It horrifies me how thoroughly the government (at every level) has indoctrinated us and systematically stripped away almost every right we once possessed. We now offer nuanced arguments about whether or not we should raise the capital gains rate or what sort of a limit is appropriate for the inheritance (death) tax. How did we get to this point?

How have we come to a place where the government controls every single aspect of our lives from who we can hire to who we must serve as a business owner? How do we cheerfully pay sales tax, real estate tax, personal property tax, licensing taxes on everything from the right to go fishing to the right to get married to taxes on our gasoline, on our investment profits and even on what little is left when we finally die?

How did we get to the place where government tells us what sort of insurance we can (or must) have, what sort of vaccinations we must have, whether we're entitled to own a firearm for self-protection, what our children must be taught about sexual and gender in school? The list is ENDLESS of government intrusion into our daily lives, our businesses, our finances, our faith and our families.

Why have we been reduced to blindly accepting what our grandparents and great-grandparents would NEVER have accepted for even a moment? The founding fathers are spinning in their graves as they watch 330+ million people grovel and beg at the feet of a grotesquely gluttonous government that's supposed to be there to help us instead of to subjugate us. Like a frog placed in tepid water, the government has been slowly turning up the heat under the pot for 50+ years and we're all being boiled alive by those we elected to protect our freedoms and empower us to better our lives and the lives of our children. We've come to numbly accept what was utterly UNacceptable to every generation of Americans until Lyndon Johnson began "The Great Society".

It all ended with the Immigration act of 1965, brought to you by a couple of Jews, Hart and Celler. (((They ))) blackmailed Teddy Kennedy and the rest is history.

It's just fact, but the indoctrinated dipshits just can't overcome the brainwash.

Too many Americans are asking and voting for "What will my country do for me" rather than " What can I do for my country (and myself)."

We got here because we stopped:

Honoring the Lord Thy God with all of our heart, soul, mind & strength & doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.

"Bless the Lord, o my soul. Bless His holy name. Bless the Lord & forget not all His benefits." Psalm 103

When was the last time you said those words as unto Him & meant it?

It seems we have been subjected to conditioning over a number of years. The Overton window has been slowly and carefully slid to the left, toward Communism, almost as if according to a coordinated plan.

I wonder who could be behind something as subversive as this?

Well said Reloder28
Your response got my attention and I am making that change right now

it's big city or citified thinking. that's how we got here.

Simple........too many people voting for Democrats.........

New World (Dis)Order
In 1991 George H.W. Bush promised a “New World Order.” A quarter of a century later, we’re finally catching a glimpse of it—like it or not.

Never too late to do the right thing.

It started before 91. Political correctness was shoved up our ass in the early 80s.

Dumbassed white goy, mostly.

We've got where were at for one simple reason. Fundamentally conservatives believe that everyone has the right to think what they want , believe what they want and do whatever they will while liberals feel if you don't think and do what they say is right you are wrong and your only value is paying taxes to support their miserable existence. That simple.

To the OP:

Apathy is how, in the main.

big part of it

Woodrow Wilson started expanding the government in earnest, FDR took over where he left off, and LBJ made the hog trough even bigger, all in the name of a more enlightened, "fair and just" society. Every one of them had a convenient crisis to exploit that instilled fear and uncertainty in the electorate, and they were able to convince voters that they and their programs were the solution.

But even then it was nothing new. The formulation of leftist ideology has always been the bailiwick of "intellectuals" who actually contribute little or nothing to society and do little or nothing but sit around gazing at their navels and dreaming up reasons why they're not glorified and praised and why they should be. It always has been and always will be about power and control. At the core of every incarnation of far left thought lies the tenet that society should be governed by authoritarian administrative states headed by councils or bureaus of "enlightened experts."

Three guesses as to who those "enlightened experts" should rightfully be.

The fact that this didn't happen in the west has been eating away at their narcissistic little hearts for two centuries. Since the Wilson administration, and especially after WWII, they have infiltrated our society with the intention of molding public thought and the dissemination of information, and they have been quite successful. Once a bloated administrative bureaucracy was in place, it was child's play for them to co-opt it to their purposes.

The opinion of leftist "intellectuals" has always been that the people are too stupid and ignorant to know what's in their bests interests and to govern themselves. Only they can do that. After a century of their manipulating modern society via our education systems, media, and entertainment institutions, a century in which the human nature the Founders feared, anticipated, and guarded against, incrementally ran its course, and we have arrived at a time and place where they are basically correct.

Being a good person--a good Christian, if you will--is not inherent in a basic human nature that is still programmed at a tribal level where all "other" is an enemy to be violently reacted to and does not have the same rights as "we" or "us." It requires effort. The same goes for maintaining liberty in a constitutional republic; it doesn't just occur. It requires work and constant vigilance on the part of the people, not the government.

We stopped being involved citizens and started being self-absorbed consumers; we stopped questioning things for ourselves and, at best, abdicated that responsibility to talking-head pundits who served their own agendas and fed us the "information" they wanted us to hear; we tuned out of public discourse in favor of sitting in echo-chambers where the only voices and opinions we heard were those that fed our own confirmation bias and instilled in us the firm belief that we were Right. And worst of all, we became more interested in being entertained than being informed

Yep, we.

Me, you, and all those other guys and gals who just want to live our lives and be left alone. The Founders knew that this was not a realistic possibility, that there would always be those who would attempt to subvert the republic to their own ends and that basic human nature had to be constantly guarded against. We didn't do that. They took advantage of that fact. They showed up at town council meetings and we didn't; they showed up at the school board meetings and we didn't; they formed groups and coalitions and lobbied congress and we didn't, not really. That too was abdicated to organizations that supposedly represented our interests but in reality only represented their own.

And here we are.

They will never leave us alone. Not going to happen.

A repblic if you can keep it.

“You get the behavior you tolerate.”

“Tolerant” folks have been “tolerating” garbage for over 50 years. It hasn’t made this nation stronger or better.

Quote ShaunRyan "Me, you, and all those other guys and gals who just want to live our lives and be left alone. The Founders knew that this was not a realistic possibility, that there would always be those who would attempt to subvert the republic to their own ends and that basic human nature had to be constantly guarded against. We didn't do that. They took advantage of that fact. They showed up at town council meetings and we didn't; they showed up at the school board meetings and we didn't; they formed groups and coalitions and lobbied congress and we didn't, not really. That too was abdicated to organizations that supposedly represented our interests but in reality only represented their own."

That is the reason. Well said.

ShaunRyan, I agree with most of what you posted except the "we" part of it. I think most of us did our part by voting and trying to exercise our rights as American citizens. Politicians stacked the deck against us with that two party system and campaign financing. Good candidates could not get on the ballot if tney didnt conform to party lines. You basically had to come up throught tne ranks by demonstrating you were are party loyalist. Only then would you be endorsed to run on the ballot. As a result the choice was between whatever two candidates the parties wanted to run. Most of us voted against the most undesirable candidate. Ross Perot demonstrated what would happen if a third party tried to run a candidate. He was the best choice of the three but we ended up with the worst of the three candidates. Personally, I voted for Reagan and Trump. In every other case I voted against the other candidate.

As I have already said, God kept vengeance for Himself but expected us to administer justice in our communities. We have abdicated that role to men lesser than ourselves, and gotten the current situation as a reward for our apathy and self-centeredness.

The democrats cheated and stole the 2020 election. The democrats all used fraud to win the election. They used vote swapping voter machines, counting machines which swapped votes, mail in voting, ballot harvesting, illegals voting, and dead people voting. The voting numbers were adjusted by overseas parties and by democrats in the states. They certified fraudulent voter tallies in the US congress. This voter fraud occurred in every state. So what makes anyone think the republicans have a chance of ever being elected in 2022 or 2024? Remove all of the democrats and republicans who won in the 2020 election ASAP. If we do not then in less than 2 years America will be a communist country. It is very close now.

Put frog in water. Slowly turn up temperature.

Now you know how good educated Germans let Hitler take over their country.

ShaunRyan, Well said and spot on. As close to a short and correct answer as it could be put.

"Politicians" came to be once they knew they could promise "free" stuff and get another term to fill their own pockets and those who would finance them. These people went into office for their own benefit, not the good of the Nation. Most were not interested in the betterment of the founding, just power and personal gain. And so it is today on a grand scale.

At some point soon, they will have taken everything there is left to take.

40 years of liberal brainwashing in schools followed up by those kids growing up and getting jobs running things.

It may get worse before it gets better.

The original constitutional document and bill of rights were the most wise documents ever put together to allow people to thrive. Freedom...just do no harm. States rights... so you could vote with your feet. A central power restricted and explicitly defined...to prevent usurping rights of the individual. Three branches of federal government... to keep balance of power.

However, no document can protect those rights for "We the People" without vigilance from "We the People"

To all of us that just wanted to be left alone, worked hard to provide and prosper, took our eyes off what was conspiring to change our way of life, time is up.

With in a very short time there will be people dead and dying before their time. Experiments and Communism extract a high toll on life.

We got here because the Democrat Party is the biggest crime syndicate in the history of the planet. And they've systematically, over the last 100 years, infiltrated and corrupted the media, education system and entertainment industry. That gave them a platform to brainwash generation after generation to abandon every aspect of traditional values, respect, class, patriotism, self reliance and sense of reality. So we have legions of people were have no values, no class, are addicted to government crack, make encuses for all their own failures, lack ambition, and believe the blue pill matrix is in fact reality.

Yep

+1

You voted republican regardless and gave your children to the government to raise. But you sure showed that other team. And wasn't free daycare great?

The"we" is collective and spans generations. The distortion of our political system spanned those same generations. People weren't taught the actual concepts behind the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution in school, only simplistic, paint-by-number, cartoon representations of them. Same with actual history. Those concepts and the warnings that go with them are implicit--and sometimes explicit---in the documents themselves, as well as in the debates leading up to them.

But most people never bothered to read farther than what they were taught in school. I didn't until my mid-twenties, and I've been a lifelong reader.

We sat on the sidelines while the deck was stacked against us. Our shortcoming hasn't been a failure to exercise our rights but a failure to shoulder the responsibilities that come with them.

After WWII we let our guard down, McCarthy and the cold war notwithstanding. The fall of the USSR and the Berlin wall reinforced the illusion. Hell, we won, right?

It's been nonstop marketing and manipulation ever since, with us falling for it. Radar ranges and Barcoloungers and Hollywood blockbusters became more important than liberty.

Pursuit of happiness is a wonderful thing. Blind pursuit of happiness not so much.

They used our own optimism and hope against us and we let them.

Well said.

Yup ..... Therein lay the weakness of democracy. Voters are totally selfish and will always vote for their own benefit over the benefit of the whole nation.

That's why your country (and mine) have become so liberal. Voters want the "free" stuff and social programs no matter what the cost. Political leaders have to give in or not get elected. Just mention austerity or cut backs and see how fast you ARE NOT elected.

if you really have to ask 'how we got here', you just have not been paying attention

Take property taxes for example. We all pay them, we may bitch about it but we pay them. But take a step back and just look at what property taxes really are. You are paying a yearly tax on something you already own, the government decides how much you should pay, and if you don’t pay, the government steals your property. That doesn’t sound like something the founders would have liked very much, does it?
The globalists are pushing for their big reset, when it is the conservatives in this country that should be demanding it.