◼ A widely-repeated one-sentence analysis of the 2012 election is that it represented the triumph of “free stuff over freedom.” I think that’s not quite accurate. Actual dependency on free stuff – the difficulty of “running against Santa Claus,” as Rush Limbaugh put it on the radio Wednesday – is a problem, but not the full scope of the problem. It’s really a battle of irresponsibility vs. freedom. - John Hayward/Human Events
...Middle-class dependency is based on two core assumptions:
1. I deserve this stuff, and
2. Nobody really has to suffer to pay for it....
As long as the middle class thinks government benefits magically appear from nowhere, they are receptive to the argument that only greed or callous insensitivity could lead anyone to propose spending cuts for popular programs – or even unpopular ones the public can be persuaded to view as a moral obligation, like ObamaCare. That’s the front line in the battle of “free stuff versus freedom”: the irresponsible belief, so indispensable to socialism, that freedom is scary, while all that comforting “stuff” is free.
