Apparently, there is such a thing as a free lunch.

So all of those years my Dad spent drilling into my head the acronym TANSTAAFL ("There ain't no such thing as a free lunch") were -- it would seem -- a complete waste of time.

That is, if you're a Democrat intent on addicting children (and their parents) on governmental dependency; the theory being that all will turn out to be reliable Democrat voters.

From the data provided by the Ohio Department of Education, I created a chart showing the number of students and free lunches provided in the period 2002 through 2011.

While the number of school children in Ohio is trending down (the 2005 figure from the Ohio Department of Education seems to be a mistake), while the number of students receiving a free lunch is trending up at a much faster pace.

What do should we make of this chart?
• poverty has greatly increased in Ohio
• the Great Recession is responsible for the increase
• government has created another program that fosters dependency

The simple fact is, that there is no way that this many families cannot provide lunches for their own children. Instead, in a great many of these cases... government is simply allowing parents to shirk their responsibilities to their own children, and in essence, place that burden on other taxpayers.

...A decline of individualism is upon us and is being replaced with, almost a Plato like system where the children are raised by the community rather than the parent.

Aristotle, in Politics, wrote of the consequences of the communal state:

"That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he himself is concerned as an individual."

The Democrat Party is following the Utopian template of Plato, Thomas More, Hobbes and Karl Marx; each believed that a few altruistic masterminds in government could orchestrate society into an ideal community.

And each of their models, of course, descended into despotism, tyranny and mass murder as a few not-so-altruistic masterminds used the levers of governmental power to pursue their own corrupt ends.

So too will the Democrats' plans fail -- as they have throughout all of human history.

And only the Constitution and an engaged citizenry, you and I, stand between the Democrat masterminds who seek to destroy this society and replace it with a Utopian nirvana that they can't even define.

Only the Constitution -- the greatest bulwark of liberty ever created, designed explicitly by our founders to protect the individual from the corrupting powers of centralized government -- only the Constitution, you, and I stand in their way.

And 2012 may be our last chance to save this republic from their destructive, Utopian dreams. And I don't care if Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum or Rick Perry is the GOP candidate. I would vote for a banana peel over Barack Obama, because a banana peel would do significantly less damage to this society than the Utopian mastermind who won't even reveal his college transcripts.