Land of the slightly free and the home of the indebted

In our ongoing social/civic/economic discussion, Xavier Onassis, my second cousin twice removed and head of the International Organization of Bald Guys with Sunglasses and Goatees (IBGSG for short), made some valid points showing how the Obama administration is pushing our country closer to what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

The current administration is ...making the painful and expensive, but necessary, investment into the social, legal, political, and physical infrastructure that facilitate our pursuit of the ideals that this country was founded on. ...With Obama at the helm, America may finally become the country it has always aspired to be.

And I can't see how anyone could argue these points.

I mean, the evidence is everywhere. Just look at the domestic spying bill Obama and his Democrats (and Republicans) have continually supported. It hearkens back to the "Spying on our own people is totally cool" clause of the U.S. Constitution written way back in 1787.

Then, of course, there's the babillion dollars we've spent bailing out businesses that, by all rights, should have been buried years ago. This is consistent with Thomas Jefferson's line in the Declaration of Independence where he writes "When in the course of screwing the country out of billions of dollars it becomes necessary to give those parties trillions more dollars for even more screwing activities..."

Also, I know all of the Founding Fathers were big supporters of huge taxes. They all believed that U.S. citizens should pay at least 55% of their annual incomes to the government, which they in turn believed should be the largest employer in the country. This was demonstrated by the Boston Tea Party, where patriots dumped boxes full of Tetley into Boston Harbor because they thought taxes were waaaaaaay too low.

Finally, the Founding Fathers were all about Americans sacrificing liberty for the illusion of security. I think it was Ben Franklin who wrote "If we restrict freedom to attain security, we will totally be able to raise taxes have huge inaugural balls and people will still kiss our asses."

So yes, XO. If the Founding Fathers were alive today, they probably wouldn't have their own blogs trying to call attention to the absurdity that our federal government has become.

tagged: government, Constitution, founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Obama