Answer:  It is Liberty.

I am proud to be an American.  To me, being an American means that I am a part of a nation that was created under principles that include liberties that no other nation on earth had at our time of creation.   We are a part of the great  experiment. 

Our founders limited the powers of the government.  Our founders said that the government derives its authority from the consent of the governed.  Our founders also recognized they were not infallible.  They understood that the Constitution as ratified contained provisions that were themselves the result of compromise.  As such, they provided a means to change our Constitution through a process that protected the rights of the minority by requiring a 2/3 majority of the Congress and 3/4 majority of the states.  This distinction is important.  We are not a democracy.  In a democracy all that is required is the consent of the majority.  In America, the majority may not tyrannize the minority. 

Among the strongest beliefs of our founders was that American citizens have the right to be secure in their property.  As an American they believed that I have the right to determine for myself how I might add to or dispose of my property and how I might use that property.  But what is happening?

In my lifetime the government imposed a minimum wage that places them between a prospective employer and a prospective employee.  The result was a sharp increase, particularly in teen unemployment.  

In my lifetime some cities enacted rent control that prevented landlords from raising rent as they needed to meet the market circumstances in their areas.  Immediately the ability to sell rental property disappeared.  Immediately the construction of low value rental property ended.  The only citizens who “won” when these laws were created were those who already lived in someone else’s home and who remained secure they could continue to live there because of someone else’s sacrifice.  

In my lifetime the federal government intervened in the education system.  They provided funding for local schools and because of this funding they continue to dictate curriculums and restrict the rights of local school boards to determine how their children will be educated.  

Smoking laws tell the proprietors of restaurants and bars what legal activities they may allow in their own establishments. 

National security laws dictate who may get on an airplane.  Just recently the TSA denied a woman from Rock Springs, WY the ability to board an airplane because no female agent was present to pat her down at the security gate.  

Insurance laws dictate terms to private companies who offer products to consumers.  Currently this administration is attempting to dictate to insurance companies that they provide free contraceptives to their insured with no co-pay. 

Anti-discrimination laws dictate what I may do with my property and more.  These laws also dictate what I am able to say and what I may hold in my heart as an approved attitude, as an approved thought, as an approved motivation in my dealings with others who may not look like or be like me.   

For a period of time entrance to American universities was controlled by admissions policies based not on qualifications but on quotas to ensure that the demographics of the university were consistent with the demographics of the population at large.  Qualified applicants were denied spots they had earned to favor other less qualified applicants who had the appearance that the government regarded as more “equal”.  When quotas were determined to be unconstitutional the quotas were abandoned in favor of requirements that registrars prove they did not discriminate in their admissions by reporting results consistent with these same demographics.  When someone can explain the distinction between these two methods I would love to have it explained to me. 

Certain crimes are now considered worse because of the motivation of the assailant.  Was it a crime that occurred because of an irrational hatred for individuals of a particular race or sexual orientation?  Why should it matter if someone has committed a crime that his or her motivation was hatred or something else?  Is the victim’s injury not the same?

Obamacare dictates that Americans must purchase insurance policies and imposes fines on those who do not.

Obamacare also requires that insurance companies must insure people for pre-existing conditions.  Thus we will measure the fines against the cost of insurance and if less, we will pay the fine until we get  sick and then buy the insurance.  Insurance companies will disappear and leave us even more dependent upon who?  Our federal government.   

The Obama administration stepped into General Motors, fired its chief executive, demanded that the bondholders subordinate their debt to unsecured creditors and then took control of that company giving a large percentage to their special interest group, the UAW.  Under what Constitutional Authority?

The Obama administration has hired czars who determine policy but who bypass the confirmation process that is in the Constitution.  Why has our Senate not acted to expel these interlopers?  

In New London, CT, the US Supreme Court allowed a local government to confiscate private property from local citizens and give that property to another private party to build a factory.  This was justified as an improvement to the city tax base.  Was this what our founders had in mind by the power of eminent domain?   What would John Jay say about those Supreme Court justices that applied eminent domain to this kind of thievery?  

The current administration is delaying the opening of a Boeing manufacturing facility in South Carolina because it has an interest in directing those jobs to union workers who would be employed by the facility if it were to be built in another state.  

The federal government was initially created to provide a collective security for our thirteen states, assist in commerce, provide postal services and protect private liberties and personal property rights.  Does anyone believe they could have anticipated that rogue jurists might interpret the Constitution in a manner inconsistent with its own words to allow such things as abortion or that the Congress might transfer money from our treasury to organizations who would promote the taking of innocent life?   

My question is not which of these laws may or may not be a good idea in your opinion, but what of this is within the authority of the President, the Congress or the Federal Courts to dictate to the American people?  Should the president be able to dictate to religious institutions, to commercial businesses or to private individuals?  Should our government be able to tell a child where he/she may pray or whether he/she may read his Bible in a school library?  Should the government be able to reach into the preceding moments of a high school football game or a graduation ceremony and dictate that a benediction would be an imposition of religion on those in attendance?  

Our government is runing amuck and we must do something about it if it is not already too late.  We cannot afford another four years of Barack Obama.  He would use those four years to further consolidate his power over our government and his control over individual Americans.   If this country is to survive we must do more than complain.  We must convince those around us who believe they might benefit from these actions and educate them as to the sacrifice they make in accepting those benefits.  The time to act is 2012 and it is 2012.