With all the talk of healthcare, stimulus, cap and trade, etc., we Americans are missing the big picture. What is at stake is not a technicality over who pays for what in society. The overriding critical issue is FREEDOM!

Do you want it? Are you willing to pay the price in personal responsibility and political awareness to keep it? Or will you trade away your freedom for a promise of cradle to grave paternalistic care from government?

If you take the easy way out and trade your vote and allegiance to the party which subsidizes you the most, do you think you or your descendants will ever get your freedom back (without a fight)?

The fact of the matter is that freedom. The right to live as you please (as long as you are not hurting or stealing from your fellow man) and keep the fruits of your labor is not the natural state of mankind.

Since the first caveman hit another caveman over the head with a club, the strong, the ambitious, and the intelligent have oppressed the weak, the lazy, and the weak-minded. To be free, you must prove that you have the strength and intelligence to continually protect your freedom or you will surely lose it to the guy with the club.

Trusting in your elected officials to make your decisions, provide your healthcare and retirement, and pick up the pieces when you screw up your life is not the solution. This is the road to dependence, it is followed by oppression.

When someone from the government offers you a helping hand, run (don’t walk) away. They don’t have your best interest at heart whether they are Democrats or Republicans (democrat-lite). They want power, absolute power.

These people are arrogant intellectuals who view you as foolish, gullible children that can be guided, manipulated, and used to order society as they see fit.

They want a society where ideologically correct elites (them) will wield absolute control of every activity or decision. They want you to be dependent, pliant serfs on the Federal Plantation.

We have fallen along the way since the revolution. Our founding fathers were individualists for the most part. They were self-reliant, informed, educated, and willing to stand up for their right of self-determination.

They wanted minimal service from the government (essentially protection from pirates, Indians, and the European powers). One said that “if men were angels, we would need no government at all.”

Other than that, they wanted to be left alone to order their lives, families, and businesses as they saw fit. They did not expect their fellow citizens to take responsibility for their misfortunes and bad decisions and actions. Nor did they feel an obligation to maintain other men’s station in life.

As for me, I want constitutionally limited government. Limit its power to what is specifically allowed in the constitution, not what ever is vaguely allowed.

Having the government subsidize vast swaths of our society at the expense of an overtaxed and politically vulnerable minority is not promoting the general welfare. It is promoting individual welfare.

Excessively taxing people merely because they have wealth is neither fair nor good economic policy. The high achievers in society create the jobs and keep things running. Do we really want to encourage them to retire or emigrate?

We as a country are in debt up to our eyeballs. The national debt has continued to skyrocket under both Democrat and Republican administrations, consumer debt is at a record high, and we continue to borrow a trillion dollars overseas each year to finance our trade deficit.

To all this fiscal insanity, we are adding 70 million baby boomers to Social Security and Medicare in the next few decades.

On top of this, the socialists want to nationalize 20 percent of the economy in their healthcare power grab and shut down any carbon producing utility or industry.

Seems to me that our country is headed for a financial collapse unless we back away from our open ended socialistic programs and transfer payments.

No government or corporation can make promises of unlimited services, pensions and health insurance without inviting financial collapse.

I hope this insanity can be stopped in the 2010 mid-term elections.

Bill Gilmer

Fayetteville, Ga.