Today, I cam across two articles which, when taken together, create an unsettling irony and portents of things that may be en route in our country. Something evil this way comes? I sincerely hope not, but an attitude of entitlement combined with financial realities create a path that may have been paved with good intentions, but ends up being the road to Hell nonetheless.

In reading this first article, I found myself thinking: A govt. large and determined enough to enforce its dogma of Utilitarianism, combined with an education that indoctrinates children with that philosophy, can create a dark juggernaut that democracy, with all its inefficiencies, is hard-pressed to compete with. Many believed the Internet's free flow of information would erode this, but that was naive. Security over libertry is a dangerous, but easily sold, narcotic.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0512/p09s01-coop.html

Then, in this second article, we find our own government selectively pursuing its own (misguided, IMO) Utilitarianistic agenda. In so doing there's an argument to be made that it's trampling individual rights, because what are collections or organizations of people, if not entities comprised of individuals?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124217356836613091.html

I'm noting also that this comes during a time when the Administration, having purchased its votes by campaigning on a platform that is fiscally unsupportable, is already realizing that you simply can't pay for everything by soaking the most productive or most successful elements of society--there aren't enough of them. To give entitlements to everybody, you have to tax EVERYBODY... I suspect that a bunch of people who bought into the utopian vision of sweeping levels of entitlements paid for by other people are going to be a bit angry to be told that they'll actually have to pay for what they want. How unfair!