Enough already!

The danger with democracies is being subject to the whims of the majority. The danger with dictatorships is being subjected to the whims of a single ruler.

America is neither a democracy nor a dictatorship, yet why does it feel like we are being jerked around by both?

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On a politically calculated whim, President Obama decided to delay Obamacare’s employer mandate for companies with 50 to 99 employees until 2016. The delay verges on absurdity, and the repeated lawlessness is making a mockery of the Constitution, the rule of law and the concept of separation of powers.

Obama isn’t the first president or politician to abuse the Constitution, but he is certainly accelerating the trend, seemingly without regret.  Either he is unaware that it is not his role as president to legislate, which should make him unqualified to be president, or he simply doesn’t care.

I’m going with the latter. And he doesn’t have to care because he can get away with it, shielded by the ignorance and apathy of the dumb masses.

Well I’m neither ignorant nor apathetic, and I’ve had enough!

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By any measurable standards, we are not becoming smarter as a nation.  Whether or not you believe it is by design, generations of government education have left our brains as empty as our wallets.

I don’t necessarily believe that this results in the election of dumber politicians, but I believe the result is two-fold:

1. People who lack critical thinking practices are more likely to be manipulated by soaring rhetoric and catchy slogans.

2. Most importantly, without a basic understanding of our founding principles, we lack the ability to hold politicians’ feet to the fire and demand that they live up to their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution.

If we don’t understand the basics about the Constitution, federalism, separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, we cannot be expected to demand they be honored. Beyond understanding what our founding documents say, we are failing to make the final but crucial leap in understanding the big-picture ramifications if they are undermined.

It also breeds a society that is willing to accept promises of big government benefits without recognizing how this perverts our fundamental relationship with government.  We have no business being reliant upon the government, yet somehow we’ve convinced ourselves that this is a necessary function.

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So we have a president who is acting beyond the bounds of the Constitution and an electorate that hasn’t a clue what they should even be outraged about. Add to this a growing population of people without jobs, and I fear we’re concocting a possibly deadly cocktail.

A new report from the Department of Education finds that 23 percent of young Americans who graduated high school in 2004 are living at home with their parents. About one in ten (13 percent) are neither working nor currently pursuing an education.

The youthful exuberance of the Obama generation has degraded into idleness. Far from hope and change, it is a generation that can’t even fully comprehend why they are sitting on the couches of their youth rather than in a desk chair.

They aren’t the only ones, but the inability of an entire generation to kick start their careers will have lasting long-term repercussions.

We have a dangerous mix of an idle population and a political class trying to convince everyone that this is a good thing.  Democrats strive to spin the latest CBO report on Obamacare’s negative effect on future employment with a BS political judo move: you’ll now have “freedom” not to be “trapped by employment!”

Giving up on jobs, the masses settle on government dependence as a way of life. They are less likely to challenge the hand that cradles them.  They have nothing to gain by fighting to protect certain freedoms, principles or institutions.

I can’t blame those who take advantage of the benefits offered but I blame our collective selves for allowing government to get to the point where this is an acceptable role of government.  At some point down this current path, productive members of society will exist solely to support the takers.

It will be the whims of the idle masses depriving us all of liberty and property.

It will be the unchecked whims of current and future presidents that could relegate our founding principles to merely our children’s history books, rather than their civics education.