Jon Henke at QandO wonders why this particular Hillary Clinton quote from last September hasn’t received much attention:

“We can talk all we want about freedom and opportunity, about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but what does all that mean to a mother or father who can’t take a sick child to the doctor?” she asked.

I just finished watching the excellent HBO series John Adams last Sunday. It tells the story of our nation’s birth and the sacrifice many of our founders made to create a free nation. They wanted a nation with government limited to just enough power to keep the peace and defend the nation. They didn’t conceive of the idea that a free people would trade their fortunes and freedom to create a government that would dictate choices to them in a manner far more egregious than George III.

Of course, this quote comes as a piece with another Hillary winner, from 2004:

We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.

This came from an explanation from Hillary about canceling the Bush tax cuts. She saw the money supposedly lost in revenue as belonging to the government, rather than the people who earned it. Hillary, and the statists like her, don’t really believe in private property, at least not as a right that stands up to government authority. Further, they believe that individuals are less capable of acting in their self interest than bureaucrats. Under those circumstances, it makes sense to take more and more private property and control over American citizens.

That’s why concepts like freedom, opportunity, and liberty get discounted by statists. They see these as unreal, fantasy concepts, which is why they look elsewhere for their values. They don’t understand the basic values that serve as the foundation for the Constitution and the nation. Our founders would never have tolerated a federal government that set itself up as the dispensary of all services to all people. In fact, had they encountered one, they would have thrown a party in response — much like the one they threw in Boston just before the revolution.