Quote of the day

If there are not enough honest, reasonable people left in our country to trust, then our country is already lost.

Perhaps we need to be working on that problem first. How does one go about producing honest and reasonable people?

Loxodonta on April 23, 2009 at 12:02 AM

I like to think it’s not so much a question of producing them as awakening them – not in the annoying “awareness raising,” hectoring style of the Left, but by offering them a critique of the decaying system that surrounds them. It must be a case made with both reason and passion, and unfortunately, after a few opportunities were lost over the last forty years, it’s a case that can only be made when the downward spiral of socialism enters its terminal phase.

We often marvel at the way people will support politicians who pursue policies they would never accept in their own personal lives. Even when the politicians aren’t manifestly corrupt, they often pursue policies their voters would consider dishonorable or criminal behavior, coming from a private citizen. The qualities of thrift, honesty, and courage we value in a household are pretty much the opposite of the way government works. We don’t borrow 300% of our annual income for spending sprees, then announce we plan to do the same thing every year for the next ten years. We don’t cut ten bucks off a hundred thousand dollars of spending, then brag about how much we’ve tightened our belts. We don’t respond to violent home invasion robberies by asking the criminals what’s on their minds. You wouldn’t pop across the street for a chummy backyard barbecue with a neighbor who spends every day calling your wife a slut, boasting about how he plans to murder your children, and accusing your parents of being pedophiles, then get some laughs from the crowd by remarking you’re glad the neighbor isn’t angry at *you* personally.

Most middle-class Democrat voters would be horrified to find themselves on the receiving end of the policies they support for the poor and disadvantaged. Some significant number of Harry Reid’s voters spend their weekends at the local watering hole, talking about how they’re glad our armed forces kicked al-Quaeda’s ass, and laughing about the latest batch of terrorists who blew themselves away with a faulty IED. Some of the D.C. residents who voted for Obama were genuinely surprised when he killed their school voucher program.

These people have allowed themselves to become weak, held down and bled by a system they could abolish in a single election cycle, if they had the will. All these wasteful programs and oppressive regulations could be swept aside like a curtain of dust, if a few million voters here and there were motived enough to demand it. They don’t exercise their power because they’ve been convinced the political machine constructed over the last forty years is indestructible. Questions are evil, doubts are racist, and hesitating to obey the Party is certain to result in disaster. The same political movement that demands a chemically precise definition of terms like “marriage” and “crime” maintains that we must accept 30,000 page tax codes and 100,000 page spending bills without question, and take the eternal necessity of affirmative action programs and government control of education on faith.

When Democrats make their election-year sales pitch for “hope” and “change,” they want their voters to become excited by the virtual thrill of the concepts, but they have no intention of “changing” anything significant. The voter gets the vicarious excitement of imagining he’s a daring rebel lining up behind a transformative leader, but the end result is another ridiculous pork-barrel spending bill, a few new taxes, and a new pile of regulations. Foreign leaders smile a bit more and proclaim themselves excited by the dynamic new President, but the end result is that they give less to America and take more, cushioning the bait-and-switch by offering some flattery to the American voters for having the wisdom to elect such a splendid valet for them. Obama’s no different than Clinton – it’s the same tired story of betrayal, incompetence, political greed, and of course the tidal wave of lies.

Now we find ourselves nearing the end of the socialist game, as the absurdity of its basic premises is made increasingly clear. The Democrats engineered losses that were too big to spread around, and demanded the overall economy bear a burden that will slowly crush its ability to grow. They stole so much money from the future that even the less politically aware Americans are scratching their heads and wondering how the heck those bills are ever supposed to get paid… and they blew the money on assets they mismanaged into worthlessness, or that were doomed to fall apart even after the billion-dollar failouts.

We need leadership that can show the electorate how hollow and doomed this all is, and remind them they have the power to knock this house of cards away and build something powerful and lasting in its place. The voters need a leader who can give them the confidence of knowing their desires are not racist or greedy. Liberty requires the courage to accept both risk and reward, and only that formula can restart a moribund economy. Throwing piles of bailout money on dead industries is just weaving them a burial shroud out of dollar bills. Some businessmen are going to have to do some crazy things to pull us out of the Bush-Obama nose dive. Some of those businessmen will become very rich, and some will lose everything. We must help the electorate to develop the courage and maturity to accept both outcomes.

It won’t be easy, but I think we should work to build up leadership that can show Americans how dynamism, industry, innovation, and liberty can build something vastly stronger and morally superior to the silver-plated mausoleum state Barack Obama wants to preside over. Then we can talk about having that Constitutional Convention, and building a legal framework to keep the nation we have built safe from thieves and vandals. Middle America is sprawled in a threadbare seat, grey and tired before its time, eyes filmed over by visions of helplessness and fear. We need a white wizard to shock him out of his stupor, and remind him of who he is, and what he’s truly capable of.

Doctor Zero on April 23, 2009 at 1:49 AM