The exact time when the government ceased serving 'We the People' and became our master is impossible to pinpoint. The best estimate coincides with the beginnings of the progressive (isn't "regressive" a better description?) movement and Theodore Roosevelt. What TR started, Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States from 1913-1921, expanded exponentially and the movement was on.

Those who believe in the complete control of the masses by the state at the expense of individual freedoms are statists or Leftists. The 'L' is capitalized to distinguish the group as being its own religion, ideology, and entity. Leftists, statists, and regressives are evolutions of the same beast and have no political boundaries, Republican or Democrat. They obey only the rules or laws that suit their own political ends. They are secular and against anything associated with Judeo-Christian values, morals, or rules of behavior. They disparage limited government and despise the Constitution with its limits and enumerated powers. When these obvious anti-America-as-founded zealots are out of power they spin, prevaricate, and throw hissy fits like little children when they don't get their way.

Usually the tantrums are enough to get their way, because those who don't walk the regressive line are often badgered into silence. The rare principled conservatives who believe in limited government and the original intent of the Constitution invariably get rolled because of their fear of offending the Leftists and their media toadies. The media spews Leftism, and that message affects many low-information voters who are more interested in the Kardashians than what is happening with the sequester or the budget process in Washington D.C.

After 100 years of varying degrees of oppressive rule by Leftists, America has sealed its own fate by selecting the most radical Leftist in the country's history to be its 44th president. Woodrow Wilson started it all by expanding government and then getting us into World War I only months after promising the opposite. Calvin Coolidge reversed the growth of government and balanced the budget leading to the Roaring 20's. After the disastrous administration of Herbert Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president from 1933 to 1945, inherited the Great Depression. FDR's New Deal statist agenda exposed the sophistry of socialism and prolonged the recovery. The decade-long depression ended only after the unifying affect on the economy brought on by World War II. FDR repudiated the Constitution and the rule of law by adapting a new Bill of Rights and a stacked Supreme Court, not to benefit America, but instead to promote his regressive statist ideology.

Government moderation allowed the private sector to expand for twenty years until Lyndon Baines Johnson reinstituted statist policies including civil rights legislation, immigration, the Vietnam War, and the government expansion of welfare included in his Great Society. LBJ's unconstitutional (not enumerated) welfare and redistribution policies have destroyed more that $15 Trillion (approximately the size of the massive federal debt as of 2012) in wealth and prosperity, while increasing poverty levels and unemployment, shrinking the middle class, and reducing opportunities for a better life. One hundred percent of the blame can be put on secular regressive government policies.

Ronald Reagan temporarily reversed the trend of government intervention by conquering 'stagflation' (double-digit inflation and unemployment) caused by the economic slowdown of the Carter-era 1970's. The 'Gipper' explained government was not the solution to the problem, but rather the cause of the problem. Capitalism flourished for 25 years, finally ending with the housing bust after the post-9/11 boom of George W. Bush. The primary cause of the banking scare, the housing bubble, and the deleterious effects on the economy was none other than overreach by the federal government. Are you beginning to notice a trend here?

Ayn Rand nailed it more than 55 years ago with her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. The author, who spent the first 21 years of her life under oppressive communist rule in Vladimir Lenin's U.S.S.R., understood the dilatory effects of statist control and regressive policies. Rand, who lived from 1905-1982, seemed prescient when she spoke these words more than 30 years ago:

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."

Albert Einstein is attributed with defining insanity as doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. Doesn't that exactly match the solutions secular regressives have for government and governing? We have reached societal insanity by re-electing the most radical Leftist of all, Barack Obama. The country is doomed to collapse, not if, but when. It is inevitable, and the time frame is in months, not years. It cannot be sustained by more government, more debt, and more destruction of the Constitution and rule of law.

What can God-fearing, law-abiding citizens do to survive the usurpation of power and control by radical Marxist revolutionaries? What happens when Americans are disarmed and helpless before enemies bent on replacing Judeo-Christian values and principles with secular totalitarian rule? The United States is not repairable at this point. The dark, dirty secret is everyone in every branch of the federal government knows what is happening. Unfortunately, those who still have principles either feel they can't, won't, or don't dare speak out. Economic and systemic destruction of the government is imminent. The can has been kicked to the end of the road.

Ayn Rand's work of fiction describes producers disappearing as the economy collapses from the weight of excessive statism and control. Rather than succumb to having their unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property stolen and confiscated by the moochers and looters, the producers quietly disengage from society and disappear. A 'Tax Strike' similar to Rand's fictional tome may be the best way to reject the illegitimate and oppressive control demonstrated by government today. It can range from a conscious reduction in self-employment (semi-retirement) to a flat refusal to fund the illegitimate leviathan by refusing to file tax returns until the criminal regime is thrown off. While this act of civil disobedience may be considered extreme, is it going too far to draw a line in the sand like our founders did with the Declaration of Independence in 1776? In Thomas Jefferson's own words:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience [has] shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Aren't Jefferson's words as timely today as they were in 1776?

Isn't it time to starve the beast, throw it off, and start over?

Jeff Greenlee is a semi-retired former golf professional who has lived in the Valley of the Sun for over 25 years.  He is concerned about the direction our country has been going and is willing to share and discuss what citizens and patriots can do to turn things around.  His email address is -- JGoodplayer@outlook.com.