Everybody knows that clean water and air are important. That's because the special environmental interests have bullied the population in believing that we are in mortal danger if we don't bend ourselves to their demands. They brainwash our children so that the message is never lost, and the power created is never diminished.

There was evidence that we were not good stewards of our cities and country settings, but that was a long time ago. Not only are there many laws in place today, but the planet is much cleaner. There also exists a strong consensus about what each of us should do to maintain a clean planet.

But what about liberty? If you took a poll today you would have a hard time finding a citizen raised in this country who can articulate how vital liberty is to our happiness and prosperity, and why we should protect it above all else. Liberty is an essential element for the creation of happiness and prosperity, even if most people have no idea why.

If one chose to live a most modest lifestyle, one can still enjoy liberty as a natural right. Yet this country is not set on a course to live a modest life. We are lectured, maybe hectored daily, that our children should attend college – as many as possible. But what is the point of a higher education, if not to compete in the world as it is today? Our world is about commerce, productivity, and taxes.

This twist on the old work ethic is not of our creation but rather as a result of a national consensus. More people don't want to work, but they want their color TV, their microwave, their cell phones. Who will deny them these “basic constitutional rights?” Certainly not the politicians who buy votes in exchange for toaster ovens.

Since liberty and socialism cannot coexist, why are we, the productive, driving our children to become slaves of the state? Shouldn't we be teaching them to fight for clean air, clean water, and liberty?

Will they be happy to work all of their lives so that others may lounge? Are you creating, raising, and educating your kids to become cogs and drones, to be ill-used for the benefit of the masses?

You have spent your lives guiding them to get a higher GPA, but have you told them about liberty?

Will it give your children happiness and contentment to see government bureaucrats jetting here and there, driven in black limousines from one social event to another, living the high life with money robbed from their pockets? Will they wonder why you set them up to be compliant beasts of burden, trained to pull somebody else's cart?

As your children receive their pink slips and are unable to get a job, will they turn with admiration and pleasure to see others in favored classes, enjoying job security? Will they smile as they see the average government slug shuffling off to their job to accomplish nothing much in a redundant slot created when money was plentiful, but not eliminated now that it is in short supply? The government lives as if there is no tomorrow.

As Patrick Henry once asked his countrymen, “Why stand you idle?”

Folks, the rules have changed. What drove you and me to succeed in school was the potential wealth from good grades, hard work, and best behavior. We outdid ourselves and began to brag about it. The have-nots who live among us, the unproductive, heard us bragging. They envied us, became jealous, and accused us of unfair success as a result of simple luck. But it was not good luck! It was hard work.

And lazy, dishonest politicians saw an opportunity.

Together they formed a movement. They plotted ways to steal chunks of our kill, even though not a single one of these do-nothings offered a moment of their time to help us catch our dinner. Their only agenda was, and always seems to be, how to take from you what they cannot figure out how to earn for themselves.

This is not a movement for social justice. It more closely resembles a cabal of bank robbers. It is basic human greed masquerading as victimization caused by bad luck, or inaccessibility to opportunity, or victims of mean spirited intentions. They impugn our hard work and our character by alleging negative motivations, while at the same time they piously grant themselves immunity from responsibility.

The facts are, as in the case of clean air and clean water, we also cleaned up our act in our institutions and places of employment long ago. Apparently it's not enough. It will never be enough.

There is no perfect, yet imperfection is held over our heads as “evidence” while our liberties hang in the balance. The productive ones support the ever increasing numbers of the willfully unproductive who have ever increasing exotic “needs.” Too many politicians and government bureaucrats live high on the hog – expensive human collateral damage from an out of control political agenda. And the damage is on us.

Our liberty is under assault as an endless number of self-righteous scolds guilt trip us into higher taxes and fewer freedoms. They say it is for the good of others, while our children’s and grandchildren's futures fade. They say majority mob-ism is perfectly legitimate. After all, it’s not illegal, is it?

I say the Founders did not intend for future citizens to be able to unravel a country as easily as a mischievous child pulls the loose yarn hanging from a sweater, but apparently, it is that easy.