America's future: Liberty or dependency?

A GREAT editorial from the Manchester (NH) Union-Leader:

In the 1980s, fewer than a third of Americans received some sort of government benefits. That figure has risen to about 50 percent, The Wall Street Journal reported last week. At the same time, 45 percent of Americans pay no federal income taxes.

If these trends are not reversed, we can kiss the United States of America goodbye. We will soon reach a point at which most of the people have their standard of living subsidized by the earnings of a quarter, or maybe a fifth or fewer, of the rest. No nation can sustain the economic and cultural strength that has graced the United States while transferring so much wealth from so few to so many.

Amazingly, the agenda of the current administration and its allies in Congress is not to reverse this unsustainable trend, but to accelerate it. They want to make more Americans dependent on government aid while taking more money from the "wealthy," a term they will continue to define down to as low a level as they can.

We cannot be both a land of liberty and a land of dependency. We have to pick one. Our choice, once a foregone conclusion, is no longer guaranteed.