Raining on the Parade

Today the infinitely eloquent Barrack Obama gave his inauguration speech. While moving and inspiring as always, it is clear that nothing has changed or is likely to in the near future. The speech was filled to the brim with Orwellian doublespeak that has been the status quo from both sides of the aisle, (a phrase I find appropriate because most times it seems that all that separates a democrat from a republican amounts to a few inches of carpet). The man ran for office on the dubious platform of “change” and “hope”, and yet he is barely in his second breath as President before he engages in the same fear-mongering that has become a staple of the past three administrations.
“Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.”
Yes, the perpetrators are different, for the past eight years the threat that has kept us handing over our civil liberties has been terrorism, which Obama vaguely alludes to here, but the message is identical. The only thing that can save you from all of these terrible things is Government. This is the point he is driving home during his entire speech. He fails to mention that all of the ailments and dangers he mentions are a direct result of liberal policies, except the idea that we must save our planet, which is a product of the liberal imagination. Even as he praises the founding fathers and invokes the Constitution, he announces an assault on everything they stand for.
“On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.”
Yes, the final nail in the Free Market’s coffin, the redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, more regulation and intervention. Definitely sounds like we are no longer concentrating on the petty grievances of forty-eight percent of the population who still hold to the “worn out dogma” of freedom. The forty-eight percent who did not vote for Barrack Obama.
That’s right. You wouldn’t know it by watching television, but Barrack Obama did not win by a landslide. He only won fifty-two percent of the popular vote. This great clamoring for Change by the people only happened on the box in the corner of your living room. There is no mythical Great Consensus as portrayed on the popular news networks. Almost half of America did not want Barrack Obama as President. There is a great rift in American society that is ever widening. You would think that this rift would be between Democrats and Republicans, but that is not the case. This great rift is between the government of the United States and its people. The founders advocated strong local government and a weak central government for exactly the purpose of avoiding this problem. The people are being taxed to death, and the government is spending more and more, exacerbating the problem by printing money until they can get the next tax increase passed. You are spoon fed lots of benevolent reasons for increased taxes. “We need more money for this project or that which will improve life for millions of people, just not you…where is your sense of community? Where is your civic pride? Where is your love for your fellow man? It’s only a small increase, you won’t miss it, it’s for a good cause and we know how to spend it properly, because, after all, we are the government.” Let’s think about this for a minute. Let’s forget about the amount that you are taxed. The idea that you are taxed even a half a percent of your income is not only morally wrong, but it’s economic suicide, and a license for government to get bigger. Suppose I walked into your house and I stole something of moderate value, say, worth three or four hundred dollars. You catch me, and call the police, and I go to court to answer for my theft. On the stand I testify that I had planned to sell what I stole and give the money to a charity, or give it to a homeless man, or to buy food for my starving children. I think it is safe to say that no matter how many well intended things I planned to do with my loot, the fact that I stole it from you is the only thing that matters, and I would go straight to jail, and rightly so. Personal property is a sacred and protected right in this country. So why do we allow the government to do the very same thing? Income tax amounts to nothing more than a politically correct version of slave labor. The Great Dog and Pony Show continues, and all the pundits and anchors and politicians on television talk about how far we’ve come and the fight for civil liberties and how much freedom we have in the United States of America, all the while the average American worker toils the first four to six months of his year to fund the government in one form or another.
Mr. Obama speaks of all men being created equal, and yet he places it on government to make them equal. He talks about freedom, but his perception of freedom is only a watered down socialism, freedom perverted into mild oppression. As Henry Ford approached cars, so liberalism approaches freedom. You may have it any way you want it, so long as you want it the way I want it. Liberty inside a box is not liberty at all. A free market with restrictions and bailouts is not a free market. A free country and a free market cannot exist apart from one another.
Oh wait! There’s more! Obama envisions a national healthcare system. A system in which the Federal government would pay for all healthcare for every citizen of the United States, including, no doubt, all the illegals that are about to receive amnesty. The drawbacks should be obvious to anyone who has served in the military, and received tax-payer funded care, which at best, can be described as mediocre. If the economy doesn’t collapse from over-inflation by the time Obama begins to implement national healthcare, which it almost certainly will at our current rate, it will, it will collapse because of over-taxation and over-inflation as a direct result of this plan. Medical science will stagnate, and America will have gone from being at one time the envy of the Scientific and Medical world to the level of a third world country in a matter of a few years.

You see? Liberalism is a vicious cycle of ignorance and blind hope. Maybe in four years we can stop the cycle.

A Squandered Birthright.

My wife is becoming more and more annoyed with me these days, and with good reason. She has had to give more neck massages than usual, and I believe it will not be long before she starts wearing earplugs while the news is on. Up until recently I would only sit and shake my head as I listened to men in ties tell me how to think. With the news of the bailouts and unrelenting intrusion by our government into our lives, my ritual of cranial oscillation has been interrupted by loud angry outbursts directed at the television. 
The reason? Simple. Hutch has finally had it. Hutch was not raised to distrust those in power. Hutch was not raised to be violent or angry. And he was CERTAINLY not raised to write in third person. And yet, here he is...er...I Am!
Why have I had it? I love you guys! You always ask the right questions! I'll tell you why I've had it.
Think back. All the way back to your earliest memories of American History class. Think of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Revere and Henry. Think of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. That piece of paper that said with the might of a republic that no man was born better than any other man. That no American is a subject. All are citizens. This is our proud birthright. None before it or since has been its equal. Think of what that generation gave for us to have it. Could we face them after what we have allowed our birthright to become? I know I could not. What would they think of our all-powerful federal government that can declare any of us an "enemy combatant" and kidnap us without explanation, ship us off to a foreign country, and hold us indefinitely without trial? What would they say if they knew that our President, with a bloody stroke of his pen, had sent thousands off to die in an unconstitutional war? How would we justify the comments made by men we elected relegating the document they gave their lifeblood for to be labeled as "dead", "arcane", or , worst of all, " subject to interpretation"? 
The most painful part of the last few days has been listening to representatives being derided for voting based on the outcry from their constituents. These men were cursed as "unpatriotic" and accused of not caring about the good of the country. Last I checked, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Franks, this is still a representative form of government. It is not your job to decide "what is best for America". America decides that. Anything short of casting your vote in agreement with the people you claim to represent is nothing short of authoritarian dictatorship. Judging from the outcry against it, that piece of legislation should never have made it to paper.
America, you are entitled to more than this. WE THE PEOPLE are entitled to more than this. 
I heard an anchor on CNBC the other day refer to the ideas held by those who oppose the federal reserve system(myself included) as "Timothy McVeigh-like" Have we really fallen so far? Have we really come to a place where those who hold the fiscal point of view in line with the founding fathers intentions are painted with the same brush as a murderer of innocent people?
We can change this. We can still raise our voice and be heard. We can still vote. Once they take that from us, and they will try, we have one choice. We must retake with our own blood what the first generation of Americans bought with theirs. Our freedom. Not some vain cliche. Not a campaign slogan used to incite young men to war, but real freedom. Our birthright. Our threatened inheritance. Jefferson's words ring more true today than ever. "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" It is not foreign powers that threaten our freedom. We must be vigilant of the enemy within, of human nature to dominate those not in a position to defend themselves from "the insidious encroachment by men of zeal"
I'm not going to tell you how you should vote. I'll only say this. change will not come from a republican or a democrat. There is no more hope in Obama than there is national safety in McCain. A vote for either of these will be cast for four more years of the same.
Show me some passion. Even if....no...ESPECIALLY if you disagree with me. comment.