“A government big enough to give you everything you need is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.” This is a great quote from Jefferson, except that no such quote can be found anywhere in Jefferson’s writings. We do know that Jefferson said, “To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, ‘the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, & the fruits acquired by it.’” We have allowed our government to become too powerful. That is our fault.

We also know for certain that George Bernard Shaw said, “A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” Although not officially a cynic, Margaret Thatcher was correct, and Greece has officially run out of other people’s money.

The United States is headed in the same direction as Greece. Our government knows how to spend. Both major political parties have demonstrated that. And one party knows very well how to tax. The other party is inept at taxing. Neither party knows how to act responsibly. Politicians’ shoes are all badly scuffed from kicking cans down the road. They care not that our children and grandchildren will have to pay tomorrow for the votes these politicians are buying today.

Can we avoid tyranny? Can we escape from the clutches of today’s politicians? Yes, but we will need persons of vision and common sense to vote for public servants. We have to stop electing politicians.

The congress and the president have agreed to abandon our constitutional republic in favor of a Politburo. Our elected representatives will not decide the tough budget issues. We will instead have six Republicans and six Democrats creating debt and deficit legislation, while the other 533 get to sit on the sidelines and merely vote yea or nay with no other input allowed. This plan for a super-committee means that over 90 percent of us will have no representation in the decision-making process at all. And if you support the Tea Party, I predict your voice will be silenced completely on this issue. I don’t hear the outrage, and I don’t understand why. I never thought we would surrender this meekly. Write your representative and your senators whether they are selected for the Central Committee or not. Ask why you have been disenfranchised.

Where did congress get the power to create a committee to debate and decide for all our other representatives. How can this committee disallow input? How did so much power get concentrated into the hands of so few? What other U.S. President in history would have signed such a law? Where is the press in all of this? Why are the media not howling about the tyrrany that is being imposed?

I do not know for certain that the professional politicians of the two entrenched political parties are playing us like fish, but that explanation would fit the observable facts. The rhetoric is incredible. We are being pitted against one another, and as the class, race, and ideological warfare escalates, we are forgetting in the distraction of the moment who the real problem is. We are the problem. We elected these people who now rule us. If we do not get rid of them at the ballot box, we will have unpleasant alternatives.