More on 'Do-Gooder' Government and Personal Freedoms ... The Nanny State Is Here ... Let's Kill It

We wrote earlier today on 'The American Nanny State' regarding our individual responsibilities concerning adequately saving and investing for the retirement years.

It's about freedom and self reliance, as well as a let's not allow the government do for us that which we can better do for ourselves.

Freedom is a somewhat unique, precious and wonderful right we enjoy as American citizens. Let's not unwisely and unintentionally forfeit any part of it to all the government 'helpers' who enjoy being in control of today's ever growing Nanny state.

Indeed, over the past several years, things have changed dramatically and not for the better. And for the sake of comparison, please consider what a Democratic abolitionist said in 1834. It's subtitled 'A Democrat's warning about government favoritism:

"William Leggett, a Jacksonian Democrat and abolitionist, writing in the New York Evening Post, Nov. 21, 1834:

Whenever a Government assumes the power of discriminating between the different classes of the community, it becomes, in effect, the arbiter of their prosperity, and exercises a power not contemplated by any intelligent people in delegating their sovereignty to their rulers. It then becomes the great regulator of the profits of every species of industry, and reduces men from a dependence on their own exertions, to a dependence on the caprices of their Government. Governments possess no delegated right to tamper with individual industry a single hair’s-breadth beyond what is essential to protect the rights of person and property.

In the exercise of this power of intermeddling with the private pursuits and individual occupations of the citizen, a Government may at pleasure elevate one class and depress another; it may one day legislate exclusively for the farmer, the next for the mechanic, and the third for the manufacturer, who all thus become the mere puppets of legislative cobbling and tinkering, instead of independent citizens, relying on their own resources for their prosperity. It assumes the functions which belong alone to an overruling Providence, and affects to become the universal dispenser of good and evil."

Summing Up

Nearly 200 years later, what Leggett said still makes sense to me.

How about you?

So despite the overwhelming odds against us, let's continue the fight to preserve our individual freedoms and work hard to achieve a less intrusive government.

That's my take.

Thanks. Bob.