Daily Skiff

Everywhere I go, I hear how everyone is so ecstatic that Barack Obama will make their lives better. Oprah even went as far as to call him "The One." How could she not with all the promises he made to the American people?

According to Obama, he's going to make America energy independent, give everyone health care, cut taxes, bring peace, lower gas prices and, Lord knows how many other things. Let's think realistically for a second. Can we really expect all of this from one person?

Take the energy-independence promise for example. Every president since Richard Nixon has talked about "American's intolerable dependence on foreign oil," as Jimmy Carter put it. Yet has any president done this? The answer is an emphatic no. Candidates keep promising it though, and we are again and again disappointed by our presidents because they can't do everything they promise.

In recent years, everyone puts problems they care about on the government to solve. From health care to children starving in poor countries, now it's all on the government to solve the world's problems.

This creates a scary and dangerous situation as people begin to become complacent, thinking that everything must be accomplished through the government. We have seen the nations that depend on government and they have not been good.

We as Americans must ask ourselves one very important question. Who can really change the world? Let's look at the great inventors of America's past. Did Henry Ford need government approval to make the car more affordable for all Americans? Did Edison need money from the government to make the light bulb? Was Bill Gates financed by government to create Microsoft? The answer to all these questions is no.

We, the people, are America. Not the president and not the Congress. This nation was built on the idea that the government's sole purpose was to merely to protect our rights and freedoms, not to baby and take care of us.

Fellow Americans, I encourage you take your life back. Don't depend on government approval for everything. If you want to start an organization to end hunger, do it. If you want to own a business, open it.

Thinking you need government approval for everything is dangerous and insufferable as it will give the government all the power. Stop worrying about who's going to be president and worry about your own life. Start thinking of how you, not the government, will change the world.

Michael Lauck is a freshman broadcast journalism major from Houston.

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