Republicans are kidding themselves if they think the political culture of our grid-locked bureaucracy in Washington would have fundamentally changed into a bureaucracy deserving the nation’s admiration had Romney won the election. As an old Israeli friend of mine once said, “The shit always floats to the top…and it usually smells the same when it gets there.”

That being said I’m sure Romney would have sought to institute policies that would have somewhat altered the trajectory of our national consciousness. But in my opinion he only would have delayed the inevitable. The U.S. has slowly become a nation of consumers and spectators rather than producers and achievers. More concerning is we fail to distinguish the difference between a “hand-out” and a “hand-up.” Once people believe it is primarily the responsibility of the “haves” to ensure the livelihood of the “have nots” a threshold has been crossed, a barrier of the mind has been breached…and it takes years to convince otherwise.

I’m all for the “haves” extending a helping hand UP to the “have nots,” but when money and resources cross over to the other side in the form of entitlement and pity it erodes what little self-determination and personal incentive such people had left. This in turn gently escorts the mentality of most people into a state of resignation and passive consumption with hands held out…and almost nare a word of thanks when something is put into it. And any attempt to ween them off the “boob” of assistance that has gone far too long can be met with rage. I’ve seen this in the white-skinned Appalachian region, the black-skinned ghetto and the brown-skinned Asian slums. It’s not a matter of color or race but method and mentality.

There is a reason Yellowstone National Park has signs everywhere, “Don’t feed the bears because they will not learn to forage for themselves.” Living in one of the poorest Asian countries, I see the poison of an entitlement mentality strike the poorest of people and keep them in state of disillusioned poverty despite the valiant efforts of well-intentioned humanitarian organizations. It is not a question of intention but methodology.

This is the gist of my concern in terms of my personal distillation of why Obama won the election. I don’t at all believe he won because the nation is turning radically more liberal. (In fact 11 million less people voted for Obama this year than in 2008.) I believe he won because he executed a political strategy to present himself as one who will protect and preserve the entitlements many Americans have become convinced they can’t do without. Romney was simply too scary to entertain because he didn’t seem to hold to the view that government’s main concern is to nanny the nation and guarantee equal results for everyone.

Therein lies the difference between the generation of yesterday and today’s generation. In my parents generation there was an understanding that government’s job was to work towards a culture of equal opportunity but not equal results. But that has all changed today. People have subsumed equal opportunity with equal results, but in many cases they have little to nothing to do with each other. The fact is some people are more ambitious, studious and disciplined in availing themselves of the opportunities that come their way. Just ask a school teacher.

But perseverance, ambition and self-discipline coupled with downsizing and sacrificing for tomorrow is simply not in the general consciousness of many young people in the U.S. today. The election of 2012 was more of a vote to retain government as one’s personal treasury for the bumps in the road than a vote to elect a leader who could make the tough decisions while still imbuing confidence for tomorrow.

The following is an excerpt from a writer named Rick Joyner who from time to time has some insightful points to offer:

          Obama won reelection with the worst economic record of any President since Jimmy Carter. The Federal government is dysfunctional, and by accepted accounting standards, it is bankrupt. Gridlock has dominated the last two years, and he won while giving the American people almost no plan for how he intends to fix anything during his second term. One would think that Obama must be one of the most remarkable campaigners of all time, but his campaign was not that sharp this time. So how did he win?

         The pundits and analysts will un-package this election from every angle over the coming weeks, and I do not want to address those here. One is now being discussed that I believe is true, and it is a sign of inevitability. 

The theory is that we, as a nation, have crossed a Rubicon. Half of all Americans now receive some kind of benefit or income from government on some level. These will likely vote for the one who promises to protect this, and vote against anyone who threatens it.

         Our Founding Fathers were just as afraid of the tyranny of the masses as they were the tyranny of the king. They had witnessed in the French Revolution what happened when the masses ruled, and they established in our Constitution firewalls against the tyranny on both sides. Both of these firewalls have been breached or torn down altogether now, and as the Founders warned, the Republic cannot now long survive.

         Thomas Jefferson warned that the Republic could not last if the people learned that they could vote for themselves the resources of the national treasury. That was breeched a long time ago, and we are now at the point where the entitlement mentality it has created in the masses is about to destroy us. We were led down this road by both the Democrats and the Republicans. This is not sustainable, but one is not likely to get elected to office if they even talk about trying to correct this. We are now very close to collapsing the whole system. Then elections will no longer be held at all and we will face a terrible tyranny. We will first face the tyranny of the mob, and then we will face the tyranny of the tyrant. –Rick Joyner [1]