Lee’s Summit, July 28, 2010 – The primaries are upon us.  Candidates all over Missouri have been doing their best to get their message across.  Some use radio advertising.  Others use television spots.  Most simply go door to door and talk to people in hopes that they can connect and deliver the message they represent.  Most of them use the phone as well with volunteers and write scripts for them to follow.  All healthy as long as they pitch their message, and not try to lie or stretch the truth about their opponents.

I once was told, that in the heat of a debate (and elections are truly a debate between candidates that often at the local level do not face each other) the important thing to remember is to raise the depth of your argument, not the sound of your voice.  Sage advises for all of us, including our candidates.

As we approach November 2nd and the mid term elections, as well as the primaries leading up to it, we as voters have a duty to ourselves and to this country: We must be informed, and that’s only up to us.

What’s at stake in this election cycle?  Earlier I called it the choice between Big Government and Small Government: The difference between personal choice and government choice.  It seems the more I think about it, the more I realize that it a far more critical point in the history of the United States.

Good intentions and benevolence is insufficient, paraphrasing George Washington Carver’s comment, to make a slave owner acceptable.  It did not matter how benevolent a person or a bureaucracy may be, when they control your life they may as well own you. 

Our government, backed by good intentions and a seemingly benevolent heart has been putting shackles around the creative and rugged individualist nature of the American Citizen.  It has all been done in the name of “helping” our fellow man.

No one can argue the merits of Social Security to help the retired.

No one can argue the need for Medicare to help the elderly.

No one can argue the helping hand Medicaid gives those who need it most.

No one can dispute the value to the unemployed of Unemployment Insurance.

Yet, I think back to what John F. Kennedy once said, “give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, teach him to fish feed him for a lifetime.”  Not only do you feed him for a lifetime, but you help him and his decedents to feed themselves, and perhaps feed the village.

Once the programs of FDR were implemented, and then LBJ’s Great Society was put in place, people who fought to keep themselves fed and sought opportunity out of need, were given a choice.  The choice is a hard one. 

Should I vote for someone that will do the right thing, that being keep government spending small which will likely affect what I get from the government in terms of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment Compensation, Welfare, and all the other entitlements, or do I vote for the one that will maintain or increase those entitlements.

The payment for the vote was hidden right in front of our eyes.

Who would vote to cut off payments that we’re entitled to?  Who would take food and medicine from a needy person?  No one! 

We are a very generous people, here in the United States.  Our ability to generate wealth, gives us the ability to share the wealth with those less fortunate.  And for those who are not so inclined the government started slowly to take higher and higher taxes, forcing the redistribution of wealth.  It is the benevolent thing to do; isn’t it?

Higher taxes take away from the entrepreneurs so their early businesses are in a far more precarious position financially, and thus more will fail.  If the new businesses, and new technologies are not developed then there will be less jobs (look around, this is happening today).  If there are fewer jobs, then there are more people who need help, more unemployed and under-employed.

Humanity grows when we are challenged, we are given the opportunity to succeed, and are left to reap the rewards of our efforts.  George Washington Carver said, “Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.”  In today’s environment, this quote would not be politically correct.

Government has grown too big; it has put shackles around our wrists.  They may be silver or gold shackles, they may be designer quality, but in the end they leave us beholden to the politicians who vote increases to our government stipends.  We are encouraged, for the sake of the politician’s power and the power of the bureaucracy, to become dependant on something outside of ourselves.  We are encouraged, oh so benevolently, to become wards of the State.

As we approach August 3rd, and then move forward to November 2nd, we have to understand the true choice before us.  We have to understand that whether we are voting for County, State, or Federal officials, we are voting on the following choice: Our rights to grow and prosper as individuals throughout the spectrum of society, or do we want to become wards of the State and forever be beholden to the politicians who promise us more and more to get our vote.

It is up to us.

It is our duty, to understand what this election cycle means to us.

It is our decision.  Do not make it blindly.  Chose because that is what you want, and don’t be fooled by benevolent “would be” masters of our futures.

See you at the polls on August 3rd; it is only the first step:  Then comes November.

Respectfully Submitted,
The Lee’s Summit Conservative