All young animals grow up. I have been watching the nesting robins in my front yard. First watching the nest building, the eggs being laid and tended, waiting for the eggs to hatch. Then watching the fledglings grow and eventually learn to fly and leave the nest.

This is the normal order of things, I guess since my wife and I are on the cusp of being empty nesters ourselves this natural process has taken on renewed significance. Like the robins the best we can do as parents is prepare our children to enter adult hood and face the world on all its unequal terms.

Hopefully we teach them along the way to stand up and be contributing members of society. Like the birds, we teach them how to feed themselves and at times let them fall down on their own. This is how Men and Women are formed from the clay of childhood.

This is how it has worked in every civilization throughout history, whether you believe we rose from a chimpanzee troop, or descend from the orchard thieves.

So why are we as a nation rushing head long into the abyss that would put an end to the very system nature has devised and has served society so well for so long and instead settle for a system of eternal child like dependence?

In “Democracy in America” de Tocqueville wrote:

“It would seem that if despotism were to be established among the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and milder; it would degrade men without tormenting them...”

The degradation proceeds step by step. At first you are not competent to save for your own retirement. Then slowly the government takes control of services communities once offered on their own, and removes individual responsibility, providing sustenance while destroying self respect.  

It is interesting that the current government seems intent on taking care of us, as if we were a nation of children or as de Tocqueville wrote, “ It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood:”

How does the government do this so effectively?

By trying to protect us from every little thing, cigarettes, high fat food, solar radiation, providing universal health care the list goes on. President Obama himself admitted that the cigarette bill passed recently is the first step in controlling the health of the American public.

de Tocqueville continues:

“...it (the government) is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness...”

We are allowing ourselves to be lead into this very tyranny this prophetic Frenchman talked of over 150 years ago.

How will this end be achieved? The government in its zeal to protect us will gradually remove the choices we can make on our own until there is no choice to make. Then we will have arrived at “Tyrannical Kindness”.

The same kindness drug pushers use when they give you the first hit for free, with society it just takes a little longer say, 40-50 years.

It is also called socialism.

Now socialism claims to make people equal just as democracy does, and it is correct that under a true socialist system all people are equal. However that is not the equality desired by a free people or intended by those who laid the foundation of our liberties.

Under a free system, the individual is allowed to grow to their maximum potential. Under a socialist system the individual is restricted until all are pulled down to the least common denominator. Under liberty the individual has the maximum possible value, under the socialist system the individual exists only to serve society.

Socialism restrains all equally. Liberty makes all equally free.

As the Poet said:

“...we decide which is right...And which is an illusion”