Have you ever wondered how it is that Americans today have such a completely different attitude toward the federal government than the people who founded our country?
Our ancestors looked upon the federal government as the greatest threat to their freedom and well-being. That’s why they limited its powers to a selected few in the Constitution. It’s also why they used the Bill of Rights to expressly prohibit the federal government from violating people’s fundamental rights and to expressly require it to honor important procedural guarantees when it went after people in criminal prosecutions.
With the exception of libertarians, Americans today don’t look upon the federal government in way our ancestors did. If modern-day Americans had their druthers, they would let the federal government exercise whatever powers it deemed necessary for the welfare and protection of the nation. That’s in fact why such Americans weren’t bothered in the least when the president and the Pentagon established their Constitution-free zone in Cuba as well as a Constitution-free zone in the United States with respect to the war on terrorism.
My hunch is that this marked difference in attitude toward the federal government is due to the welfare state. I think the welfare-statists have been absolutely brilliant in causing Americans to look upon the federal government as their friend and provider rather than as the biggest threat to their freedom and well-being.
I once read a tale about a farmer who lived near some woods inhabited by a group of fierce, wild boars. The farmer started leaving out corn every day, which attracted the boars. Gradually, the man began building a fence around the area where the boars were feeding on his corn. Ultimately, he was able to enclose the fence while the boars were feeding. Over time, they became mild, domesticated animals.
I think that’s pretty much the strategy that FDR and LBJ and other welfare-statists have used on Americans. Such programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education grants, SEC regulations, GI Bill, and the like are much like that corn that that farmer put out to soften up and domesticate those wild boars. By getting Americans to begin feeding on the welfare-state corn, the socialists have been able to convert a nation of independent, self-reliant, fearless people into a nation of dependent, fearful people who are ready to surrender their freedoms to the federal government at the first sign of trouble or crisis.
How many times have we heard, “I couldn’t survive without my Social Security” or “I would have died without Medicare” or “I would never have been educated without my education grant or GI Bill”? This has been the great triumph of the welfare-state socialists — making Americans feel so dependent on the federal government’s largess that they could never imagine life without it.
Not only does such dependency damage a person’s sense of self-worth, it also induces a child-like mindset toward the government, one that refuses to challenge the government’s policies at a fundamental level. After all, deep within the psyche of the dependent adult is the fear that the government has the power to cut off his dole anytime it wants.
The relationship of the American citizen and the federal government is today much like the relationship between a child and his parents. A child might throw tantrums about his parents’ rules and policies, but the child will rarely go too far because he knows that he is dependent on his parents for survival.
That’s the way American adults feel toward the federal government — they’ll carp over excesses or abuses but their welfare-state dependency prevents them from going too far. In the last several years, we’ve witnessed this phenomenon firsthand in both foreign and domestic affairs. People will carp about how the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan are not being handled properly or they’ll carp about how the politicians and bureaucrats have mismanaged the housing and mortgage crisis. But the thought that the federal government’s very own policies produced the crises and are now exacerbating them is something that is just too frightening for welfare-state-dependent Americans to accept and confront.
How sad. What began as a nation of fiercely independent, fearless, self-reliant people who distrusted the federal government and who never would have embraced socialistic programs has been turned into a nation of fearful, dependent people who look upon the federal government as their parent and provider. Even sadder is the fact that like those boars feeding on that farmer’s corn, Americans have lost their freedom in the process.
