As I’ve said before, if picking the candidate for Romney’s running mate were up to me, you can bet your bottom dollar that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal would be at the top of my list. He’s been a vocal and effective critic of President Obama’s many failed endeavors, and the man is just flat-out brilliant — he somehow found the time to fire off this awesome missive of an Independence Day message along with his governing duties.

Slowly but surely, the Obama administration has repeatedly undermined the American ethic of self-reliance and personal freedom with policies that seek to make us more dependent on the government instead of setting us free from the burdens of bureaucracy. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and if we don’t quit engendering this humiliating gimme-more culture, we’ll shortly find ourselves in the exact same boat as Europe:

Amazingly, facing the greatest economic recession since the Great Depression, President Obama chose to create a new entitlement program when we cannot afford the ones we already have. Republicans like to go on television and say we are borrowing from our children’s and grandchildren’s future. We can throw those talking points out; we are hurting ourselves now. You know we are in trouble when the German Finance Minister rebuffs President Obama and basically tells him to clean up his own mess before offering advice to others. Even the Europeans feel they have the moral high ground to tell us to tackle our own debt problems; that’s like the town drunk telling you that you have a drinking problem. …

Here is the big picture situation in America today. Success used to be measured by how many people we could get off the government dole, but now, under President Obama, we measure success by how many people we can get on government programs. Indeed, food stamp rolls have increased by 70 percent since 2007, and yet the government is spending millions of taxpayer dollars on advertising and encouraging parties to enroll even more. There used to be a stigma to relying on the government, but now it’s celebrated. We have it 100 percent backwards in America today. We should celebrate people getting off food stamps, off Medicaid, and off government health care. The bottom line is that Obamacare eats into the spirit of independence that has made America great in the first place, and if we don’t repeal it soon, we will have more people riding in the cart than pulling the cart. We are at an inflection point in our nation’s history. We have to decide whether we want to revive our economy by growing the private sector or expanding the public sector, to continue our culture of self-reliance versus a culture of dependency, to provide our children with opportunity or a sense of entitlement, and to pursue the American model or give in to the European model.

So. Much. Truth. Just a little something to think about while you watch the fireworks tonight, and to watch and consider as we get closer to November. Enjoy the day!