Apr

It’s the Dependency, Stupid!

The tea party movement isn’t just about taxes and spending. Yes, that’s bad, and it’s unsustainable. But it’s more than that. Michael Barone’s piece in the Washington Examiner really got to the heart of the matter. It’s the way the current administration and congress are turning America into a nation of dependents. Already we have nearly half of Americans dependent to some measure on the other half, and the number of dependents is only going to rise.

But public policy also helps determine the kind of society we are. The Obama Democrats see a society in which ordinary people cannot fend for themselves, where they need to have their incomes supplemented, their health care insurance regulated and guaranteed, their relationships with their employers governed by union leaders. Highly educated mandarins can make better decisions for them than they can make themselves.

That is the culture of dependence. The tea partiers see things differently. They’re not looking for lower taxes; half of tea party supporters, a New York Times survey found, think their taxes are fair. Nor are they financially secure: Half say someone in their household may lose their job in the next year. Two-thirds say the recession has caused some hardship in their lives. But they recognize, correctly, that the Obama Democrats are trying to permanently enlarge government and increase citizens’ dependence on it.

And, invoking the language of the Founding Fathers, they believe that this will destroy the culture of independence that has enabled Americans over the past two centuries to make this the most productive and prosperous — and the most charitably generous — nation in the world. Seeing our political divisions as a battle between the culture of dependence and the culture of independence helps to make sense of the divisions seen in the 2008 election.

Few things are worse for the human spirit than dependency. It’s one thing to be dependent on loved ones with our best interests at heart. It’s quite another to be dependent on the state – a massive bureaucracy that views you as just another number, as just another liability.

Via memeorandum

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