Stop feeding the crocodile!

To sit back hoping that someday, someway, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last--but eat you he will.
--Ronald Reagan

I thought it fitting to begin my very first post of my very first blog by explaining where the URL came from. I spent nearly an hour trying to think up an appropriate name to the myriad of thoughts, ideas, and passions that I hope to impart here - something witty, possibly funny, yet meaningful and of course at least a tad political, at least once you understand its meaning. While searching hopelessly I stumbled upon this little quote by one of my favorite presidents... And I think that about sums it up.

What I like about this quote is the imagery. I interpret the crocodile to be the government, especially federal. If you stop to think about how powerful it has become, how huge and bloated, it kind of looks like a big, fat, insatiable crocodile. People in this country have been slowly handing over their liberties to it for over 200 years.

Well, that's not exactly true. People feed it other people's liberties. Tax the rich, subsidize my industry, control those prices, regulate those irresponsible hoodlums! But they don't realize that when every interest group does that, as they do now, everyone's liberties - even our basic concept of liberty - begin to erode away.

But we keep feeding it. We actually ASK for more regulations, more controls. Something go wrong in the market? Regulate the markets. Worried about the environment? Impose a new tax on energy. Got health care bills? Force everyone to use government health care. It's simple. Feed it to the crocodile. He'll take care of it. Just watch your fingers!

My mom says that if you want to get out of a hole, you have to stop digging first, which is another way of saying: the first step to fixing a problem is admitting that you have a problem. That's just another way of saying, stop feeding the crocodile!!