Maybe this is what has me so pessimistic about my country.  With each day that passes the more I believe that I no longer understand what America is all about.  I do not recognize or understand this country anymore and the people of this country.  I was raised to believe in freedom.  Freedom is and always has been crucial to me and, I thought, the people of this nation.  I see the love of freedom fading.  Fading fast; and the love of security growing.

I think the phrase that applies here is “The New Normal.”  I’m sprouting my curmudgeon wings .. which means I go way back, back to where “normal” was loving freedom and believing in self-reliance.  That certainly is not the normal now.

For forty-two years I’ve been listening to presidential State of the Union speeches, and each year I hear the word freedom less and less.  Instead, it has been replaced with one word that I think will one day prove to be the downfall of this nation: security.  When people wake up each morning in pursuit of the American Dream, they are no longer dreaming of freedom.  No, they are dreaming of security.  Government-provided security is the new normal.   Freedom is so 1960s.  

There’s another element of the new normal.  Government dependence.  A growing number of Americans spend far more time trying to figure out what wonderful new government benefits they can qualify for than they do trying to figure out how they can use their talents and work ethic to build their wealth on their own. 

Not that many people seem to have the desire to put forth the effort to become rich, and this is for two reasons.  One … Our government has propped them up with handouts and entitlements, which validates their moocher lifestyle.  Work hard?  Why?  Secondly; liberals in this country have done a damn good job of demonizing the rich … just about to the point where people no longer want to become rich because they view it as a negative.  They believe that rich people had to steal that money in order to become rich, they don’t pay their taxes, they became rich by taking someone else’s living wage, they are bad and don’t pay their fair share, they don’t carry the load, they are swindlers … you know the routine.   This is Obama’s class warfare campaign at work.  The rich are not only evil, we’re told they’re actually unpatriotic because they don’t pay their fair share (a lie, by the way).  People want to be considered patriotic.  People don’t want to be considered evil.  There are now so many negative connotations attached to wealth that the American people are actually being programmed against working to become wealthy.  If rich being evil and unpatriotic is the new normal --- then why bother?  After all, you’re not evil, are you? 

Now I ask you … which candidate do you think appeals to this new normal?  Easy .. that would be Barack Obama.  Which party speaks to the person who demonizes wealth and encourages government-provided healthcare and security?  The Democrats.  The Democrats are the party of government provided security, government-provided jobs, government-mandated job protection, government healthcare, government-funded retirement, government schools.  Is it any wonder why government employees are one of the top five sources of cash for Barack Obama’s reelection campaign?  These people want to keep their cushy government jobs and the security of knowing how difficult it is to be fired, and there is one party and one president who won’t challenge them on that: Barack Obama and the Democrats.

This transition toward a nation dependent on government has been steadily going on since I started doing talk radio.  Year after year, more and more people just throw their hands up and say, “I can’t cope.  This self-reliance thing is killing me. I want somebody else to take care of me.”  And along the way our government grows more powerful, answering the pleas of people asking the government to take care of them. 

Now for those of you who have yet to throw up your hands … the ones who are still plugging away at earning, growing, achieving, providing, paying and saving … I hate to say this .. but you have a question to answer and a decision to make.  The question is this:  Do you think that there is any realistic chance that the people of this country are going to abandon their drive to government dependency and suddenly decide to embrace liberty and self-reliance?  If you think this might happen, you need to start working now to bring that about. 

BUT .. if you think the drive to government dependence has reached critical mass and cannot be turned around, you have to start questioning whether or not The United States is the best place for you to pursue your dreams.   Seniors are starting to retire outside of the United States because they fear that all they’ve worked for is being eyed by Obama and the Democrat Party.  They fear an economic Berlin Wall, and they’re escaping before that wall is fully erected.  Similarly, young people might want to consider other places to live in which they can work to create wealth without being demonized and raped by high taxes. 

We are now ranked a pathetic 18^th for economic liberty.  That’s not good.  Have you seen any changes in the works that give you hope that we will one day climb back up those ranks?  I didn’t think so.  To pursue you dreams, you essentially need two things: The rule of law protecting property rights and economic liberty.  Barack Obama has worked to destroy the rule of law.  Just one example is his bypassing of established bankruptcy law in order to save the United Auto Workers.  Then there’s economic liberty, and we just touched on that.  Eighteenth in the ranks of economic liberty, and according to the most recent Index of Economic Freedom, published by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, “freedom from corruption in the United States has fallen by 5 percentage points over the previous year due to increasing levels of cronyism and corruption.”  The Heritage Foundation writes, “As favoritism grows with the size of the government, economic freedom continues to be eroded by policies like bailouts, loan guarantees, and tax exemptions. Privilege has replaced the good public economic policies of freedom. The influence of a select few is eroding our economic values and introducing perverse incentives and inefficiencies that hurt our competitiveness.”

I would love to be wrong about Mitt Romney and this election in November.  I hope that Romney wins, but I don’t see anything turning the tide of government dependency, even with a Romney win.  Do you see a movement in the direction of self-reliance or more government reliance and dependency?  Just think about it.  My message to you is to start considering whether or not there is a better place to pursue your dreams.