What have we become? Part I

Over the Labor Day holiday, my family had dinner together celebrating the end of summer. This is no different than what many other families were doing, but, after dinner, our discussions turned to politics, and that led me to ask: "What have we come to?"

First, a little background. I'm a Reagan Republican. I came to voting age just after Reagan's 1980 election. My mother is a social liberal Democrat who I'm sure wonders at times where she went wrong.

After dinner, a political discussion began as it often does. My mother lamented the war, its must written about negatives, and the fact that nothing is getting done in Washington. Now, I'm not going to discuss the war, because it's kind of like abortion: everyone views it from their own perspective and little can be done to pursuade someone from one side to the other. What I asked my mother was: "What are you wanting Congress to do?" Her response was to solve people's problems like healthcare and the mortgage issues people are facing. I asked how they did that. She said, by passing legislation.

Then it hit me. What have we become? Why are we, as citizens, so passive in solving our own personal problems that we expect government to solve them for us? Is it the government education most are receiving today that encourages this communistic thinking? What ever happened to the teachings of personal responsibility?

I find it ironic that my mother, one generation removed from the greatest generation, had gone so far towards Marxism. Her parents' generation proactively solved problems themselves, at home and around the world, tyring to rid the world of Marxism and tyranny believing everyone had a right to be free.

Why is it that my mother's generation feels so compelled to rely on the government to take action for them and solve life's problems and send us back towards Marxism?

I asked her whether, in her opinion, society had gotten better or worse since she became an adult. She said worse. I stated that we have had a fifty fold expansion of legislation and government over her lifetime attempting to solve our problems and make our lives better. Then I asked her to name the problems that government has solved through this increase in legislation and scope of government. She couldn't. I asked to name me a piece of legislation passed or program implemented by Congress that had negative, unintended consequences which had been revoked. She couldn't name one.

Is this the same lady that held me accountable for everything telling me that if something negative that happened to me, its my fault even when it wasn't? Is this the same lady that said