One of the reasons that pagan ideas are gaining ascendancy in our society is because personal responsibility and initiative are being replaced by an endemic reliance on the state for our daily needs. Having departed from the wisdom of Edmund Burke, who taught that government should depend on the people, modern Westerners have reversed this: the people should depending on the government.

George Will took up some of these themes in the following speech, arguing that dependency on government that is not only a corollary to the President’s recent policies, but the long-term goal of the liberal agenda.