It's not just about the economy.

It's about liberty as well - "being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life," the dictionary says.

Americans sense the erosion of liberty - feel it in their bones. But they haven't figured out why it is happening.

Republicans should tell them.

Today's Democratic Party is coldly, calculatingly encouraging dependence upon itself so as to retain control, and it is succeeding. The result of this will inevitably be loss of liberty.

Vulnerable Americans are being reduced to serfs on a federal plantation.

They will report to the government, not it to them.

Don't buy health insurance? You will be reported to the IRS.

Drink too many sugary drinks? Governments will limit the size of the container.

Put Cheetos in a child's lunch? In some schools, monitors confiscated verboten things, returning them at the end of the day.

On the other hand, turn down a free public education? We'll give you free health care.

Lose your food stamp card - or sell it to get cash for what you really want - and the government will replace it instantly.

Heck, parents aren't even expected to feed their own children any more. Children can get free breakfasts, lunches and dinners at school.

And the federal government, to encourage dependence upon itself, now extends that benefit to all children in some schools. There's no need to qualify.

But encouraging dependence on government weakens the individual.

The result is a sea of personal tragedy. It's all around us.

The number of Americans who receive food stamps has increased by 50 percent.

Yet even free meals don't keep kids coming to school. Truancy has been called "an epidemic" in West Virginia. Dropout rates are a national scandal.

The incentives to dependence are now so strong - free food, subsidized housing, subsidized utilities, free cellphones, free health care - that people fall into the trap.

They realize too late that they face a threadbare existence.

The Democratic Party has cynically discouraged self-reliance and strengthened the incentives to depend on government to gain power for itself.

As for all this jaw-jaw about the rich needing "to pay their fair share" - they already pay way more than that - it is an attempt to misdirect attention away from the obvious:

Nobody is richer than the people who control the federal government and direct the wealth of the American people.

He who runs the government is a multi-trillionaire.

It's a power grab - in the case of health care, of a sixth of the American economy.

Sowell pegged it accurately:

"The whole point of the collectivist mindset is to concentrate power in the hands of the collectivists - which is to say, to take away our freedom."

This is a formula for weakening individuals so as to strengthen government control.

The cost of this game? $16 trillion in debt - $5 trillion of it on President Obama's watch.

The next generation is in for it, not just economically, but in terms of liberty and national security.

Nobody in either party is going to let poor people suffer.

But the encouragement of dependence, the creation of a welfare state, has gone way too far. It has created more poverty.

It has produced individual tragedy and national weakness.

Think security is not the enemy of liberty?

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not," Thomas Jefferson said.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan know that encouraging self-reliance produces far better economic results with far less loss of individual liberty and dignity.

I hope Americans choose their course in November, before it's too late.

Maurice is editorial page editor of the Daily Mail. She may be reached at 348-4802 or ha...@dailymail.com.