What Have We Wrought?

Mark Steyn, whom I have never heard of, writing in the April 2009 Imprimis, published by Hillsdale College says this:

"...When governments annex a huge chunk of the economy, they also annex a huge chunk of individual liberty. You fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the state into something closer to that of junkie and pusher - and you make it very difficult ever to change back.

Americans face a choice. They can rediscover the animating principles of the American idea - of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the opportunities to exploit your talents to the fullest - or you can join most of the rest of the Western world in terminal decline. To rekindle the spark of liberty once it dies is very difficult. The inertia, the ennui, the fatalism is more pathetic than the demographic decline and fiscal profligacy of the social democratic state, because it's subtle and less tangible..."

Is America at this place?