“Get in their face” and argue, Barack Obama told his supporters in Elko Nevada yesterday. Obama has become increasingly fierce in his political attacks of John McCain since he began slipping in the polls following the two major party conventions. As more of the general public tune into the political debate, the tide of public enthusiasm has shifted toward John McCain.
In an election year that should have been a slam-dunk for democrats, McCain’s popularity shows how uncomfortable a majority of the American people are with Obama’s far left policy proposals. Obama’s VP candidate, Joseph Biden, recently went so far as to say that “paying more taxes is patriotic”. Obama’s big government ambitions seem to have no limits. History teaches a stern lesson of skepticism for those who gullibly believe democratic candidates claims’ to raise taxes “just on the rich”. While Obama’s official rhetoric promises tax cuts for 95% of Americans, the independent Tax Policy Center specifies that Obama’s proposals would grant a tax cut to only four of five American households. If one accounts for the capital gains tax increases, corporate tax increases, estate tax increases, and social security tax increases proposed by Obama, the notion that “middle class” Americans will be less burdened by taxes becomes a ridiculous fantasy.
Americans would do well to remember the wise counsel of our first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln:
In all that people can do for themselves, government ought not to interfere.
It is the eternal struggle between these two principles- right and wrong. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time and will ever continue to struggle. It is the same spirit that says “You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.”
Obama’s prescription for all of America’s ills boils down to increased government regulation and control. He plans to “create green collar jobs” with new government tax money taken from productive workers. He plans to regulate oil company profits and redistribute their earnings. He plans to increase taxes on capital gains at a time when capital is dangerously scarce, thereby further discouraging capital investment. He plans to increase payroll taxes. He plans to tax, regulate, tax and then regulate some more.
As he discusses in his first book, “Memoirs About Nothing”, Barack Obama tries to sell his ideas by cloaking them in more palatable rhetoric than people are used to hearing. He fashions himself as a politician who reaches out across party lines; but such moderation is not apparent in his voting record- the most partisan liberal voting record in the Senate. The new kind of politics Obama promised Americans is looking more and more like the old cut-throat brand of politics he is now practicing openly as the race tightens.
Obama’s new politics are not new at all. His brand of change is remarkably similar to the old liberal big- government, tax and spend policies of Lyndon Johnson and Walter Mondale. Obama’s brand of change can be aptly characterized as Socialism-Lite. It has the same bad taste as Old Europe’s socialism, but with 30% more freedom! Americans are not buying it. Socialism must always be dressed up to make it marketable. It is a bland, tasteless dish that promises an adequate minimum daily allotment of calories in return for security. It robs its adherents of courage and initiative, and makes no mention of the corrosive heat disease it slowly and quietly fosters within a society. McCain believes that Americans are entitled to the fruit of their labors.
If Obama supporters “get in your face” over the next while in heated defense of their candidate, we might quietly and respectfully ask them to keep their errant political views to themselves. After all, we don’t push our views on them. The Bolsheviks, however, did not deal well with differing viewpoints either. The party of tolerance has quickly become the party of intolerance for anyone whose views are not in line with theirs. Congressional democrats even attempted to pass a bill called the “Fairness Doctrine” this past year, which would have limited the free political speech of conservative talk radio hosts.
This election is about freedom. Freedom to live out the ideals of a free and independent people. America does have her difficulties, but America’s strength lies in her political differences from Old Europe, not her similarities. Nationalized healthcare, a nationalized home mortgage industry , and increasingly demanding employment laws are threats to our cherished freedoms just as surely as Soviet era tanks and missiles. Like the boiled frog that complacently and fatally waits for an alarming increase in temperature, the policies of liberalism and Obama’s Socialism-Lite are widdling away our freedoms. We Americans need to awake to the state of our affairs, and return to the safety of our first principles.
Indeed, as attributed to Lincoln:
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by tearing down the wage payer. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot build a man’s character by taking away his initiative and independence. You cannot help a man permanently by doing for him what he could and should do for himself.
Ronald Reagan was fond of reminding us that freedom is never more than a generation away from being lost, and that once lost, freedom is never redeemed without bloodshed. John McCain urged passionately in his nomination acceptance speech to “Fight with me for the ideals of a free people!”
As docile, moderate, and cosmopolitan as Barack Obama tries to present himself; he is nonetheless, irrespective of whether he realizes it or not, a threat to our freedoms. “I’m not scary”, he says playfully at his campaign rallies. “I’m not risky.” Reason tells us otherwise. History teaches a different lesson. Obama’s Socialism-Lite is dangerous stuff. The giving away of our freedoms for promises of security will eventually put a corruptingly great amount of power in the hands of a self-interested few who will not put our best interests before their own. The declining power of Old Europe is due in part to the fact that they have so overspent on social programs and indebted themselves to each other on the premise of collective security that they cannot afford to pay for their own national defense.
As the campaign rhetoric heats up in the race for the Presidency, and the angry left gets angrier, Barack Obama is beginning to show his true colors. What we see is Socialism-Lite. It is a dramatic escalation of old liberal thinking from years past. That’s not change we can believe in. That’s more of the same.
