During the campaign Sen. Obama made it clear what he wants to do. America, in his estimation, is at a crossroads and must be radically changed and transformed for the purpose of creating a new “Post American World.” That’s the title, by the way, of a book Obama was seen reading on the campaign trail.
On the 221st anniversary of our Constitution’s birthday, Sept. 17, Obama took note of another anniversary for the opportunity to address a crowd in New York. Paying tribute to the New Deal campaign of 1933, Obama repeated the rhetoric from Roosevelt’s speech seventy-five years ago given at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.
The “hope” and “change” of Obama was therefore equated to the designs of FDR’s societal transformation. There would be a “re-appraisal of values” where “our right to live must include the right to live comfortably.” There’s no mention of who will be compelled to deliver said comfort and whether those individuals have any rights of their own to refuse such obligation, but why quibble over the details?
Obama continued to quote FDR saying “[we] must work together to achieve the common end.” The vision, explained Obama, “would require change…a renewed spirit of obligation and cooperation between business and workers.” “Faith in America, faith in our tradition of personal responsibility, faith in our institutions, and faith in ourselves demands that we all recognize the new terms of the old social contract.”
One must remember that FDR’s statements came BEFORE the establishment of such federal entitlement programs as: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. These obligations amount to a $50 trillion debt for future taxpayers already over-burdened with the costs of government!
Apparently, president-elect Obama is reliving the past and is ready to re-launch the type of activist government we experienced in the 1930s.This was the golden age of what was called “creeping socialism” that created the failures addressed by the Reagan Revolution in the ‘80s. Looking at it from that historical perspective one can then understand why the Obama movement has such antipathy towards Reagan and the smaller government reforms he initiated. The political movement behind Reagan should not be so easily dismissed. It even reached President Clinton if you recall. In his 1996 State of the Union address, Clinton remarked, “the era of big government is over!”
Obama’s “re-appraisal of our values as a nation” is the real change he’s offering. The “higher principles” of centralized, government “guidance” is the reason why, in Obama’s view, our markets have worked at all. This is dangerous thinking. It puts individuals, freedom and the market as secondary considerations to the primary motives and “sublime” directives of an “all-knowing,” “all-seeing” and “all-powerful” government.
The evil that Obama sees is not so much al Qaeda, but the “great income inequalities” that prompted his now famous comment to Joe the Plumber regarding “spreading the wealth.” It’s that type of “government knows best” thinking that led him to make the following remark about the Coal Industry: “So, if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”
“We are going to have to adapt our institutions to a new world,” Obama contends, “to realign the interests of all Americans in a solemn obligation to modernize America’s safety net in a project of American renewal.” The “great hope” of Obama’s presidency, quite simply, is the attempt to install another New Deal where “we must shoulder our common load.”
Returning to that other anniversary for just a minute- the Constitution of the United States remains so vital today because it serves to protect our freedom from the greatest threat known to freedom— government. Thomas Jefferson said it best, “In matters of power let no more be heard of the confidence in man but bind them down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.” He also said, “that government governs best, that governs least.” The American system of government is one of limited government, not because the Founders were heartless and cruel towards the poor, but because they understood that governments tend to oppress their people as they amass power unto themselves…regardless of the motives!
In our Republic, the Constitution rules in authority over public opinion, but it only truly matters if we’re still a Nation of Laws and not a corrupted Nation of usurping Rulers who govern by capricious and arbitrary judgments. (send comments to WFC83197@aol.com, or mail to: POB 114, Jacksboro, TN 37757)
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