As I await the arrival of my tickets to see The Who in concert
in a few months, it is tempting in this election season to consider
a 2012 version of the gauzy wisdom of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” — to
wonder whether a majority of this nation still believes, or even
wants to believe, the “same as the old boss” campaign rhetoric of
President Barack Obama, despite his persistent record of
hyper-partisanship and failure, both foreign and domestic.
But sticking with the words of Pete Townshend (a great lyricist
if not the equal of Ray Davies of The Kinks), a better
question as we ponder what is accurately if too frequently called
“the most important election of our lifetimes,” is “Who Are You?”
Who are you, Mr. or Mrs. Likely Voter? And what does America
mean to you?
Are you a “Progressive” who believes, as Barack Obama does, that
our Constitution, our society’s rulebook (even if apparently
officiated by replacement referees these days), is “political
witchcraft” (Woodrow Wilson) designed to create a “supremacy for
the rich and powerful” (Howard Zinn) which should only be supported
by a president “as he understands it” (Franklin Roosevelt)?
Or are you a proud American who believes, as I do, that the
Constitution “is the only safeguard of our liberties” (Abraham
Lincoln), that freedom is being taken from us “by gradual and
silent encroachments” (James Madison), that “the Constitution is
colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens”
(Justice John Marshall Harlan) and that an important defense
against “abuses of Constitutional power” is to “inform (Americans’)
discretion by education” (Thomas Jefferson)?
Do you believe, as Barack Obama does, that there is a “right” to
health care or a “living wage” or anything else which must be
demanded or extracted from others with an implicit threat of
force?
Or do you believe, as the Founders did and as I hope Mitt Romney
at least feels in his gut, that our fundamental laws are the
codification of natural and “negative” rights? To wit, we have
rights as human beings (not just as citizens) regarding actions
that the government may not take against us or allow
others to take against us, rather than commands regarding what
others must do for us.
Do you accept as true, as Barack Obama does, that “When you
spread the
wealth around, it’s good for everybody”? Or do you deem
taxation beyond what is needed to fund the legitimate functions of
government — to protect the life, liberty, and property of
citizens — as “lawful
plunder” which inculcates Americans into a culture of
dependency and out of our historic trait of self-reliance (to
include family, neighbors, and charity when necessary) upon which
American exceptionalism was built? (Liberals, including Obama, view
American exceptionalism as a
myth.)
Do you consider, as Barack Obama does, men (the term used the
traditional way, to include women) to be too venal to be allowed to
freely interact with others, especially in the economic sphere, and
too stupid to be allowed to govern our own affairs, especially in
the most important aspects of our existence as once-free
people?
Or do you conclude, as Madison said in Federalist
51, that although “if men were angels no government would
be necessary,” over-regulation and over-legislation based on
mistrust of our citizens’ ethics or intelligence leads to loss of
liberty and prosperity, while giving government nearly unfettered
power over our daily lives?
These and many other such fundamental issues are at stake on
Tuesday. Questions about “entitlements” (think about what that word
really means, and whether such a thing should really be possible
under our Constitution), and questions about energy policy (whether
to sacrifice the prosperity of a nation at the altar of “green”).
Questions about whether national security means being liked or
being respected, even feared, and questions about whether we want
to live in a country where politicians buy our votes with our own
money by promising subsidies for everything from education to
health care to ethanol (as if any society that is not diagnosably
insane would willingly implement a policy of burning our food). And
perhaps most importantly, critical questions about the immoral
transfer of debt onto the backs of our youngest in order to fund
the profligacy and cowardice of interest groups, unions, and
politicians.
Mitt Romney may not have been most Republicans’ idea of the
perfect candidate. Indeed he was not mine.
But my enthusiasm for a Romney victory is so strong that I will,
for the first time in at least twenty years, vote Republican
(rather than Libertarian; I’ve never voted for a Democrat) for
president.
One obvious reason: As I said to a neighbor who asked me what I
would do on Election Day, “I have two young children. It would be
utterly irresponsible of me to vote for anyone other than Mitt
Romney.” This nation simply cannot afford another four years of
Barack Obama. By that I do not just mean financially, though that
is vitally important, but also in terms of the fundamental
relationship between the citizens of the United States and our
government. Barack Obama has moved us rapidly (speeding up a
process in which politicians of both parties have been complicit
for generations) toward all becoming wards of the state, dependent
on handouts and the beneficence of politicians and regulators. This
must stop, or we will no longer be even vaguely recognizable as the
free nation that our forebears pledged their “lives, fortunes, and
sacred honor” to create.
But another reason to enthusiastically support the Republican
candidate must be made plain, and that reason is Mitt Romney
himself. No doubt any citizen of good will can find something in
Romney’s plans, as with any politician’s plans, to question. But in
the past several weeks, perhaps due to increasing self-confidence
following the pivotal first presidential debate, Romney has become
an appealing, often compelling speaker, with a positive, hopeful,
credible message. (Romney’s
speech in Englewood, Colorado on Saturday is just the latest
example, and well worth watching if you have not seen Romney speak
lately.)
Yes, we could spend our time wondering “Where was this guy six
months ago, or four years ago?” but even successful adults
sometimes go through significant growing processes as they
experience and learn. It is perhaps a key sign of successful adults
that they, unlike our current president, do indeed learn rather
than going through life as the very embodiment of Einstein’s
definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results.
Indeed, Barack Obama’s prescription for the next four years is
identical to that for the last four years, much the same way that a
medieval doctor, determining that
bleeding a patient was not healing her, would then bleed her
again. Mitt Romney is a welcome, and desperately needed, dose of
sanity.
Just as Barack Obama’s character, that of a narcissistic
supercilious petty tyrant, is predictable in a “community
organizer” born to, raised among, and influenced by the most
radical of anti-American leftists, Mitt Romney’s public persona is,
at long last, a better reflection — a fine mirror rather than a
distorting funhouse looking glass — of his true nature as a
remarkably
generous and
decent man. (Please do visit both of those links.) He’s even
shown a warm, self-deprecating sense of
humor unlike our prickly president who is caustic and
egomaniacal even in jest.
For many of us who are deeply opposed to the Obama agenda, Mitt
Romney has gone from being a candidate of default to a man we can
proudly, affirmatively support.
In this election, we face a stark choice. Not just between two
men or two political parties. Not even just between two very
different sets of policies and priorities. We face a choice between
two opposite and incompatible futures for our nation.
It is too optimistic to say that we are at a fork in the road.
Rather, we have already taken the wrong fork in the road and are
heading deep into a jungle where our money will be devoured by
ravenous political beasts goaded by their union owners, and our
freedom will be restrained and then crushed by the strangler figs
of the bureaucratic regulatory state.
But looking through the trees, we can still see, no doubt off to
our right, the path that leads out, into the sunshine of liberty
and free markets, to a nation where adults are expected to make the
most important decisions for themselves and their families, where
politicians and those whose votes they are trying to buy do not
consider your success the same way a leech considers a pulsing
ankle vein, where your relationship to your government does not
mirror your pet’s relationship to you, hoping to be given food,
shelter, and a pat on the head in return for nothing more — and
nothing less — than obedience.
So, Mr. and Mrs. Likely Voter, I ask you again, as you look down
at your ballot, Who Are You?
