It is said that when Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes he asked the wise man if there was anything he could do for him. Diogenes is said to have replied, “Yes. Stand a little less between me and the sun.”

I thought of Diogenes as I read portions of the president’s speech from Cleveland, Ohio. The New York Times reports that the president used the word fight or some version of it more than 20 times.

Mr. Obama vowed to fight for jobs; he promised to fight for quality education; he promised to fight for health care; fight for transparency in government. He promised to fight! Fight! Fight! And never stop fighting. “So long as I have some breath in me,” he said, “so long as I have the privilege of serving as your President, I will not stop fighting for you.”

Such pronouncements of chivalry no doubt came as a surprise to the parents and children of the opportunity scholarship program.

Also known as the D.C. voucher program the OSP was started in 2003 as a program to provide children from low income families scholarships of up to $7500 to attend non-public K-12 schools within the district.

I wonder if during The Great Depression, the people carried the same sort of angst we hold now. Whether they believed they had destroyed America for the generations to follow or were they more worried about their current plight?

With the pre-election crash in the market, a continued fear of market investment, high unemployment, high taxes, and a government that leans to protectionism and massive spending; the scene is set for a Great Depression. Two major factors keep us on the brink of what we deserve and what we will allow; the individual American and the Government. This doesn’t bode well for us.

Government’s heavy handiness occurred during the Great Depression. The individual American had legitimate arguments. They hadn’t lived out-side of their means or risked it all in the stock market; their only sin was depositing money in an unsecured bank. As banks failed, they lost everything and the first “US” generation was born. “We, the people” was forgotten and selfishness and entitlement set in.

I am always troubled by those in government claiming they have a moral imperative to enact this or that policy. A little digging often reveals that their motives are more self serving than moral.

Such is the case with liberal Democrats and their insistence that the moral laws of the universe - laws that have been with us since God breathed life into man (or as some would have it when we rose from the primordial soup) - command Government to supply every citizen (and many that aren’t) with health insurance.

Hastily written and thrust upon the American people after almost no debate, the “stimulus” provided for hundreds of billions of dollars of non-stimulative spending. It contained, for example, many billions of dollars for money-losers like Amtrak, grant-makers like the National Endowment for the Arts, and Democratic pet projects like global-warming research and purchasing hybrid vehicles for federal employees - hardly the kinds of outlays that come to mind when the goal is to accelerate an economic recovery

Conservatives, or so called “conservatives” wail on and on about how big the government has gotten. They constantly tell us how universal healtcare would cost too much, be too instrusive, is “socialist” and so on and so forth. Well I do agree to some extent with them, the government is too big, it’s bloated, inefficient, and out of control. There are aspects of the government that smack of socialism. Where we diverge is what we believe is socialism.

“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” - Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States. 

In the time and age of economic peril, we have seen many people lose hope, faith and trust. Many Americans have seen their investments and their financial security totally collapse. While the government is looking for solutions to combat this economic warfare, I believe the answer is simple and not complex: Americans need to decrease their dependency on the government. For far too long, many Americans have had a love affair with the naive …