I have detected a shift in the American mind and it is a good thing.  I see more and more people awakening to the fact that government is not there to look after people.  I see more people realizing that these ongoing wars are ridiculous, unnecessary, and quite harmful.  I see more people realizing that government is not the answer to their problems.

For young Ron Paul supporters, they have no idea just how much this country has changed in the last 5 years.  Libertarianism was barely on the map.  There was no such thing as a libertarian giving a speech to thousands of people in an audience.

But I also see very subtle things in every day life where the government weakens slightly and the spread of information increases.  The government has promoted, and sometimes even forced upon people, unhealthy things.  Fluoride in water is one example and yet I see most people drinking bottled water now.  They know that most of the tap water is bad.

I am actually seeing several products in the grocery store advertising that they contain no high fructose corn syrup.  Of course, this is something that has been promoted by government with subsidies and high tariffs on sugar.  But the fact that some products are starting to advertise in bold letters that they do not contain high fructose corn syrup, attests to the fact that consumers are conscious about it.

Changing subjects, but still on the same theme, I saw a piece on Fox News talking about military requests for ballots being way down from past presidential election years.  In other words, it looks like a lot of military men and women are not going to vote.  While the Republican hacks on Fox were talking about Obama and his administration most of the time, they couldn’t explain why the military people were not going to vote in big numbers for Romney.  And I doubt that there is any more apathy than in years past.  Of course, the most logical explanation, which terrifies the establishment, is that more people, particularly in the military, don’t want to vote because they see little difference between Romney and Obama.

We now live in a world of open communication.  We live in a world of Google and YouTube.  Things get around fast.  Politicians can’t get away with things as much as they could in the past.

With a bad economy, more people are doing their own independent research to find out why.  They want to know the reasons for the bad economy and what can be done to fix it.  They are tired of the same old Keynesian explanations.  More people are finding Austrian economics.

While I think it will still take some time to change hearts and minds, we are actually headed in the right direction.  The government continues to grow, but its structural foundation is weakening.

It isn’t really considered “cool” this time around to support Obama.  If anything, the Ron Paul supporters are where the action is.  People aren’t as excited about Obama this time around and rightly so.  And it seems that most of the Romney supporters are only Romney supporters because they are anti-Obama.

So while it seems like things are getting worse and worse with bigger and bigger government, we need to look at the positive things and realize how many more libertarians we have today than we did just 5 short years ago.  I’m not sure if Americans will be better off 5 years from now, but I think we will be much better off in 20 years.