The week’s buzz has been all about “The Hunger Games.” All over campus a person can hear debates about the movie’s inferiority to the novels. All over campus conversations involved a comprehensive synopsis of the books and the thoughts that resulted from reading the books.

I admit I put off reading the books for a long time and finished the first book a few hours before the midnight premiere. I had heard my friends discussing the books and listened to their excitement heightening as the premiere’s date crept closer and closer and naturally my curiosity was piqued. My final decision to break down and read the books came when I heard one thing: that they held fundamentally Republican ideals.

The fact that a conservative novel that focused on an overpowering government and the oppression it caused the country’s citizens had garnered so much national attention by such a young age group mystified me. Books as popular as these, I thought, could not possibly hold conservative ideals and still be beloved by so many people in the under-25 age demographic, but as I read through the story I realized my friends were right, these books are very conservative and forewarn of government oppression.

“The Hunger Games” takes place in the future country of Panem, in a post-apocalyptic North America. Panem’s government is the epitome of big, over regulated government. It watches and wires every conversation the citizens have. It dictates each district by instilling the fear of death into each citizen for the simplest sign of rebellion. In fact, when District 13 tried to rebel, the government simply wiped them out in a matter of minutes with a nuclear holocaust and televised the still smoldering remains to remind citizens of what would happen to them if they tried to rebel.

Once a year government officials of Panem draw two names from all the youth to become the next two tributes, one boy and one girl, between the ages of 12 and 18, from each of the 12 districts, to compete in the Hunger Games for food and survival, which are being broadcast on television for the country’s citizens to view and place bets on who will be the victor and who will die. As Suzanne Collins, author of the book, writes in her novel this is all done to remind the citizens just how much power the government possesses.

Some may think the government system of Panem is just a hyperbole, something that severe could never happen in our democratic society, but looking at other countries that are oppressed by the government, it does not seem that farfetched. Learning from history it is clear the more power governments maintain the fewer liberties the people reserve. Countless governments overrun by dictators have taught us that. For instance, the Bolsheviks overtook the monarchy of Russia to create the Soviet Union and stripped everyone of their rights. Under the rule of Rev. Josef Tiso, the people of the Slovak Republic also experienced a loss of personal liberties.

President Gerald Ford once said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” This has never been truer than what we are seeing in our country today, this is especially relevant in the Obamacare mandate. The risk of an overly powerful government will become more and more relevant if the country’s leadership continues on the path it is on.

To date President Barack Obama has made 106 new major federal regulations in his lone term. To put this in perspective, President George Bush created 120 major regulations over the course of two terms. By way of changing the eligibility requirements for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, Obama has managed to expand entitlements by $32 billion dollars. Additionally, he has changed the eligibility requirements for Medicaid expanding the number of people it now benefits and increasing spending. Also, by creating 123,000 more federal jobs in his term, Obama has managed to increase people’s reliance on the government, and as history and “The Hunger Games” will tell us, this is a very dangerous thing to do.

The problem with an increasing number of regulations is the more of them created the more they must be implemented by federal agencies. This ultimately means more power is granted to the government. The longer this regulation creation continues, the more our country threatens to end up like Panem.

The problem with our current leader is that he governs for today, not tomorrow. The regulations he creates only solve temporary problems and have no sustainable values, and they create government dependency, an issue that will haunt this nation for decades to come if regulations such as his continue. These regulations have no source of sustainability and will only impair the people of tomorrow.

We cannot continue to support candidates in favor of frivolous federal regulation creation; we would do better to support candidates in favor of commonsense regulation. As the November elections get closer we should all remember to vote for tomorrow and govern for the future.