Reclaim Conservatism

While reading PEBO’s remarks from Philadelphia, one quote stuck out to me.

That is the reason I launched my campaign for the presidency nearly two years ago. I did so in the belief that the most fundamental American ideal, that a better life is in store for all those willing to work for it, was slipping out of reach. That Washington was serving the interests of the few, not the many. And that our politics had grown too small for the scale of the challenges we faced.

My Emphasis.

The first part of the quote, “the most fundamental American ideal, that a better life is in store for all those willing to work for it, [is] slipping out of reach” is correct, but the idea that it is due to too little government, or one that has “grown too small for the scale of the challenges we [face]” is absolutely wrong.

Many, if not most, of the challenges we face are due to an abundance of government, not a lack. Business are failing, or failing to grow, from over regulation not a shortage of regulation. Individual effort, creativity, and entrepreneurship are stifled by government that has grown as large and intrusive as ours.

Several times in this account of his remarks he mentions our founding documents, saying, “What is required is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives – from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry – an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels.” There was also this:

For the American Revolution did not end when British guns fell silent. It was never something to be won only on a battlefield or fulfilled only in our founding documents. It was not simply a struggle to break free from empire and declare independence. The American Revolution was – and remains – an ongoing struggle ‘in the minds and hearts of the people’ to live up to our founding creed.

With such an emphasis on our founding documents I would like to remind him what one of them says.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

My biggest concern regarding the new congress and incoming administration is that their answer to any and every problem will be more government. I hope and pray that I will be proved wrong.

Cross posted from bRight & Early