America's Founders believed that federal power was a necessary evil that would swallow the liberties their ancestors left Europe to obtain unless it was severely limited. But today we seem to have forgotten that freedom cannot survive the unrestrained governmental encroachments that are raining down daily from our nation's capital.

You need not have written a doctoral thesis on the political theories espoused in the Federalist Papers to understand that socialism impoverishes nations despite the professed good intentions of its benefactors. You needn't have a master's in history to realize that America is the freest and most prosperous nation in the history of the world because its prescient Framers devised a constitution that would maximize liberty by imposing restraints on government. And you don't need to be a rocket scientist to grasp that unless we put the brakes on our out-of-control federal government soon, we will go the way of all other great nations before us.

While there has long existed a tension between liberty's usurpers and watchdogs, rarely have the usurpers been in such ascendance. They are in firm control of the executive and legislative branches and are using the full force of the federal government to stack the deck in their favor in perpetuity. Just look at the taxpayer-funded payoffs of defaulting mortgagors, unions, governors, big-city mayors, liberal "public interest" groups, and ever-expanding dependency constituencies, including illegal immigrants.

But why can't they be honest about what they're doing? Have they even tried to dispute the charge that an untold amount of this so-called stimulus money will not be spent in the near future and that much of it, even when spent, will not stimulate? No, because they cannot explain away their subterfuge in such shenanigans as allocating billions of taxpayer dollars to community organizing groups, such as ACORN, whose real function is to secure elections for like-minded "progressives."

It's as if President Barack Obama and Congress were trying to turn us all into conspiracy theorists. Indeed, only the grossly naive believe the usurpers are not calculating their systematic power grabs.

Those with nothing to hide don't mask their intentions in deceitful language, such as establishing deliberately and hopelessly vague yardsticks -- e.g., using "we're going to save or create 3.5 million jobs" to measure the success of the "stimulus" bill -- and calling a mostly pork bill a "stimulus bill that has absolutely no pork," a bill eliminating secret ballots in union voting "the Employee Free Choice Act," Marxist programs "measures to strengthen capitalism," taxpayer-funded health care "free medical coverage," across-the-board cuts in defense spending "shoring up our national defenses," greater-percentage tax cuts for middle- and lower-income groups "tax cuts only for the rich," government-coerced transfer payments "economic justice," the government's bailout of delinquent debtors "an act promoting financial accountability," aggressive, exclusive partisanship "a spirit of bipartisanship," a plan to triple the national budget right before "trimming it back" to levels grossly above where you started "fiscal conservatism," government suppression of political expression "the Fairness Doctrine," appointing one tax cheat after another and lobbyist after lobbyist "a new era for ethical government," already-broken promises to allow five days for public comment before signing legislation "transparency," and a government that singles out and attacks its influential critics "a government of the people."

The usurpers probably want you to believe the "stimulus" bill was passed so quickly our legislators didn't realize what was in it. That's less damning than their willful passage of the indefensible mischief the bill contains. Have you seen just how specific it is in its allocations of money and who is benefiting? Please follow the money.

As our federal government marches ever closer to socialism and Marxism, we might remind ourselves that nearly every dictator in the world is an ardent proponent of those systems. Socialism and Marxism, by definition, cannot come about without major consolidations of power in the central government.

These consolidations, which are invariably sold as democratic and compassionate governments for the benefit and security of the people, result in tyranny and wholesale subjugation of the people. In the name of compassion, or economic stimulus, the federal government gets its tentacles into our local business and begins to micromanage our lives from Washington, whether in education, commerce or even executive salaries for private corporations.

Who knows, the usurpers might even have the audacity to try to micromanage decisions of local governments once they dole out money they steal from taxpayers and their offspring to fund this stimulus ruse.

Oh, I almost forgot: President Obama already told the nation's mayors that if they waste the money he is philanthropically bestowing upon them, he "will call them out on it and use the full power of (his) office and … administration to stop it."

I suppose one man's super watchdog is another's super-duper tyrant.