President
Barack Obama's inaugural declaration that "The question we ask today is not
whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works"
is further evidence that the wisdom and values that animated America's founding generation are lost – evidence that too few Americans today possess a mature skepticism of power and a love of liberty, and that too many Americans today are subject to adolescent crushes on charismatic charmers.
If
Thomas Jefferson thought as Mr. Obama does, he would have written in
1776: "We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men are
endowed by their government with the unalienable right to be taxed, subsidized,
regulated, lectured, scolded, herded, harassed, and otherwise ruled in whatever
ways work."
And these soaring words would have been part of a Declaration of Dependence.