When
Barack Obama encouraged graduates at Ohio State University to ignore the "voices" that exhort us to avoid the dangers of oversized government . . .
“Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn
of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s
at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices also doing
their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always
lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because
what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment
in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted
We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to
solve our problems. We shouldn’t want to. But we don’t think the
government is the source of all our problems, either. Because we
understand that this democracy is ours. And as citizens, we understand
that it’s not about what America can do for us, it’s about what can be
done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely
necessary work of self-government.”
Perhaps
the voices he was referring to were these . . .
"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government." ~Thomas Jefferson
"You can't be for big government, big taxes, and big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy." ~Ronald Reagan
"The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power." ~Daniel Webster
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a
troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it
be left to irresponsible action." ~George Washington
"There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state
comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power,
from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him
accordingly." ~Henry David Thoreau
"No method of procedure has ever been devised by which liberty could be
divorced from local self-government. No plan of centralization has ever
been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny,
inflexibility, reaction, and decline." ~Calvin Coolidge
"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice
of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of
increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to
all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." ~Harry Truman
But consider recent headlines:
Then weigh these headlines against the warnings of
the voices vs. the warning of Barack Obama. . . and if you prefer "liberty and justice for all" to tyranny,
heed the voices!
