The Label 'Citizen'

From Babble Voices-- a parenting site-- via Instapundit, a thoughtful post. From near the beginning:

Before I go any further, I want to be clear; this is not a right vs left piece. It isn’t Republicans vs Democrats, or conservative vs liberals, or even about Obama vs Romney.

It’s about us, and about who we are, who we want to be, and most importantly, who we want our children to be when they take their place as adults.

I was asked to write a post about what issues parents should pay close attention to during the election season.

From the end:

Folks, 200 years ago, we fought a war over a government that imposed its will on us without giving us a say. Now we gripe for a few days, then get distracted by the next episode of Dancing With the Stars. Worse, our children are growing up and accepting this sad state of affairs as normal.

Our children will still sport the label ‘citizen,’ but will they really be citizens? Will they be the bosses of the country, or will they answer to the whims of unelected bureaucrats making law by fiat? Will elections matter, or will they become political theater, without any real consequence. Congress has already delegated a large portion of its authority to the bureaucrats and simply abandoned much of the rest. The Executive branch has built an army of czars to fill that void, to shape policy and execute legally binding regulations, bypassing the checks and balances provide by the Constitution.

When all power is held by the unelected bureaucrats, what difference will it make who is elected to Congress?

Or the White House?

And once elections no longer matter, once our voice is safely neutralized, then we are no longer citizens.

Your children, raised in freedom, will live instead as subjects of a government they have no real control over.

Go back and look at that list of issues I started this article with. Think about how the last few administrations have addressed these issues. Assess their performance using this one single criteria: have the actions taken to address the issue acted to increase your freedom, or decrease it? Then, for just one day, from the time your alarm clock goes off to the time you go back to sleep in your bed (with the mattress tag you are not allowed under penalty of law to remove) think about how your actions are circumscribed by local, state and federal laws and regulations. Finally, ask yourself how many of those laws were made by faceless, unelected, unaccountable people.

And then think about the kind of world you want your child to grow up in.

Then consider your vote carefully, and make it count.

Please. Go read the middle.