At Least The Dems Make The Trains Run On Time

Captain Ed Morrissey--he'll always be "Captain Ed" to me, by the way--writes in his post "The Nanny State, Explained" about some of Hillary Clinton's more frightening comments that have been overlooked. Here's the gem that he notes: "We can talk all we want about freedom and opportunity, about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but what does all that mean to a mother or father who can't take a sick child to the doctor?" His response:

I just finished watching the excellent HBO series John Adams last Sunday. It tells the story of our nation’s birth and the sacrifice many of our founders made to create a free nation. They wanted a nation with government limited to just enough power to keep the peace and defend the nation. They didn’t conceive of the idea that a free people would trade their fortunes and freedom to create a government that would dictate choices to them in a manner far more egregious than George III.

*nodding* Actually, freedom meant a great deal to a large number of people who did not have access to the sort of medical care available to even the poorest in this nation. It meant enough that they fought and died in the war that killed the largest percentage of Americans ever against a people to whom they were intimately related. But it seems that the days are gone when the majority of Americans strongly believed there was anything more out there than life and comfort. And with the passing of those ideals, the courage of a nation is passing, as well.

Gone are the days of "ask not," replaced by the days of "you deserve." (What do people really deserve, anyway? Of course it will be more popular to enact policies based on the idea that you deserve everything the world has to offer; the only problem is that it isn't true.) The party of John F. Kennedy died with him; the commitment to freedom is no longer a bipartisan effort.