Dear Editor,

For almost two and a half centuries America has been the land of opportunity, primarily because people were able to pursue their dreams with a minimum amount of interference from our federal government. While in Europe governments oppressed their people and perpetuated a rigid economic class system, the American system, based on rugged individualism, allowed people to prosper financially, and to move fluidly between economic classes. With a little luck and a lot of hard work, paupers could become princes within a single lifetime.

Now Mr. Obama would have us believe that the American Dream is only possible with the help of an all-powerful federal government. Obama seems to think that without the intervention of the almighty federal machine, the American Dream is dead. Collectivism, implies Mr. Obama, not individualism is the new path to success. He and his ilk seem to want to trade the very ideas which have underpinned our society since the beginning for ideas more European in nature. The fact is that America is not a nation defined by geography but one defined by ideas. When those ideas cease to exist, so does America.

– Daniel Wallace, Clanton