You and me both!

That is because those who benefit from being able to live on the largess of others outnumber those whose largess is being stolen! In a representative democracy, numbers mean everything.

The only thing that will shake people up and provide impetus for eliminating these programs will be a debt catastrophe - the point at which the federal government (or state governments for that matter) can no longer pay for these types of programs with debt. With our current deficit scheduled to hit $20 trillion by 2020 (and with almost $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities), all it will really take is a bump in the interest rates upward to collapse the whole house of cards. And it won't even take a huge rise. Even a point or two will cause the debt service obligations to rise dramatically, increasing the spin of the snowball...

There really does seem to be an increasing sense of it being viewed as unpatriotic to disagree or prolong critical decisions such as war or major changes to the law such as healthcare. I think that many people forget that our system was created with the intent to make it difficult to make such changes.

I have become jaded to the notion that the Republican Party is viable. Many pundits are now likening them to the Whigs that died off with the rise of Abraham Lincoln as President. And why did they die off? Because they presented no real difference to the voters in terms of policy or principle. Sound familiar?

If there were ever to be a Libertarian party, now would be its chance. Frankly, though there is no official TEA party, they have better grass-roots support and I can see them becoming the next real political party much easier.

The Democrats have just swung Progressive. There are no more "blue dog Democrats" - those who were socially liberal but economically conservative. The DNC won't fund for re-election anyone not voting party lines, so they have all died off. Where it used to be that represented in Government were a wide range of constituencies and political ideals, there is now only the hard left (Democrats), middle (Republicans), and a few from the hard right (Tea Party Republicans). The Progressives have effectively split their opposition into two ineffective groups and minimized them. Add to that the liberal press who sides with them and it means that the uneducated masses only see policy being presented in one light.

I believe the free market would certainly accomplish the second objective. Although last I heard, the fear of eradicating or reducing the second amendment has greatly increased sales in this area, so the free market may not be needed in this instance, just mass fear of losing the right to purchase a firearm in the future.