Of the government, by the government, and for the government.

Or was it supposed to be of the people, by the people, and for the people?
For those not familiar with this phrase it is the ending line of President Lincolns Gettysburg. An address which starts with an even more often quoted phrase "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal". I think of these two phrases now more than ever before as I wonder what has happened to America. Lincolns war, the civil war was a war to provide freedom and equality to every one in the United States. I have to wonder if I'm still in the same America. Cause it sure seems there's some folks at the top who are being treated as a little more equal than others.

Indeed I more and more often feel like this is not the America that I was brought up in. I'm speaking specifically of the blatant hubris, greed, and corruption at every level of big business and government in this country. Each and every day I turn on the news and am amazed by some new story of a CEO, or board of directors who has run their company into the ground, begged, ..........and then gotten money from the government. And then turned around and just as irresponsibly as before gone on some self indulgent spending spree as if it was just business as usual.

These folks are no better than heroine addicts, except that your typical heroine addict at least has the common courtesy to remove the needle and rubber band from his arm before going out into public so that the rest of don't have to be offended by his vulgar habit. This differs from the corrupt corporate execs who, are asking for yet more money with the shame of their most recent failures still fresh on the days news. Also in defense of the heroine addict the hubris which they commit doesn't really harm anyone but themselves. Oh sure there's the occasional failed attempt at a liquor store robbery to get his fix, but that pales in comparison to the damage that is being done by these incompetent, unethical, immoral white collar bastards who are destroying our country purely for the sake of their own gluttony. And make no mistake it is gluttony. There are very real people in this country who are every day losing their jobs, their homes indeed everything they have. All the while our government is subsidizing the lifestyles of the evil corporate execs, and doing so at our expense.

Of course there are other differences between a corporate exec and a heroine addict. Specifically, if you or I see a heroine addict on the street begging for money with a needle still dangling from his arm we would almost certainly walk away disgusted by him. Our government it seems doesn't operate on any sort of similar principals.

In fact it seems our government has no problem at all funding these white collar addicts, and they are doing so at our expense, and at the expense of our children. Because when our government is paying for something that really means it's us the taxpayer who is paying for things. And we are paying for it on credit, and sooner or later the interest will be coming due.

The original idea of America, and the reason this country that was so appealing to the rest of the world was because of the belief that in America anyone can come here and the only limitation they had was their own intelligence, drive, and ambition. If you build a better product or service you will succeed because people will want to have the better product to the inferior one. Oh yes I recall now, that's what they call capitalism and free markets. However, it seems as though we have recently moved away from that idea.

These people are utterly without shame. It used to be that if you were caught committing acts of such an egregious nature that you were at the very least ashamed of your self. Not these bastards. No sir. They don't even seem to feel as though they've done anything the least bit wrong. And our the response of our government is to continue to supply them with a fresh set of needles. How is this ever going to get any better? Until we have a government that is willing to do the hard thing things are just going to get worse, and I will continue to ask what happened to America?

I started this out with a quote from one of my favorite president, and I'm going to close it out with a quote from one of my favorite four fathers Benjamin Franklin:

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."