquility to presiding over an increasing incivility, from providing for the common defense to shrinking down that vital function in favor of mushrooming entitlement spending, from promoting the general welfare to kowtowing to special interest groups, and from securing the blessings of liberty to seizing the fruits of her people’s forced labor.

The temptations of life in a state-sponsored bubble, free from the need to provide for one’s self and one’s family, from the risks of personal failure, from the knowledge that we’re not entitled to anything, are real, but yielding to them means ultimately submitting to a lifetime of modern serfdom. America can do better. Reformed fiscal policy based on a sound vision that reflects the natural order is vital to restoring America’s greatness.