The Leave Us Alone Coalition

A speech by Grover Norquist, President of “Americans for Tax Reform”, identifys my politics - and I suspect the politics of the majority of Americans - describing a

"coalition of individuals and groups who share a common political goal: They all want to be left alone by the government.

This “Leave Us Alone” coalition is made up of taxpayers who oppose higher taxes and farmers and property owners who don’t want the federal government making their property useless by declaring it a wetland or endangered species habitat or by inventing some other regulation. The coalition also includes Westerners who resent being treated as a colony and having their water and land rationed by eastern bureaucrats. The 17 million small businessmen and women who fear taxes and regulation, the self-employed attacked by regulations and labor laws written for General Motors in the 1940’s, and gun owners who do not want their guns stolen have joined as well. And the “Leave Us Alone” coalition provides a haven for the one million parents who educate their children at home and the 12 percent of parents who send their children to private schools."

Against those of us who just want to be left along are what he describes as the "Takings Coalition".

"The left as embodied in the Democratic Party is a “Takings” coalition made up of groups that want the government to take things - usually money - from other Americans and give it to them: This coalition includes government workers, unions, government contractors, corrupt big city machines, federal grant recipients, left-wing intellectuals, and both wings of the dependency lobby (those locked into welfare dependency and those who earn a handsome living managing that deliberately never-ending dependency). A recent addition has been the new paymasters of the “Takings” coalition, trial lawyers.

Within these economically self-interested groups are the radical utopians who wish to use the power of the state to restructure society. They include the radical leaders of the feminist, homosexual, environmentalist, and animal rights movements. (And don´ t forget the anti-military pacifists, who would now have us surrender our sovereignty to the United Nations instead of the Soviet Union.)"

It is obvious that the Obama administration falls in this group, using fear and crisis as the excuse for radical measures meant to restructure society and redistribute wealth.

The Administration is moving to a socialist nanny state at a breathtaking pace, but it is not inevitable - yet. There may yet be a spark of independence and the love of liberty in this nation.