I admit that I copied this quote from George Will’s book The Conservative Sensibility, from a friend’s post over on Ricochet.  He (George Will) said this better than I could.

Conservatives’ task is to build a society that nurtures individuals to self-sufficiency, including independence from politics. Now more than ever conservatives need to be focused on this nurturing because the related forces of urbanization and statism are exerting a powerful pull toward an enervating dependency. It is a dependency on large economic entities, and on government, for security. Ultimately, it is dependency on – and addiction to – security as the highest aim of life. This addiction produces, over time, a timid, fearful debased people erecting barriers against a competitive world and aggressively asserting an entitlement mentality, including an entitlement to government protection against uncertainty. This entitlement exacts a steep moral cost. Government that acknowledges such an entitlement becomes a bland Leviathan, administering a soft, kindly, but ultimately corrupting statism of benighted benevolence.

Those units of Government who now control our lives, due to “emergency” declarations over the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic, are demonstrating how far this country has declined into the “Enervating Dependency” Mr. Will describes.  Can we stop it?  I wonder.