Look Out Grandma, Big Brother Has Got His Eye On You

"And though the past had it's share of injustice,
fine was the spirit in many a way,
but it's protectors and friends have been sleeping --
now it's a monster and will not obey."
-- from the song The Monster by Steppenwolf

Here is another example of what happens when we allow the federal government to "help" us, and it proves the old adage that "Whoever pays the piper calls the tune."

Senior citizens dining at the Ed Young Senior Citizens Center in Port Wentworth, Georgia have offered a prayer of thanks before their meals for as long as anyone can remember. Now these elderly Americans, members of the greatest generation who sacrificed so much of their young lives to fight for our freedoms, are being told they can no longer pray together before their meals.

Federal regulations have graciously allowed them a moment of silence for private prayer - at least for now.

An outift called Senior Citizens Inc. has been contracted by the city of Port Wentworth to provide meals at the Senior Citizens Center, at a cost of about $6 per meal. The seniors pay only 55 cents for the meal, and the federal government makes up the difference.

So now, prayers before the meals are an issue - a violation, in the all-seeing eyes of our Big Brother in Washington, of the separation of church and state.

The rationale is that since the federal government is paying for the meals, federal guidelines must be followed in all areas related to the meal service.

First the kids couldn't pray in school. Now senior citizens can't pray aloud over their government-subsidized meals.

I wonder -- if you are eating food at home that was purchased with food stamps, will the government someday decide that your private meal-time activities must conform to federal regulations? You may laugh, and say that is ridiculous. But how ridiculous is censoring the prayers of senior citizens?

When we keep giving more money (which means more power) to the federal government, and keep inviting the federal government to get ever more deeply involved in every facet of our daily lives, we encourage the government to dictate the conduct of everything we do.

Should we be surprised that the government now tells senior citizens they can't pray aloud before a meal? Isn't this just the kind of power that liberals love to lord over us, the unwashed masses?

The bigger our government grows, the more of this we can expect. It is an irrrefutable lesson of history that power corrupts. We have created a monster, and as it grows more powerful, it will only become more corrupt and arbitrary in it's use of power.

How far will they push us before we push back? Just another reason to "Remember in November." The coming 2010 election will decide if we can reverse this tyrannical tide of government control, or continue to march towards the "brave new world" of the nanny state.

Check out the full news report at http://www.wsbtv.com/news/23495797/detail.html