. . . is not entirely clear.  How long ago did this hard turn to the left begin?  At what point did the power of the people begin to be transferred from the people and morph into the ever growing and powerful government we have today?  The Obama presidency is but another step, a giant step, away from the vision the founders and the framers had for this country - but when was the first step taken, from what sprung the root of the root, that has emerged to pull this country so far from it's original intent?  It is fact that the original intent of the founding of the United States was nothing short of freedom from tyranny and in support of a people governed only by the consent of the governed.  The history is without interpretation - from the first shots at Concord to Washington escaping in the fog to the surrender at Yorktown - the power of this new republic would be from the people, by the people.  The founders were emphatic that we be a federation of states with a central government that derived its power from the states and their representatives.  The framers were intent in developing a document that would withstand time and took great pains as to phrases and words that would stand the test of man's innovation and progress for centuries to come.

Did it begin with Tammany Hall in the 1850s, a mere 76 years after the Declaration and just over 60 year or so after Constitution was adopted?  Was it so soon that the ideals of a representative republic built on the principle of self-determination began to erode that has brought us to where we are today, such that our representatives can call on the power of government to impel private citizens to relinquish their earnings to the government because the government deemed those earnings to be the property of government?  Did it only really take 6 decades for the seeds of righteous indignation of our elected representatives, and their contempt for us, the governed, to be sown into fields of divisiveness and identity politics that lords over the political process of today?

Or was it some faceless, nameless bureaucrat from a listless and lowly presidency of a Tyler, Filmore, or Arthur that headed some obscure, newly created agency that gave birth to the idea that power was more important than doing the people’s biding, that control of the federal purse was more important than the will of the people.  At some point, the tide shifted from the states granting powers to and funding the federal government, to today where the federal government grants powers to the states and provides major funding and holds leverage over the states for their very existence.  

For example, in reality there was no literal national speed limit of 55 mph enacted in the early 70s.  The Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act of 1973 was a mandate from the federal government to the states.  Any state that did not go along with the 55 mph speed limit would lose federal highway dollars to repair roads in that state,the federal government thereby exercised control and blackmail over the states in this one very narrow instance.  Multiply this one very real and damaging legislation over decades and decades and thousands of acts and of the growth and power of the federal government, counter to the founders’ and the framers’ intents – you have to ask yourself, when did it start?

And here we are today with the present administration of 40-somethings wielding more power than has ever been seen by a federal bureaucracy and inventing more money out of thin air than has ever been witnessed and can never be accounted for.  The assault on liberty and individuality and personal freedom has never been more in force than it is today.  What country are we living in when our legislators can demand that  a private individual remand over to the federal government his earnings at the threat of special legislation directed specifically at this said individual, totally contrary to the constitution (Article 1, Sections 9 and 10)?  What  kind of Americans have we empowered that grant our protections and rights granted us under our Constitution to those illegally in this country?

At what point . . . . I am tiring of asking questions that have no prospect of being answered absent a new and radical response from what is left of the rational, educated, and achievment class of our society.  Sadly, too many of them voted for change with no understanding at all of what this hard turn to the left would do, and is doing.  I have said in previous posts that the Left and the Obamists of this great nation will be more than willing to govern a 3rd rate country, and that is exactly their goal and the path to which we are being led down -  we will be consumed by our own debt as an effective net sub-prime borrower on the world stage, we will be emasculated militarily on the world stage, and we will be relegated to 3rd world status by any measure if the Left and Obamunism succeeds - AND, it will be perfectly alright with them, as long as they remain in power.