The masses have spoken and spoken loudly. The concept of freedom and self sufficiency no longer matter. The Constitution is no longer well known or as revered as the Simpsons.

The masses have spoken and this is what they said:


GIMME

Gimme free health care

Gimme free mortgages

Gimme free tax credits even if I DID NOT pay any federal income taxes outside of my wage taxes.

Gimme YOUR 401k and Roth or Simple IRA's as I'm too stupid and simple to manage or prepare for my own retirement.

Gimme money to send MY kid to college since I'm too stupid and simple to save for this event that is 10-20 years down the road.

Our republic is officially dead. We are going to become another convert to Socialism and it was approved by the masses.

This is from wikipedia and it sums this mess up rather well:



This phrase originates in Satire X of the Roman poet Juvenal of the late 1st and early 2nd centuries. In context, the Latin phrase panem et circenses (bread and circuses) is given as the only remaining cares of a Roman populace which has given up its birthright of political freedom:


... Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man,
the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time
handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now
restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things:
bread and circuses ... iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli
uendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim
imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se
continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat,
panem et circenses. ...
(Juvenal, Satire 10.77–81)

Juvenal here makes reference to the Roman practice of providing free wheat to some poor Romans as well as costly circus games and other forms of entertainment as a means of gaining political power through populism. The Annona (grain dole) was begun under the instigation of the popularis politician Gaius Sempronius Gracchus in 123 BC; it remained an object of political contention until it was taken under the control of the Roman emperors.

A reference in the The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (1993) states that Juvenal displayed his contempt for the declining heroism of his contemporary Romans in this passage.[1] Spanish intellectuals between the 19th and 20th centuries complained about the similar pan y toros ("bread and bullfights"). It appears similarly in Russian as хлеб и зрелище ("bread and spectacle").

Aldous Huxley used the phrase in Brave New World Revisited as an example of one the ideas he used as a theme in Brave New World.

Lets hope the masses enjoy the free bread. Bread that will be paid for by the sweat of OUR brows and our childrens brows.

May God forgive us for being this inattentive to the freedoms given to us by the blood, sweat, toil and tears of our forefathers.