What We Can Be Thankful For

During this holiday season, I again find myself most thankful for individual freedom and rights. Unfortunately, our political leaders have forgotten our past and have shown little respect for either.

Fortunately, there is an inkling of hope with the recent unraveling of ObamaCare. And I am not simply being political when I say that. Consider what there is to be thankful for in this case.

1. Virtually everything that the opposition said was bad about this legislation is being revealed as truth; e.g. government control of HC will breed corruption and cronyism, individuals will not necessarily be able to keep their previous insurance policies, costs will not be reduced, etc.

2. HC cannot be considered a right, and attempting to make it so for altruistic and egalitarian reasons is immoral. Also note that every problem ObamaCare was supposed to fix was caused by government controls, not free markets. The unraveling will hopefully lead to rational HC reforms. 

3. Everything that ObamaCare was intended to accomplish was with evil motives: redistribution of wealth, control of the economy, destruction of the middle class and small businesses, increased union power, etc. This could wake people up to the broader statist agenda.    

4. President Obama is being revealed as the liar and narcissist many have known him to be. He does not care if he violates the rights of doctors, patients, insurers and the lives of millions of Americans. His statist/Marxist ideology trumps all. Hopefully, enough people will realize that, Republicans will win the Senate next year and make it impossible for him to do further damage.

Understand that rights exist in order for man to be selfish (yes, that “evil” word of which each person is “guilty” whenever he acts in his best interest), not to be sacrificed: they sanction those actions that enable each individual to sustain his own live and achieve happiness. Let’s be thankful for those rights we still retain and work together to regain those we have lost.

Is there a "Common Good"?

Liberals/statists talk of having some responsibility to the “common good” (CG). Such talk suggests a lack of understanding and acceptance of moral principles. 

The objective approach to the principle of ‘the good’ is to evaluate facts of reality according to a rational standard of value; thus ‘good’ is that which is proper to one’s life from a rational, not emotional or unreal, perspective. The subjective approach considers only one’s feelings, desires or arbitrary needs. Which do you think is the proper method of evaluation? 

Where actions can be objectively evaluated, it is possible for rational individuals to agree to a CG. But since most people do not act rationally, it is meaningless to speak of any CG (or public interest). To impose a CG on individuals is to use force to give preference for the good of some at the expense of others - which is immoral and collectivist. Only by defining ‘good’ for individuals vs. the collective can rights be retained.  

In discussing our recent fiscal crises and federal debt, such reasoning has been lost on most politicians/liberals. Many people do not support higher taxes on the relatively wealthy to support the non-productive and looters in society; they do not support increased spending and the resulting higher debt in the deceptive name of ‘fairness’ and at great economic cost. Thus, re-distribution of income and unsustainable government debt/deficits are clearly not for the CG. It is hypocritical to expect the wealthy to be productive, buoy the economy and provide jobs for the poor and middle classes, while raising their taxes as if they don’t already pay much more than their ‘fair share’. 

Likewise, many do not see it in their best interest to remain defenseless against criminals; therefore gun control is not for the CG. It is hypocritical for politicians to pretend to support the 2^nd amendment as they attempt to restrict guns and ammunition; to expect armed security protection while asking the populace to publicly announce their gun ownership and to give up any guns.  

Many do not support environmentalists who simply want to shut down existing technology and hopelessly pursue inefficient and unnecessary ‘green’ energies at great cost to our economy; thus subjective favoritism toward ‘green’ companies is not for the CG. It is hypocritical to depend on successful oil and gas companies that efficiently provide energy with minimal effect on the environment, while fighting them through regulations/executive orders and subsidizing ‘green’ companies that cannot otherwise sustain themselves.  

Essentially, everything liberals push as being for the CG has hypocrisy written all over it. And hypocrisy results from the lack of moral principles. It reveals the fact that the hypocrites are acting contrary to their nature; they hold ideals they have to accept as their highest ambition despite being hateful and repulsive toward them. Consider, for example, how they must view America vis a vis the world: a country with exceptional virtues, wealth, success and power; yet they show distaste for the term “capitalism”, apologize for its virtues and demonstrate great hypocrisy and evasiveness in international affairs.  

Again I must note that Obama and his followers hold the wrong moral standard. They place the collective good over individual good, government force over support of individual rights. They are willing to sacrifice our happiness for the sake of the allusive CG. Don’t accept this.

State of the Union

If I was to address Obama’s SOTU speech, I would be nearly speechless. How does one respond to a fully statist/collectivist speech which contains many talking points but no real solutions to our financial woes? Redistribution of wealth, punishments for corporations and universities that don’t conform to his wishes, unsound reforms, tax increases, global equality, worthless international diplomacy and financial aid to our enemies is all so un-American that it should scare all of us.  

How can anyone buy-in to this President’s proposals and actions? FDR provides a real clue. Until recent history, liberal historians (and the broad media) have evaluated FDR as near-saintly. Some believes that his election represented a great revolution in American history. But more recent analyses reveal a different picture.  

He was essentially an unproductive man throughout his life; his only success was as a politician. He had low aptitude for economics, business and the law. He was said to have a 2^nd class intellect; however, he had first class charm and guile. In areas where he lacked confidence, he viewed his superiors as having achieved success unfairly. He was financially supported by others on his way to the Presidency.  

He spoke frequently of the virtues of a free market but seldom acted to support it. He blamed his predecessors for the prolonged depression, yet his policies were precisely what depressed the economy throughout the ‘30s. His Smoot-Hawley tariff was clearly one of the primary causes of the depression. He strongly supported the redistribution of wealth, attacked industries (while supporting those who could serve him best – cronyism), and promised a 25% reduction in spending and a balanced budget when campaigning (never his real intentions). He had no business person on his economic team capable of showing him a better path to recovery. 

Obama fits that profile perfectly. Liberals love him for the same reasons and with the same faults. Unfortunately, they blindly accept him despite two enormous flaws that FDR never had: he is a thorough egalitarian and a narcissist. He is indifferent to our economic welfare and is willing to destroy it in the process of taking down the most productive among us. He and his followers are showing either an amazing ignorance or evasion of economics, the Constitution and morality. 

The true SOTU is depressing and there is little hope that Obama – with his ideology – will enable robust growth in the economy. His despicable lies re the supposed disaster to be caused by sequestration (forcing a miniscule reduction in planned growth in spending over a decade) show that he has no intent to truly cut spending. Do you realize that our total national debt in 1931 was equal to our current debt growth in just 5+ days! Do you really believe this trend is sustainable? 

His altruistic morality dictates his statist politics. “Altruism” means sacrificing one’s higher values to lower values, ability to inability, achievement and wealth to need; it is not mere “humanitarianism” as often believed. And being “humanitarian” is caring to help others without sacrifice, not forcing individuals to care for others out of duty, envy or in the name of economic equality as Obama and liberals wish. The Right and the Left both preach altruism (albeit for different reasons), and that moral code is destroying our culture as well as our economy.

Current Issues

Obama’s 12/16 speech re the mass killings in Connecticut was yet another attempt to impose collectivism on our culture. “We can’t tolerate this anymore... these tragedies must end”; “this…is something we can only do together.” “We bear a responsibility for every child.” No Mr. President, we are not truly our “brothers’ keeper” and such tragedies will never end. 

Soon after - as with every such tragedy - the focus turned to gun control. Yet - as always - control advocates are ignoring the facts: criminals attack areas of least resistance - where guns are not allowed or in smaller numbers, there is a negative correlation between gun ownership and serious crime, and new laws cannot control guns. 

I see a three-pronged problem: 

1.    Gun-free zones: eliminate them. Enable responsible individuals in public places to carry or have easy access to guns for the protection of others. And find more creative ways to improve security in such areas. 

2.    The mentally ill: loosen legal restrictions on how we deal with them. E.g. allow a registry (with reasonably restricted access) that identifies persons who have been seen as a potential danger to others - just as we can reveal to the DMV people who are a danger driving. 

3.    Politics! Rational people could agree that we don’t generally need assault weapons for self-defense or sports. But government should not dictate our needs; and the political climate is such that yielding to the control advocates on such a point would only lead to further attempts to impose controls beyond reason. And even if Congress could pass a law that rationally determined which gun restrictions are and are not violations of our right to bear arms, that would not prevent criminals from obtaining illegal weapons. 

Fiscal Cliff: does anyone wonder how a “balanced” solution to the “Cliff” became defined as increased revenues (via tax hikes) and virtually no decrease in spending? Obama’s forced deal has certainly not averted a fiscal crisis yet to come. It simply advanced his short-term goals of punishing the rich, redistributing income for the sake of economic equality and subsidizing his friends. This will all be at the long-term expense of our economy which will likely be blamed on the next President.  

Note that our financial crisis of ’08 began with the equally irrational goal of “equality” of home ownership. Few seemed to understand how that would damage our economy either. Now using the same excuse to confiscate wealth is a moral disgrace; it is a good example of how our morality is been degraded and our political system destroyed. All such redistribution and divisive efforts are undertaken merely for a statist/Marxist principle. The lies to justify it all will never end unless people are taught that inequality is a natural and healthy phenomenon that benefits the poor the most when it results from free markets, not political cronyism and statist policies. As economist Yaron Brook said, “A society that cares about inequality of income is a sick society driven by altruism and envy.” Those who ask for unearned equality or inequality are guilty of parasitism.

Current Events

Obama has no foreign policy per se, just short-term posturing.

11/7 - Govt. acknowledged that Iranian fighter planes had fired on an unmanned reconnaissance drone five days before the election.

NID director Clapper “suggested” Petraeus resign as head of the CIA.

11/9: Petraeus resigned. The Administration had previously objected to his request to provide enhanced support of the Benghazi embassy and his decision to release his own timeline of events; that was when the FBI told Clapper of Petraeus’s affair. What a convenient time to push him out.

11/13: it was announced that 2 days after the attack, Petraeus had said it was not one of terrorism; thus the supposed justification for Susan Rice’s continual claims that it was merely a mob attack due to the video. In fact, his actual acknowledgment of it being a terrorist attack was omitted by someone at the White House from the report given to Rice. 

Benghazi is Obama’s “Watergate” - perhaps worse. And all the above were clearly timed to cover up events that could have affected the election outcome. More lies and deceit. 

War between Hamas and Israel escalated again. Obama was relatively silent re Hamas’ actions but told Israel to show maximum restraint! Then Israel was pressured into a peace agreement that is viewed as a victory for Hamas, giving them more time to garner wider support and arms for the next battle. Obama’s position again revealed his distaste for Israel. And he has even been unwilling to expose Hamas’ “dead-baby” strategy which uses innocent civilians as martyrs while the terrorists hide from return fire.  

11/8: Obama deemed 1.6 million acres of federal land unavailable for oil/gas exploration and production. He clearly lied re his desire to pursue such development; his preference is to destroy competition for green energy. 

Obama continues to show support for immoral union rules and laws that violate the rights of employers as it grants coercive powers to unions and forces businesses to “negotiate” and concede to union demands which always results in higher unemployment, higher prices for consumers, and unsustainable production costs that have driven many companies out of business or overseas. The latest victim is Hostess Brands with at least 15k jobs lost – union jobs he purports to protect. 

ObamaCare is already causing corporations to make changes to compensate for regulations; e.g. cutting hours of employees to avoid fines for lack of HC coverage. And there is growing evidence of a near-future shortage of primary-care doctors. All this was predicted by non-supporters. 

The USPS reported a $16B loss in the recent fiscal year. Now it wants to eliminate Saturday mail service. It is time to end this legal monopoly on delivery service; but in deference to the unions, Obama wouldn’t accept that. 

Obama continues to insist on raising taxes on the rich in the interest of “fairness”, knowing full well that the economy would be hurt by such a move. He has shown no interest in reducing spending and truly resolving our fiscal crisis. He is all about divisiveness: poor and middle-classes against the rich, minorities against whites, women against men. His ends always justify his means.  

Add it up: 0-7 against freedom and respect for rights!

What Next?

Robin Hood is returning. How did this happen?  

Obama’s followers are primarily Baby Boomers (protesters of the 1960’s who learned from Marx) and those they taught in our liberal institutions to be true statists. And Barak Obama has skillfully used them to begin his destruction of this once free country. Yes, he is the new Robin Hood: the champion of need - not individual rights or achievement - who robs the rich to give to the poor. He and his followers believe that the more one produces the less right he has to his rewards. This is contemptible, yet evidently accepted by half our population. 

The dangers of Obama’s ideology have fallen on their complacent and naïve ears. They fully evade the principles on which our country was founded (as I have been describing). This is the primary answer to the question above.  

Obama also benefited substantially from a fantastically biased Media who carefully disguised his lies and deceit and supported his invalid attacks on Romney. Then there are the minorities (and others) who accept the ridiculous notion that it is historically important to keep the first black President in office.  

Finally - and certainly not insignificant - is his weak opposition. The Republican Party is unwilling to accept true separation of church and state, to moderate its positions on social issues in the name of individual freedom, and (as with the Democrats) to understand and support the morality of economic freedom. 

Romney was handicapped by his party and some of his own views. But he was also too pragmatic to even consider distinguishing himself from a statist/Marxist, and he was unwilling to speak about many of the damaging actions of Obama and negative results to date of his policies.  

So what’s next? One can only conclude that Obama will continue full steam ahead. Republicans will inappropriately yield on tax hikes (in some form) while getting no real spending cuts in return. Continued slow economic growth, low productivity, further implementation of ObamaCare, costly environmental/energy policies and greater inflation will likely lead to another recession - with even higher unemployment - early in his second term. As government consumes wealth instead of enabling individuals to create it, free enterprise and individual freedom will continue to be sacrificed. And continued terrorism emanating from the Middle East will further reveal Obama’s weak foreign policy. 

Obama will tell us – as he did in 2008 - that we must now unite and work together for the collective good. But there is no such thing as the “collective good” - only what is good for individuals. And Obama has been a destroyer, not a uniter. He has temporarily destroyed the “American Dream” which can only be recaptured with proper education and a new free market, pro-individual rights President. 

Going forward, let’s evaluate current actions of the Administration, using that dream as the standard: judging each by the freedom and opportunities it offers and the individual rights it protects. Judgment according to needs met or political correctness must stop.

If You Are an Obama Suppoter...

Obama was raised and has lived his entire life as a statist/Marxist; that is his ideology, and it is anti-American. Why don’t you see that? 

Statism/egalitarianism always requires some to support others by force. How can you possibly consider that moral? 

Why do you accept his Keynesian economic policies when Keynes' theory has continually been proven false? Or why do you accept what sounds good over what works?   

Why do you assume that economic equality has anything to do with treating people equally? The former is Marxist, the latter is American. And why do you assume that different rules and standards apply to different people? Are we to be properly equal or not? 

How far are you willing to go in allowing Obama to sacrifice the more successful among us for the sake of the unproductive? Is someone who stays unemployed in order to avoid work and to cheat the government, or who gambles away his welfare check, worthy of our compassion and justified in forcing us to sustain his unearned lifestyle?  

Obama believes that government needs to compete with private industry; but, in fact, private industry alone produces goods and services that make an economy grow. Why don’t you see that we cannot afford to have government compete and that there is serious damage done by following his thesis? 

On what basis do you assume that government stimulus of the economy is better than private stimulus? You are replacing rational decision makers with the irrational, those with risk in the game with those without risk or incentive to be efficient. 

Bush had a deficit around $400B prior to TARP in 2008; and everyone including Obama supported TARP and considered it a requirement. Obama has added over $5T in deficits/debt, all optional. How can you say that Obama did not create his own economic mess? 

The producers (particularly the wealthy) in this country provide the jobs and government revenue to support the moochers and looters. How can you possibly say they don’t pay their fair share? 

Why do you only care about the benefits government can provide you today and not the heavy burdens your children and grandchildren will inherit tomorrow? 

Since you have accepted politicians providing you benefits at others’ expense, how can you possibly complain when they take from you to give to others - or themselves?

How can you have your cake and let your neighbor eat it too? 

If you have not contributed to society, then why do you feel society owes you something at the expense of the true contributors? If you have contributed yourself, then why do you feel that those who have not deserve the fruits of others’ labor? 

Why is one considered “greedy” to want to keep what he earns, but "compassionate" when he wants to take the earnings from one to give to others? 

If you think we cannot afford health care, then how in the world do you think we can afford ObamaCare with enormous inefficiencies and an enormous government bureaucracy to administer it? 

Does it bother you that science has verified that there has been zero global warming for the last 16 years, and that there has not been any concerning climate change in our lifetime; yet Obama’s entire energy and ecology policies are based on that myth? And he plans for more damaging EPA rules after the election. 

Does it bother you that he has subsidized - with tax dollars - inefficient “green” industries that have or will fail as the subsidies defy laws of economics? 

Do you approve of the cronyism that is associated with such policies? (It is certainly not capitalism that leads to that.) 

Do you like the high gas prices resulting from Obama’s energy policies? How can you complain about the prices without understanding the cause? 

Aren’t you a bit concerned that Obama strongly fights bullying – children taking things from others by force, yet he constantly bullies all of us with his statist/egalitarian policies? 

You are for the collective over the individual. But why aren’t you concerned about government controls over the individual? Why are you more supportive of statism than capitalism that leaves individuals free? There are no collective rights. 

Obama said he would end all military conflicts early in his term. Yet he escalated Afganistan and contributed to the crises in Egypt, Syria and Libya. He created the greatest conflict in the M.E. by sympathizing with Muslims, has accomplished nothing with Iran - our greatest concern, and has constantly rebuffed Israel - our only ally there. He has refused to recognize our real enemy. How can you possibly say his foreign policy is a success? How can you naively believe that killing bin Laden decimated Al Queda or that “leading from behind” has been a successful strategy? How can you accept his lies about M.E. events? Radical Islam has hijacked the “Arab Spring” and he cannot face it - so he lies about it.  

Obama said he was “offended” at the suggestion that his administration would attempt to deceive the public about the Benghazi attack (which he in fact did). After all the lies he has told, what is there that you can really believe he has not deceived us about? Certainly nothing dealing with foreign policy, ObamaCare, deficits, “green” energy, executive orders, etc. But that’s what nihilists do - have to do. 

Do you really believe he should be considered a hero for having bin Laden killed, when in fact Bush laid the groundwork for capture and any President would find it his duty to approve of the killing? Do you not find it arrogant of him to take all credit and to act like that made his foreign policy a success? 

Why is it okay for unions and other public institutions to influence votes for the Left, but not for churches to tell their members which candidate agrees with their values? 

Does it matter that Obama has no 2^nd term agenda? That, by default, we will see a continuation of high deficits, slow growth, foreign policy weakness leading to increased terrorism, etc.? 

If someone does not accept your political views, how can you assume he does not care about the people you claim to want to help? And if someone disagrees with Obama, why do you assume he is a racist? 

Does it bother you that Obama is conducting the most negative campaign in our history? That he says it is detestable to attack personal character, yet he has frequently attacked Romney’s character and called him a liar - without any justification? Why can’t you recognize the contrasting honesty of Romney? 

Could anything convince you that Obama is a danger to this once-free country?

The best book you could read is Atlas Shrugged: Rand defines the likes of Obama very clearly; and you will be able to see why America will likely “shrug” more than it has with a 2^nd Obama term.