How often in recent months have I seen reports on legislation at the state and federal levels (and sometimes in my own little village) and exclaimed: “Don’t these idiots know they are destroying our country?”

I’ve heard the same question on talk radio and read it in commentaries by columnists I respect and tend to agree with. There is in the question an assumption that preserving the United States and its Constitution is something we all agree with.

When Congress quadruples the debt ceiling and passes trillions of unfunded free giveaways, you might assume this is well-intended. These noble public servants must be confident they are not harming the nation. Maybe not.

Sadly, I have been deluded. Destroying the United States is the objective of a narrow majority of the members of Congress.

I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, we had eight years of a President who claimed to be an expert on the Constitution but apparently didn’t agree with its content or intent. He promised fundamental change to our nation and we failed to realize how fundamental he intended. Now we witness fundamental change in action.

President Obama was clear in his conviction that the Constitution should guarantee what government will do for people.  That concept is blossoming before our eyes in legislation that will confiscate life savings and property from some people and provide “free” everything to others: college, health care, kindergarten, childcare, housing, transportation, and on and on.

Under this approach, the government will regulate what you can do and what you can own. And those making the rules will be government kings and queens living in mansions.

Obama famously asked Joe the Plumber why he would need to earn more than $250,000 a year. The puzzled plumber likely didn’t get an invitation to the former President’s 60^th birthday party, which drew hundreds of guests to a lavish gala at the former president’s $12 million mansion. (I guess Obama needs more than $250,000 a year to live on.)

As George Orwell wrote in Animal Farm, some pigs are more equal than others. There are so many examples of elitist hypocrisy:

• John Kerry wants to save the planet by having you take public transportation; he flies to meetings in a private jet.
• A St. Louis politician wants to defund the police; she has taxpayer-provided security guards.
• CDC officials state their concern about a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, SD; they offer no worries about 100,00 young people jammed into a park in Chicago for a rock concert (or those priviledged few at the Obama birthday bash).
• The leaders of teacher unions campaign against school vouchers; many send their own children to private schools.

Somewhere along the line, many (perhaps most) of our politicians and educators forgot why the United States fought for it independence from England. Perhaps they never learned why.

The colonists had experienced the rule of a tyrannical government, a government that demanded to make all decisions about the people. So they wrote a constitution not to proscribe what government should do but to make clear what it shall not do. They chose not a new, reformed, king but a representative republic where the government would be restricted and the people could achieve what their God-given talents and hard work might provide.

If we continue in the current direction Congress would take us, we will get a new king.  He or she will sit in (or behind) the White House with a court of people who have more money than the rest of us combined and believe they know what is best for the common people.

These people have more in common with King George  than George Washington. These people disdain the common people.

And if the people complain, they likely will say, “let them eat cake.”