Too much government creates more problems than it solves and reduces personal accountability across generations. Government was created to provide for the defense of its people, not the financial welfare of all its citizens.

Would-be defenders of the poor and powerless spend a lot of time and effort “denying that people bear responsibility for the way their life has turned out,” because helplessness seems the sole condition for granting them assistance. The underprivileged are depicted as the playthings of the forces of poverty and racism, “perennial victims,” incapable of providing for themselves.

In 1968, Ronald Reagan, then the governor of California, announced in a speech at the Republican National Convention that it was time to stop blaming “society” for people’s failings and to start accepting that “each individual is accountable for his actions.”

In 1971, Reagan turned his words into reality by signing a welfare-reform bill in California that made state assistance conditional on people’s good behavior, as judged by work status, child-support arrangements and other proxies for conscientious conduct.

In 1996, Clinton signed a similar welfare reform bill that withheld benefits from those thought to show an inadequate willingness to work or an overlong history of requiring assistance. Momentum seemed to be building towards personal accountability within those programs focused on the public’s overall social well-being.

This all changed under the campaign, and then the presidency, of Obama who promised a flat screen TV and free smartphones to his supporters.

Supporters of government solving all of our problems, oppose personal accountability as too “invasive” with bureaucratic investigations into people’s lives. Yet, they support equally invasive investigations by regulators into all levels of business–and are any three letters feared more by citizens than IRS?