WE’RE COMING DOWN to the wire now for the 2012 elections, but if
you think that this choice is between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney,
you haven’t been paying attention. Though this presidential
campaign has been broadcast, written, Tweeted, and Facebooked about
more than any other in history, it’s not about the personalities
involved. Forget about whether you’d want to have beer and
cigarettes with Barack or spend time with Mitt doing…whatever he
does for fun.
The choice is between restoring America or watching our nation
become, in perpetuity, a larger version of the beleaguered European
Union. Let’s face it: We’re hanging by a thread on the very edge of
a cliff. Below us are all the nations we, for so long, had risen
above in terms of productivity, quality of life, personal liberty,
and economic freedom.
Today we live in a country where outlays by the federal
government double every 18 years despite the so-called conservative
movement’s efforts; where thousands of local and municipal
governments can’t pay their bills and teeter on the brink of
bankruptcy; where the government colludes with business, labor, and
small interest groups to pick winners and losers while forcing the
many to pay for the few.
It’s a ticking time bomb, and our time is almost up. From the
progressives who imported from Europe ideas that favored the common
good over the rights of the individual, to the New Deal, Fair Deal,
and Great Society, America has become dangerously collectivist.
President after president—from both parties—has built walls around
failing ideas, because they’ve been reduced to mere used car
salesmen trying to make a deal. They’ve altogether lacked the
stomach to simply tell people “no.” And Obama has taken it to new
lows.
The social compact has changed: from a time when hardscrabble
people worked to better themselves and expected little help from a
government whose principal function was to protect them; to a time
when people’s personal achievements are forcibly tempered by a
government that has pledged to support huge segments of the
population on the backs of everyone else.
Through pensions, public employee unions, Medicare, and the
Social Security Ponzi scheme, too many have gamed the system for
too long for it to survive. We’ve gone from limited government to
an attitude of “never enough.”
This whole idea of something for nothing has brought America to
its weakest point since the Civil War. Instead of expecting to work
hard and keep their earnings as a reward for a job well done, many
Americans expect the government to provide for virtually their
every need, while others are unmotivated to do more because they
know they are ultimately working for the benefit of someone
else.
P.J. O’Rourke, in his book
Parliament of Whores, makes the point that America is
imperiled because millions of people who wake up every day
and work hard to put food on the table are being skewered by their
own government. The rich can’t pay for all the programs. It will be
the hard-earned money of the middle class that the government will
compel to help sustain our downward spiral.
This will ultimately lead to lower incomes in the middle third
of wage earners and a greater dependency by the middle class on
government programs. We’ve seen it already in the past four years,
when incomes for middle-class Americans dropped by $4,000 a year.
Check the math. Our spending, taxes, revenue, giveaways, and
bastardization of the free market don’t add up to anything more
than impending disaster.
We need a fundamental transformation led by that bloc of
Americans who have been hurt the most: the middle class.
They must rise up and demand means testing and indexing for all
social programs, an increase in the retirement age, an end to union
contracts with low or no employee contributions for health care,
the elimination of subsidies for favored industries, and deep
payroll cuts in every federal department. They need to demand
enforcement of fraud laws, division of too-big-to-fail banks,
elimination of duplicate services, and an end to the crony
capitalism that permits insider trading for congressmen.
The idea that you can’t have a safety net for those in need
without bankrupting the country is simply un-American. The notion
that Tea Partiers and fiscal conservatives are evil people who
don’t care about the poor is equally repugnant.
Republicans and Democrats alike have brought us to this point.
The fault does not rest with one party, one policy, or one person.
It rests with both parties, and with the tired, calcified
conservative movement that has failed to stop statists’
advances.
This election isn’t about Obama and Romney. It’s about the kind
of nation we will be.
It’s not about which ticket is more conservative. It’s about
urging Americans at long last to stand up for their values and hold
(hopefully) President Romney, Speaker Boehner, Senator McConnell,
and thousands of elected officials across the country
accountable—every election day until the American taxpayer again
runs this country. In the end, it’s about keeping America free.
Anything less and we might as well start humming “La
Marseillaise.”
