A recent e-mail exchange with a reader provided some interesting food for thought.

This reader is a solid conservative who also appreciates–and even agrees at times–with libertarian thought that some of his fellow Republicans may object to.

Specifically, he believes that the leadership and elected representatives of both incumbent parties, on the national level at least, are in it for the power. It’s party over principal and even power over party. The discussion evolved to the thought that the name calling of fascist vs. socialist is counter productive and even obstructionist, that both parties are controlled by statists.

As he wrote: “The real problem is… the statist's quest for power and control over all aspects of our lives, not because of political ideology, but because of greed and elitist privilege. … Rather than a struggle between left and right politics, it is a divide and conquer effort that exploits ideological differences, and both political parties use the same tactics to cover their real agenda-keep out new, unknown players.”

Well said.

And it’s nice to hear that local voice echoing one from the national scene. Here we must, again, cite Judge Andrew Napolitano, the legal analyst at Fox News and possibly the only national commentator who has a clue.

Speaking at the Ohio Rally for State Sovereignty on Aug. 1 the judge said, “We wrote a Constitution to ensure that the government would never interfere with these rights. Think about it–if rights come from the government, then the government, by ordinary legislation, or presidential decree can take them away. But if the rights come from our humanity, then unless we violate someone else’s natural rights, the government cannot take our rights away.

“This is not just a democrat, upper case D, or a republican, upper case R, problem. It’s a problem with government today. There’s a republican version of big government just as assaultive to our liberties as the democrat version of big government.”

Indeed, the American political culture has been so twisted–over the last century at least–as to become meaningless. Those elected to office, president, congressman, senator, even governor and state legislator all take an oath to support, protect and defend the Constitution then blithely ignore that oath as they go about some bogus agenda that destroys even the concept behind the Constitution.

As Judge Napolitano also said in his speech, “You’ve heard the president say, present president and his predecessor, ‘my first job is to keep you safe.’ He’s wrong! His first job is to keep us free. It is his only job to keep us free.”

To be more accurate, though in the same keeping, it’s the elected politicians job to fight for the condition of liberty. Instead, they fight for the private agendas of special interest, both left and right, all at the expense of liberty.

Why do they do that? Because they can, because the American people have learned they can vote for bread and circuses and now that’s all they do vote for.

A Chadds Ford Live subscriber from the other side of the aisle, a staunch Obamakin during the 2008 election recently forwarded a quote from economist Milton Friedman: "Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."

It goes beyond that. The American electorate has forsaken the concept of liberty, not because of what liberty allows, but because of what it demands. With liberty comes responsibility, and far too many people can’t deal with that. And power hungry politicians are all too eager to intercede, taking away the liberty along with the responsibility just to achieve more power.