That’s the framework and belief that provides the background to the hauntingly familiar message.  Don’t worry – the government will take care and fix everything.  There are those in the government who are smarter and brighter than the average person and they will “fix things.”

Citizens, told that the world is a complex and confusing place, are sitting back and waiting for the government to solve our problems.  Individual effort and activity are being replaced by government intervention.

Somehow, it just doesn’t ring true to me.

The impossible part?  That in today’s world, America is leading the charge into government intervention.  When Saab recently went to the Swedish government for help, and the government refused to bail them out. The French government rejected a large stimulus bill as fiscally irresponsible. 

All of this is occurring while Obama is firing the CEO of General Motors, Rick Wagoner, and Congress is rushing through a $787 billion stimulus bill, and a $3.6 trillion budget.  People are focusing on how to get their share of stimulus money (funded by debt that taxpayers will have to repay) instead of how to create stimulus through individual action.

Americans once believed the words President Reagan’s spoke in his first inaugural address, that “government is not the solution to our problem.”  Now it appears we have momentarily lost our way and, in Reagan’s words, “have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people.”

Déjà vu – we live in a time that appears startling and impossible.