Aqui vão umas belas palavras de um grande FREE THINKER:

People who vote for free lunches – knowing full well that someone needs to pay for them, and they are fine with that as long as the someone is someone besides themselves – deserve to become tax slaves for those who view them as milk cows. If economically ignorant, greedy, and shortsighted people vote for bad government, they should start by looking in the mirror when they wonder what went wrong. But few people are that introspective. Further, most people apparently lack a real center, an ego in the good sense. That's why they create these false gods to worship; by becoming part of a group, they think they gain worth. Pity the poor fools…

There's no doubt in my mind that the U.S. has devolved to that level. Something like 43 million people get their food from the government, about half of workers pay no income taxes (although I wish no one did, of course), about half are significant net recipients of government funds… and many millions more are employed directly by the state. It's why I no longer refer to "America" when discussing the U.S. – America was a wonderful idea, which unfortunately no longer exists.

A bad leader can bring out the worst in people, making them think the government is a cornucopia; and then the people demand more of the same from future leaders. It's a downward spiral – never, for some reason, an upward spiral. It's why, after Augustus, Rome never returned to being a republic, even though they pretended – just like the U.S. does today. My conclusion is that people basically get the kind of government they deserve. Which is a sad testimony to the degraded state of the average person today.