This new way of thinking ultimately led to the third greatest event in human history—the founding of America. For the first time ever, a free people would govern themselves. In order for this to be successful, it would require a spirit of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and sacrifice. It meant each took care of their own responsibilities as free citizens. It had to be that way if the “great experiment” had any chance at success, for if a man will not be ruled from within, he must be ruled from without.  

The challenges we face today are not unique to Hardin County, but we do have our own share of difficulties trying to deal with a variety of problems such as crime, over-taxation, excessive regulatory mandates, blighted properties, broken families, poverty, and a host of other troubles and concerns. It is my position that these problems have not come about because we don’t throw enough money at them, nor because we don’t have enough county services to deal with them. Neither have our problems come about because the government isn’t big enough to handle them. No, it is my belief that all of these are the result of one issue alone:  

We have forgotten who we are as a people.

Until we recognize our own responsibilities as a free people, government will continue to grow to the point of our dependence upon it. We’re practically there now. Except we harness the beast, it will run wild and consume everyone in its path. What was once freedom has become captivity in a passive prison. Hardin County is no different than any other when it comes to such a threat, and the only way to stay it is through vigilance and the understanding “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”