A Facebook exchange.

I am not going to name names, but I stole this from a friend of mine on Facebook. He perfectly articulates the American experiment in limited government and the principles of economic freedom. If we could have found just ONE politician that could present it this well, we might have won the White House instead of sitting around rubbing our butts from the ass-kicking we just got.

A friend elsewhere stated:

"As a citizen of the People's Paradise of Europe, aka the EUSSR, I am so thrilled with this truly historic victory of Provider Obamarx II of the United States of Eumerica. It took you guys 250 years--and I don't mind admitting that many times we Europeans despaired of you and your "old stale ideas", but finally you are getting your act together. Bravo. But …. FORWARD is the way!!! Now, let us all work together towards the establishment of ONE global United Nation!, one single family of comrade-citizens forever living happily together on the face of dear old Mama Gaia. A goal more noble there is not."

My friend's reply:

How come you don’t opinionate more often? That’s good stuff. That's how I feel.

Although I despise the socialist nanny EU, Europe is the cradle of American civilization. Yes, we adopted a few of our own ideas. But “our” ideas were also your ideas to a great extent. We took the best the Dutch had to offer, the best of the Scots, the best of the British — and I think even a Frenchman had a good idea or two — (and the Germans brought the beer) and we made a country founded upon the principle that all men were created equal, that the point of government was to secure our rights, and that the land would be devoted to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The proper American outlook is not particularly ideological, other than the ideology that life should be lived at the level of the citizen and that the purpose of government was to secure our ability to do so (and that therefore government, by necessity, be limited in function and size). Government was not to be a surrogate church, Cathedral, or Big Brother.

The business of America, as they say, is business. What that means is that Americans don’t typically get caught up in Hatfields and McCoys type of Hundred Years Wars because we don’t exist to be a Master Race, to preserve the bloodlines of a King, or to forward any particular tribe.

This idea has been undermined, of course, by decades of identity politics from the Left. But being an ideological zealot is definitely not the business of America. The business of America is making a living and being able to improve your lot. And I think we got this trait in large part from the Dutch. And it is not at all an immoral trait. Nothing is more moral than a person (short of stealing) taking care of himself and his family through hard work, industry, and producing some product or service that is of use to other people.

The opposite is where we are heading now where we have more moochers than producers, where those who work hard and actually create something are demonized while the deadbeats are honored as “victims.”