I have always found it odd that those on the left seem to believe they can make government hand out goodies like universal healthcare, college education and drug coverage without infringing on freedom at all.

This is patently false and I hope Liberal Democrats will understand why. Take 2 extremes for a moment:

Government A - This system takes 100% in taxes of your disposable income and uses it to buy healthcare, education, daycare, housing, food, retirement, funeralcare, etc...

Government B - This system takes 0% in taxes from income and does nothing for you.

So, with Government B you obviously have complete economic freedom, in that the money you earn, you choose how you want to spend it. While with Government A you have no economic freedom as government decides how to spend your money for you.

Simply put, each program government does, like drug coverage, means obviously you pay more in taxes which means you have a correlating loss in your economic freedom. It decreases.

Now some on the left will say, but wait, what if we tax businesses and corporations and fund government programs, then you have no ecomomic freedom lost.
This is also wrong, because we forget what those businesses are doing, they are selling goods and services to us.
So, as there taxes increase, they are like expenses to them and correspondingly the prices of those goods and services will increase, which means that now indirectly you are not able to afford as much with your money which means you are indirectly losing economic freedom.

This is why, in higher tax Europe with big penalties to corporations and higher regulations, the cost of living is increased a lot.
So while they may in some cases make excellent GDP per person, when it comes down to purchasing power (which is an excellent measurement of economic freedom) they end up being thousands worse off than the average American:
http://www.geographyiq.com/ranking/r...arity_dall.htm


Economic freedoms are almost always put on the back burner to other more obvious social freedoms like freedom of speech, guns, abortion, etc...

This is really a shame because when you look at the non-economic freedoms in play with government you have the Patriot Act, banning gay marriage and the Iraq war. All of which 15 years from now no one will care about.
The Patriot Act will expire.
Banning gay marriage will never happen because you need support from 2/3 of the house and senate along with 38 of the states. Politically impossible.
Nobody cares about the Panama war 14 years ago, nobody will care about the Iraq war 14 years from now.

Yet with economic freedoms like putting in drug coverage, these do not come and go like social freedom restrictions, they breed dependance. Try and take them away and enough people have become dependant on them that they will never let it happen and Democrats are right there to blast anyone with fearmongering over anyone who even dares to mention touching them.

Look at Bush's proposal over SS, Democrats pushed fear on that with seniors and Bush knew he had to back down.

When you lose economic freedoms, history has shown so far you lose them forever. As Reagan put it:
"No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear."

Think well and hard on that, when you vote, because the next generation's dependance on government depends on your choices now....even if they may not be the best choice for other things.

Economic Freedom is so much more important and vital to the future of America, I mean really if you just have a world where government pays for everything under the pretense of you not being responsible enough to work and do it yourself, then giving into that, is really just reverting to serfdom. Wherein government takes care of you in exchange for your labor.

Maybe that kind of life doesn't bother my friends on the left, but it bothers me...it strikes me as the furthest thing from what this great free country of ours is and I can only hope that you see that clearly through the fog of the minor blather of silly political sniping of the day.

As Barry Goldwater put it:
"Our future, like our past, will be what we make it. And we can shatter the collectivists’ designs on individual freedom if we will impress upon the men who conduct our affairs this one truth: that the material and spiritual sides of man are intertwined; that it is impossible for the State to assume responsibility for one without intruding on the essential nature of the other; that if we take from a man the personal responsibility for caring for his material needs, we take from him also the will and the opportunity to be free."

I love this country and I will never stop believing, not in what government can do for people, but in it's people themselves.

Even tho i dont really agree with much of what you said...you put it quite well. I admire folks who speak out with their ideas.

I live a very simple life. Having money is not as important as living in a country with healthy and well educated citizens.

(was there a war with panama just 14 years ago? I know the gulf war was about 14 years ago)

ANd if it makes you feel any better, i am not raising my children to have dependence on the gov't. I am raising them to question the gov't .