Calling John Adams

"The nature of the encroachment upon American constitution is such, as to grow everyday more and more encroaching.  Like a cancer; it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited and virtuous, the Seekers more numerous and corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity and frugality become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole of society."

John Adams, to the inhabitants of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1775

When I first was reading this, I thought this was from a speech given by Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy, Newt Gingrich, Scoop Jackson or another moderate or conservative of modern or at least, recent history. I was extremely surprised to read that John Adams said this in 1775, the year prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence when Americans were still proud to be British citizens.

This quote is apropos more today as we debate the issues of Obamacare, entitlements, welfare reform and other social issues. John Adams understood that if you give people handouts, they become reliant and expect to be cared for by the state.

We began this slippery slope in 1932 with the election of FDR. Each President since then, except for Ronald Reagan, has managed to put another cog in the wheel I call "socialism". No one else is exempt.

Obamacare, the PPACA, is the biggest blight this country has ever produced. At least with Social Security and Medicare, Roosevelt and Kennedy understood that the government would not be able to afford senior benefits as we enjoy them today. So, a FICA tax was added in 1935 and a Medicare tax was added in 1965.

Until the 70s, as with the Federal Highway Administration, all these funds were held as trusts for the purposes intended. The Carter Administration removed the trusts and commingled all the funds into the big blur called the “federal budget”.

Somehow these are called "entitlements" because the federal government considers itself the "ultimate Nanny State" which is a far cry from what Adams unequivocally understood almost 240 years ago.

Obamacare Protest at Supreme Court (Photo credit: southerntabitha)

With Obamacare, there isn't even a real payment into the system by anyone. Oh, the usual suspects keep saying that the system will work if only the young pay high premiums to cover the older plan participants. The Obama Administration, through HHS doesn't know if anyone, ANYONE has paid in because that part of the system, four years after the law was signed, hasn't been built yet. Unbelievable!

In the end, John Adams with his backward education and non-technological society in which he lived, understood more about the inherent faults of the welfare state than any of today's mental giants who have shown know nothing at all. Seems a bit ironic, doesn’t it?

Adams was a Federalist, one who believed in a strong, central government. What we have today is not what he envisioned. He saw the government as an entity which was to work for the people, so that the people wouldn't need to work the government for themselves.

He also believed that the government exists with the consent of the governed, not that the governed exists with the blessings of the government.

We are not a statist country, at least not yet. Let's make certain this statist experiment never happens again. It is an unmitigated failure and we are broke because of it.

Let's find ourselves a modern-day John Adams to bring us back from this abyss. Now!