Because We Need Change

I'm having deja vu. I was only 18 years old the first time, and it was the first election in which I could vote. Governor Bill Clinton campaigned across the country. I pulled my hair out - I did have hair back then - hearing voter after voter responding with "...because we need change" to qualify their presidential vote. Change what?

Sixteen years later, which included two terms for President Clinton, the cliche has resurfaced. It makes sense. Those who regurgitate the mindless dribble are the same lemmings who swallowed the mainstream media generated propoganda in 1992. They are featured regularly on "J-Walking". Ask them to describe the difference between captilism and socialism and get a puzzled glare. Ask them about Britney Spears, and they can spew forth hours of pop culture history.

Unfortunately, I must confess that these voters trouble me much more today than they did sixteen years ago. Back then, Bill Clinton said that the economy was the "worst in 50 years" even though it wasn't. Because the understanding of basic economic principals for many was whatever had been covered by MTV programming, it was accepted as fact and Clinton was going to save the masses from another Great Depression. Even if Clinton's assertion was accurate, it was frightening to me, even as an 18-year-old, that so many American citizens looked to a politician and a government to "fix" things.

Today it is "oil prices", the "mortgage crisis", "universal healthcare", etc., etc. The knee-jerk reaction of the politically and ecomomically uneducated are once again looking to a politician and government. What has changed is that these voters seem to be the majority on both sides of the political isle. Most are more than willing to trade, many knowingly, freedoms for a "quick fix". The sick irony is that many of these problems are direct results of government and politicians upseting free-market forces, regulating and forcing private entities to engage practices that would inevitably produce negative results.

Congress has not allowed a new oil refinery to be built since the early 1980's. U.S oil drilling has been disallowed over and over in the same time frame. Basic economic laws say that when supply does not keep up with demand, prices go up. Of course, when a majority of the electorate know as much about "supply and demand" as they do about nuclear physics, pinning the blame on George W. Bush is unbelievably simple.

We do live in prolific times. Not like those described by Obama when he won the nomination saying that future people would reflected on this time as "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal …", but we live at a time that has a nation on the verge of becoming what it fought for 40+ years during the Cold War.

We do need change, but not those changes promoted by John McCain, Barack Obama, Republicans, Democrats, etc. We need a more educated population with the ability to critically examine those issues that continue to chip away at our right to "Life", "Happiness", and especially "Liberty".

I don't wan't a government forcing me to have health insurance. I don't want a government forcing me to "invest" in a failing retirement plan (Social Security). I don't want a goverment telling me what kind of car to drive, whether or not a restuarant can allow smoking, how to raise my kids, etc., etc.

We need change. We need our freedom. We need the government to get out of our lives. My "hope" is not in a politician, Barack Obama. I don't need you to tell me when and how much money I can donate to a political campaign, John McCain. I want and need the "inalienable" right to exercise free will, to have the ability to make my own decisions whether they be the right ones or the wrong ones. That is the change we need.