One of the motivating factors of the liberal agenda, especially as manifest in ObamaCare, is a fundamental lack of trust in the American people.  The liberal agenda assumes that a few elite elected officials in their offices in Washington know better what is good for the American people than the American people do.  This assumption fundamentally means that our government doesn’t trust us to solve our own problems but assumes that they have all the answers.

ObamaCare claims to address many problems that do exist in the health insurance system.  It claims to “make insurance more affordable,” to “set up a new competitive health insurance market,” and to “bring greater accountability to health care” (whitehouse.gov).  Most of the American people would agree that these are worthy goals and that these ends should indeed be achieved to fix our current health care system. The trouble isn’t that the goals are wrong but that they are being addressed by government!  The liberal establishment in government asks us to trust them that they know what is right.  The goals of health care reform, however, can be much more efficiently achieved by leaving these problems and their solutions to the people.  Leave the money in the hands of the people and allow them to address their own problems.

Ronald Reagan addressed this lack of trust when he said, “‘Trust me’ government asks that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man; that we trust him to do what’s best for us. But my view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties. The trust is where it belongs-in the people. The responsibility to live up to that trust is where it belongs, in their elected leaders. That kind of relationship, between the people and their elected leaders, is a special kind of compact” (July 17, 1980).

As Reagan stated, our government today needs to return the trust to the people. The values that Reagan spoke of that “transcend persons and parties” are the values that were fundamental to the founding of our country.  These values are those of Life, Liberty, and Property. We trust our elected leaders to preserve these values — we also trust them to never encroach on these values.  In this election year candidates for office should remember that the American people trust them only to the extent that they trust the American people.  The role of government is not to increase itself, but to protect the liberties of those who are its creators — the people.

I welcome your comments and discussion.

“The family is the foundation upon which the world of business is built, and it is a vital force in the local, state and national economy.”

The statue is by Michigan native Charles Umlauf who worked at UT Austin as a sculpture instructor. His works can be seen across America from the Smithsonian and New York city to Central Texas.   I believe that Mr. Umlauf catches the essence of the importance of the family in this simple statement and with his statue.  The family is not simply an old tradition, it is the fundamental building block of society.  Without a family with a mother and a father to teach them, children grow up with a skewed sense of their place in society.  They struggle to understand their civic duty and they have more difficulty becoming a contributing citizen. It is important that our society preserve this fundamental unit.  If this unit crumbles or if it is forcibly replaced by a government or social activists, the very fundamental part of our free society will disappear and we will be left to stumble in the dark.

First I think it is a gesture of no confidence in the ability of American’s to fix their own problems. The CEO may have been corrupt, he may have been unwise, it may be a good thing to have him gone from the company but it is not the federal government’s job to remove him. Why, you may ask, is it not within the realm of the government to do this? It’s quite simple actually. If you or I do not like the owner of the local grocery store because he sells things at an inflated cost and simply doesn’t do business as well as the new store down the street, we have no right to march down to the store and force him to leave his job. That would be preposterous. We simply would never do that. Why then do we feel that it is our job to fix the auto industry. If they can’t compete, let them die.

Second, I think it shows arrogance on the part of the government–the entire government. Not only the president is to blame, nor can we pin the blame on one party or the other. Why does the government assume that simply because they are in a position of power that they have the ability to direct the affairs of industry. They may think that they have good ideas and their rhetoric may sound good on television and in the news, but that does not qualify them to spend our money because we want to avoid the penalties of our own actions.

As I’ve written before, this whole thing smacks of extreme socialism leading toward the moster of comunism. This administration ran on a platform of change. Well that is not a new thing. Others have run on that platform before and society has been damaged greatly by the radical changes misguided leaders have made.

“I have talked face to face with the godless communist leaders. It may surprise you to learn that I was host to Mr. Kruschev for a half day when he visited the United States, not that I’m proud of it. I opposed his coming then, and I still feel it was a mistake to welcome this atheistic murderer as a state visitor. But, according to President Eisenhower, Kruschev had expressed a desire to learn something of American Agriculture and after seeing Russian agriculture I can understand why. As we talked face to face, he indicated that my grandchildren would live under communism. After assuring him that I expected to do all in my power to assure that his and all other grandchildren will live under freedom he arrogantly declared in substance:

‘You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands.’”

– Ezra T Benson,Our Immediate Responsibility. BYU Devotional, October 25, 1966.

In America we have come to think of the word prejudice as an evil word. We think that because society is prejudiced against someone that that person is by definition being wronged. This is a flawed view. For example, it could be said that I am prejudiced against murderers. I feel it is just for society to take from them their God-given rights to life, liberty, and property. I feel the same way about those who steal, are dishonest in business dealings, etc. Why am I prejudiced against these types of people? Because their choices harm the public good and can harm me personally. The same principle applies to the issues of providing marriage to gay and lesbian couples. Society can rightfully be prejudiced against these people in depriving them of the privilege to marry because in so doing society protects its own good and its own strength. The argument that we are prejudiced against a particular demographic is not sufficient reason to grant them rights or to forbear taking those rights and privileges from them.

The Times further reported that “The lawyer, Shannon Minter, the legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, argued that if the court upheld Proposition 8, same-sex couples would have ‘our outsider status enshrined in our Constitution.’ The right to marry, he said, was inalienable.”

This is simply not true. In simple fact, there is no inalienable “right to marry” given to any citizen of the United States. Marriage is rather a privilege that can be attained by citizens who are willing to live up to the social responsibility and obligations that come along with marriage.