Sam Smith-One of the scariest things about living in America these days is how few – especially in government and the media – seem to care about the things that used to define the place. Thus there is hardly a murmur as the Senate approves by a voice vote the extension of the despicable Patriot Act or when Bush and Obama wreck the Fourth Amendment or as the latter increasingly treats the U.S. like a corporation he has taken over in a merger deal – with those who used to be considered citizens now just employees wondering how much longer they’ll have a job. What we have now is a silent surrender. No terrorists, no war, no revolution, just incremental capitulation led by those supposed to guard our rights and our freedoms. A case in point is the mandatory mandate in the Democrat’s health plan. The idea that the government can order how you spend your money in the private sector is unprecedented. No, auto insurance is not a parallel, since you don’t have to drive a car on a public road. You do, – if you want to be human, that is – have to live. There is one reason for this extraordinary plan: to avoid having to admit that the government would be raising taxes. In fact, the mandate is a tax on some of those least able to pay it and it would be one of the great tax increases in American history. To understand the madness, consider that if the government can order you to pay a badly administered, fiscally irresponsible, avaricious corporation for some health insurance, that same government could order you to buy a computer for each of your children so they will be properly educated or purchase a condo for your aged parents. It could even close all public schools and fire stations and require you to pay tuition to corporate beneficiaries of its plan. But the greatest madness is that no one is talking about this. Once again, as we have done so often in recent years, we are simply giving up our rights because there is no one in power to tell us what is really going on.