— — Over the course of British Petroleum’s oil leak, many people came down hard on President Barack Obama, wondering when the federal government might save the day. As politely as they could, he and his administration consistently provided the right response, letting everyone know that the disaster was of BP’s doing and only BP had the resources and know-how to stop the leak.

It was ironic, if not entertaining, that a president known for thinking the federal government has implausibly vast power admitted, though discretely, that there is a limit to its abilities. That should be a lesson to all: Government is not God. It was never intended, nor is it equipped, to handle every disaster — natural or manmade — that comes our way.

Similarly, it should not be called upon (prayed to, if you will) to provide for the day-to-day accommodations of life like an income, a home, and health care. Those niceties should not be given to anyone; rather, they should be achieved and acquired by everyone on their own. The federal government, in its proper purpose, is supposed to provide the environment in which people can strive for those things. It is supposed to recognize and ensure the rights to life, liberty and property and provide the oversight to make sure one’s collection of rights are not infringed by others, whether the others are fellow citizens, corporations or the government itself.

It should be noted that the latter of the three entities is not held to the same standards as the other two. Government has broken the covenant known as the Constitution and it allows itself to intrude on the rights of its citizenry by stealing from taxpayers in order to fund its adopted role of God, one in which it physically provides the income, food and shelter to those who can’t or, in most cases, won’t.

One could argue that some forms of public assistance have their place, temporarily serving those who are facing a bump in the road, like the loss of a job. They just may, but in most cases such programs don’t work as intended, for there are more “abusers” than there are “users.” In many cases, assistance isn’t temporary in nature. Instead, it remains quite permanent, a lifestyle that becomes accepted as the norm by the recipients and their offspring. It becomes a religion, in which their God — Uncle Sam — puts a roof over their heads and food on their table with no exertion of their own energy. If they can survive just by asking their Great One, why would they have it any other way?

What’s interesting about this is the fact that those who actually worship a God would never commit such an egregious act against him. Christians, for example, never demand that their God fills their bellies or gives them homes. No, their relationship is one of give and take. They ask — not demand — that he provide the means necessary to achieve what they want in life, while at the same time knowing they have a responsibility to be moral and hard-working. They know the rewards they seek are earned through countless personal sacrifices and are never given, and if they are given to them without the application of faith and work, they know there may be a little bit of evil involved.

And there is an evil that exists with the worship of government. There is nothing moral about a lifetime of public assistance. It is sinful — no matter if the reader’s morality is based in religion or reason — to have an individual provide for another through forced benevolence. The government is also more devil than God as an outcome of its actions. The dependency it creates among its worshippers strips them of their humanity and devolves their existence, minimizing the potential greatness that every human being possesses at birth. They lack the ability to reason, the most basic understanding of self-preservation, and the sense of community that all come from self-reliance, individualism and the pursuit of life’s blessings.

We need to put an end to this religion of government and come to grips with the fact that it is not a god, nor should we ever expect to be. Thinking that it is one is ruining our society and constricting the further development and betterment of mankind.

Bob Confer is a Gasport resident and vice president of Confer Plastics Inc. in North Tonawanda. E-mail him at bobconfer@juno.com.