Means nothing to you, means something to me.

What is fair?  How do you establish a government that gives every individual an opportunity for success?  Can you possibly protect the interests and hopes of every person?  Our founding fathers wrestled with these questions and more when they set out to lay the foundation of a new fledgling nation.  Not far removed from the violent travail, which gave birth to this new freedom, these wise men knew they could not take lightly the solemn responsibility to guard the future of a newborn nation, whose hopes they now held in their hands.

Fresh in their minds was the horrors of war and the stench of blood-soaked battlefields.  Stamped into their memories was the ultimate price so many had paid for the hope and dream of freedom.  Our Founding Fathers knew they had to get it right or this would be another bloody revolution that simply shifted the power of tyranny from one faction to another.

So they started with this basic premise; all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with basic unalienable rights; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It didn’t matter whether you were the majority or the minority, these basic rights could not be taken from you.  Next, the Founders grappled with how to insure this premise would be honored and protected.

These great men were keenly aware of the failure of government throughout history to be fair to every man.  So how could our government succeed were others had failed?  It couldn’t.  No government can.  The hopes, beliefs, and dreams of so many individuals offer a myriad of goals and intents that no government could ever guarantee.  Someone’s dreams inevitably would be set aside for others the government deemed more worthy of attention.  Perhaps the idea of government based on the belief that all men were created equal was simply folly.

Unless, that government was marginalized.  What if that government were confined and constrained to a small specific purpose?  What if that government feared the people because it feared the Creator of the people?  What if that government simply protected the nation from the threat of the invasion of a new tyranny?  What if that government was too small to provide an impediment to anyone’s life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness?  Then, perhaps, the aspirations of all American’s could have a hope of realization.

Government cannot understand the passions of the individual.  It simply cannot.  The human desire is a multi-faceted expression.  What matters little to you many be of utmost importance to another.  But each must be afforded an opportunity to pursue that passion.  This is the responsibility of the individual.  He or she alone knows what they value and desire.

Big government holds people helpless to its decisions.  The more it fails the more government reminds its people that it can’t please everyone.  Our Forefathers never intended Americans to look to government for answers.  It was not intended to please anyone, just function in its limited role.  They believed that every individual knew his own dream and that was none of government’s business.

Since the President and his Party have taken power, the private sector has lost 1.6 million jobs.  The government has grown by at least 105,000 jobs.  Senator Harry Reid has said the private sector is “doing just fine”.  He believes government jobs need to be protected.  If Mr. Reid were not a public servant, he would be entitled to his beliefs.  But while the loss of 1.6 million jobs is “just fine” with Democrats, the private sector does not agree.  Government is deciding whose hopes and futures are worth preserving.  Government is now right where our Founding Fathers did not want it to be, in the way.  Big government needs to be, once again, marginalized.  This government needs to be told that the “means nothing to you” means something to me and it is really none of your business, so get out of it.