It’s early May.  Time for colleges and universities all over the country to unleash their best and brightest out into the world.  If these young graduates are anything like I was, they’re probably dreading having to sit through their graduation ceremony, despite their school promoting the big guest speaker and telling us to heed their wisdom.  I remember our speaker was Mary McAleese, the president of Ireland at that time, speak at ours…That’s about all I remember from her, but I’m sure she very uplifting and probably encouraged us all to make the most of ourselves in the world.  Anyway, I wish them all the best of luck in their quest for a career!

Last weekend The Ohio State University’s class of 2013 had their commencement ceremony.  The Speaker for the ceremony was our wonderful head of state, Barrack Obama.  I read the entire speech, the transcript is here.   He opened with an O-H, I-O chant, some light-hearted jokes, and congratulated the graduates and parents in attendance…the normal commencement speech stuff.  But once the speech got going I thought the general theme (besides telling the graduates to do good in the world) was to convince us that government isn’t so bad.  He even said that we should not completely rely on government.  The government is only here to help us and make our country great.  Is it scary to anyone that he takes every possible opportunity to push his big government agenda? However, the big quote that is getting some traction on the internet is the following:

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices also doing their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

Why should I not question government, or anything for that matter? Why should I ever blindly follow anyone in charge?  Should I really believe that government is for the people and not for the government?  You only have to look at our own history to doubt their real intentions.  Slavery was a government institution, just like the Jim Crow laws.  The Trail of Tears wasn’t a free market idea, neither was rounding up Japanese-Americans to concentration camps .  Racism is a wholly owned subsidiary of federal government.

It is encouraging to hear Obama’s warning though.  It means the word is getting out and he is hearing it.  Remember, this is the same guy who called out his own people, just about half the population, the people he is supposed to lead and govern, as his enemies…Now he tells me not to fear him.  If people open their minds and educate themselves they will always come to the side of liberty over tyranny.

I’ll leave you with these words from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr written in a Letter From a Birmingham Jail in 1963:

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s anti-religious laws.

I know Obama is not a Nazi, and it isn’t 1956 Hungary, but King’s point is clear. We should never blindly trust government, no matter who is in charge.

God Bless Freedom, Liberty, and Personal Property,

Slappy Jones II