Have you ever wondered how a country evolves as time progresses? I want to put a quick example of slow shifts in the minds of people and relate it to politics. When I was younger a new TV show came on that was far more graphic, used explicit language and discussed topics that were generally not out in the open. I remember a number of moms who would not let their children watch this show even though it was targeted to a younger audience (as a cartoon shown in the evening around dinner time). The show was once seen in a bad light in many households. The Simpsons first aired in December of 1989. Now fast-forward to 2008, almost 20 years later. Television has evolved to the point of allowing just about anything on as long as it has a “viewer discretion advised” warning before the show starts. The people who once found The Simpson’s to be offended find the show to be one of the “better” shows on TV. Our country’s ideals have shifted as the media has slowly pushed the edge more and more until we become accepting of what many were once against.

So how does this relate to the slowly shifting country. Back in the cold war, many in our country were vehemently against the rise of communism. You could stand on a street corner and ask many if they agreed with communism and a vast majority would respond that they were against it. Even today, this same result can be found by doing a simple poll. However, what is communism? Is it not allowing the central government to regulate and “provide” (aka control) everything that the populace needs?

Over the past 100 years, the USA has slowly been shifting more and more towards socialism. Not the “communism” as we think of when someone mentions the USSR, China or Cuba. The founding fathers created our nation with a great balance of power between local governments and centralized governments. Almost yearly our local governments lose more power to the central government and in doing so we are rapidly (generally speaking if rapidly means 50+ years) moving towards a socialist/communist form of government in which the few “rich/wealthy/powerful” rule the rest of us. These so called “leaders” feel that they know best for us. The once liberal parties have moved further left and could easily be classified as socialist movements – while on the other side of the spectrum, the conservative party has now become the moderate party (which means liberal 20-50 years ago) and we have lost any semblance of conservatism in our government.

This is just some observations from someone who feels that the founding fathers knew something about being subjugated to a centralized government (they did leave monarchys and absolute rule). If we truly wish to protect our freedoms and have the rights that our founding fathers provided us with, we the people must rise again and hold on to the conservative values with which we were endowed.