(Newser)
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Can we thank government for our best opportunities? President Obama seems to think so, but Charles Krauthammer isn't buying it: Yes, government builds roads and pays teachers, but "to say that all individuals are embedded in and the product of society is banal," he writes in the Washington Post. The most powerful influence on individuals "is civil society, those elements of the collectivity that lie outside government: family, neighborhood, church, Rotary club, PTA" ... and so on.
Worse, says Krauthammer, the real threat to civil society "is the ever-growing Leviathan state and those like Obama who see it as the ultimate expression of the collective." Krauthammer goes on to mock The Life of Julia, "an Obama campaign creation" that shows how government can help one American woman during her lifetime. "Julia’s world is totally atomized," he writes. "It contains no friends, no community and, of course, no spouse. Who needs one? She’s married to the provider state." Click for the full article.
