President Obama campaigns at Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth today. The last sitting President to visit Strawbery Banke was George Washington, who wrote, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master.”

President Obama holds the opposite view. Government, to Obama and his party, is neither troublesome nor fearful, but beneficent. At the Democratic National Convention this week, speaker after speaker extolled the virtues not just of government, but of a bold, activist government that energetically directs the behaviors of the American people in the name of promoting the public good.

Instead of “Live free or die,” the New Hampshire motto that was coined by Gen. John Stark, one of George Washington's generals, and trumpeted by Sen. Kelly Ayotte at the Republican National Convention, the Democrats have “You didn't build that.” Government, they believe, provides our well-being — and our rights. Whereas Washington and his fellow Founders of both parties understood that our rights are given to us by God, Obama's party portrays them as bestowed by government. They even cut God from the party platform this week. They put Him back in only after the media reported the act.

A government that grants you your rights is a government that can revoke them. A government that grants you your prosperity is a government that can demand you “give back” what you have earned, to use Obama's own words.

In the remaining weeks before Election Day, New Hampshire will hear President Obama attack Mitt Romney for having a radical view of the role of government in our lives. He will claim that Romney's view is simply this: “You're on your own.”

That, of course, is not close to the truth. Romney believes that government must set and enforce fair rules and regulations, collect fair taxes and provide essential services. He just does not believe, as Obama does, that there should be virtually no limits to the power and reach of the state.

The candidate with the radical view of government, as columnist George Will has eloquently written, is the current President, who views restraints on government power as antiquated obstacles foolishly hindering his pursuit of a government-created and -directed Utopia.

Just remember, one man's Utopia is another man's Hell. Power given to the state for the purpose of molding society into one man's image of perfection some day will be used by those with very different ideas to shape a different society. Once the shackles keeping it in servitude are removed, it quickly becomes a master. The Founders were right to fear that. Obama is foolish not to.