If a Candidate Makes Outlandish Promises, Remember '… It's Not Going to Be Free'

Dear Mr. Black,
    I assume you have started breathing again [“Page Two,” Nov. 14]. With oxygen having refreshed your mind, can you now see the irony of your exaltation of “unity” juxtaposed with your denigration of certain media personalities and politicians and, by implication, the tens of millions of Americans who support and agree with them?
    The unity that you think Sen. Barak Obama is capable of creating is a dangerous canard. If the people of this country move forward in lockstep, they march to either one form of totalitarianism or another. Disagreement, debate, and petitioning our government are codified as fundamental rights in our Constitution. They also make our nation a healthier place, contrary to what your column implies.
    As to the idea that government might be working well, I am again hopeful that respiration has restored your mental faculties. The government we have today mocks the constitutional premise that individual liberty is innate. You're thinking of the PATRIOT Act and its spawn. Yes, but I'm also thinking of the myriad intrusions into our personal economics, businesses, and lifestyles. The government, in these regards, has rendered our Constitution a tattered relic of history.
    Your Postcard IV says that the idea of this country is that we all share the exact same rights in relationship to our government. Of course the relatively few who pay the majority of the taxes would be justified in wondering why that idea is not in practice. Why do they have less right to their own work product than someone who produces less? Other examples of the same underlying contradiction abound.
    And need I remind you that our government, despite ever-increasing taxation, continues to make exorbitant promises that even those taxes are insufficient to support? Wall Street obviously has its share of idiots, but the stupidity of our current government in spending money we don't and are unlikely to be able to produce is unequaled in the history of the world.
    It is timely to quote Gene Healy, author of The Cult of the Presidency: “If we need heroes in our lives, we shouldn't go looking for them among professional politicians, for God's sake. Because in politics, wherever there's a promise, there's an unspoken threat. And when a presidential candidate promises to save the world and solve all your problems, it's not going to be free.”
    Breathe deeply, sir. The government is not working well, unless your ideal is the moral superiority of the state over the individual. Of course, that is the exact opposite of the vision of our Constitution.