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Obama's 'revenge' is the antithesis of American ideals
Sacrifice, character, patriotism, family and the faith of successive generations built America. Obama represents few of those things
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.”
These words, attributed (although unverified) to Alexander Tytler, an eighteenth century Scottish historian, appear to have been prophetic.
President Barack Obama won a second term. He did not win by laying out a grand vision for the country. He did not win by being honest with the American people about our debt, our deficits, or our chronic unemployment well above 10 percent (in real terms).
He did not win by offering a plan for immigration reform, or saving social security and Medicare, or how to fight a resurgent Al Qaeda.
He didn’t win explaining how he would stop causing deadlock in Congress and start building consensus. He simply won.
In fact his only campaign promise was to soak the rich – directed against Governor Romney. It almost sounded like payback for Romney having the audacity to challenge him.
“Voting is the best revenge” the President said on the Friday before the election. Yesterday I guess the American people gave the President his second opportunity to exact that revenge.
America today faces a bleak future. By shattering the country into a thousand pieces, and re-assembling 51 percent, the President might have hobbled together what he needed to hold onto power, but he has done lasting damage to this grand country.
America was not built on revenge. America as an idea was thought up in the burning embers of the revolutionary war and built by a successive line of patriots who achieved their joy in giving back, not taking.
Sacrifice, character, patriotism, family and the faith of successive generations built this great land. Through the blood of our soldiers overseas and the tireless work of our industry and inventors at home we forged a new reality and created a shining beacon that the entire world looked to in envy.
We are a people who have never had to ask permission from Washington, render accounts to our overlords, or report back in fear. We have always been a free people whose un-coerced interactions served to build up, not to tear down. And they have always been enough.
I wonder how much longer this will be the case.
In his forward to Friedrich Hayek’s masterpiece “The Road to Serfdom”, Dr. Walter Williams explains what is happening. Intellectuals, as Hayek calls “second-hand dealers in ideas (…) are masters in the technique of conveying ideas but usually amateurs so far as the substance of what they convey is concerned.”
In their intention of doing good they undermine the pillars of a free society, leaving it bare for tyranny. This happens so much as to not even be controversial. From Venezuela to the old USSR to modern-day France – and now the USA – collectivists subjugate based upon the proclaimed intention of creating fairness or equality.
They use the tax code and the regulatory environment on the one hand and the expansion of social services, benefits or entitlements on the other to bind poor to rich, with an army of nameless, faceless bureaucrats as intermediaries. These dependencies end only when the money runs out; and the society collapses.
This was the message that Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan tried tirelessly to deliver, because it was the only way to save the United States and return America to a society based on individual productivity, the only motor for economic growth (and job creation).
The challenge was about returning integrity to our money supply so it can serve as a faithful store of value and unit of measure and addressing expanding entitlements so that they work not only for this generation but for future generations. It was about replacing the regulatory framework which is killing job growth through “death by a thousand paper cuts.” But this is not a popular message, especially when the “second-hand dealers” are muddying the water to make it appear deep.
So now we face another four years.
Debt will balloon until it takes us $1 trillion a year simply to service it. Entitlements will continue to expand with the corresponding unintended consequence of reducing the incentives to work, thereby increasing the cost of entitlements until they spiral out of control. Class warfare, as the best tool of the “second-hand dealers”, will seep even more into our society along with the ideas of revenge which no longer even cause outrage. And America’s bright, shining star will grow each day a little dimmer.
Mitt Romney did a good job laying out the perils. At least we cannot say we weren’t warned.
Joel D. Hirst is Principal at Cordoba Group International, a consulting firm in Washington DC and author of the novel The Lieutenant of San Porfirio
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