Two Americas

Daniel Greenfield writes,

There is a word for men who surround themselves with czars, who expand their staffs, who fly their dogs out on separate planes, who amuse themselves at the expense of the people at lavish parties, concerts and vacations. And it isn’t public servant.

In 1940, the Code of Federal Regulations was a mere 5,307 pages. Still more than any sane person could read through and a legacy of the New Deal. But it was only a foreshadowing of what was to come. By 2010, it was up to 81,405 pages.

We were now firmly in the land of thousand page omnibus bills that had to be passed to be fully known. We were living under a government whose top officials no longer knew what they were doing. They had passed on that responsibility to the vast bureaucracy of Federal employees who had become the true masters of the system.

The United States government was similarly replaced by another form of government; an unelected bureaucracy whose officials, judges and permit-givers wield real power while the congressmen carry on with the forms of power, parading around and arguing over bills that they haven’t read.

Government employees have a 4.2% unemployment rate compared to 8.6% for private sector workers and a union membership rate of 35.9% compared to 6.6% for private sector workers. The very people who made ObamaCare and will oversee ObamaCare have been immunized against its toxic effects.

There are indeed two Americas. There is the America of the worker and the America of his master; the public servant. There is the America of the small businessman and the America of the crony capitalist. There is the unreal America of the Obamas and their retinue of assistants, czars and chefs and the real America where fathers hunt through the job ads wondering how they will feed their families next week.

“I had rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world,” George Washington said. Now the city named after him has become the home of a new Sun King and his empire of government workers. The farms have closed. The factories have been shut down. But the government buildings continue to rise.

Yesterday the sun set on Washington D.C. May it rise one day on a new nation whose leaders would rather be farmers than emperors.