"Hope and Change" or "Opium and Chains"?

Who, besides me, is tired of the race-bating and class warfare that is being dumped on us daily from our president, Barack Hussein Obama (mmm, mmm, mmm) and his leftsist cronies and union patsies?  A couple weeks ago, the president spoke off-prompter and actually explained in plain English how he really feels about small business owners and entrepreneurs. He, in essence, said he was amazed that some people think that they built their businesses because they might have been smarter or worked harder than other people. He pointed out that there are a lot of smart people out there and a lot of hardworking people out there. When his words were quoted back to him by his opponents on the right—and rightly interpreted as disdainful of conservatives who happen to take pride in their initiative and hard work and would like to be able to keep more of their earnings than he and the democrats would like to let them—the president and his supporters cried “foul” and claimed that he was taken out of context. I always enjoy the left trying to invent new dance steps to avoid the truth about their beliefs. They claimed that he was referring to roads and bridges that the government built. I would argue that if he was actually trying to make that point that he was again wrong. Businesses, business owners and the rest of us who pay taxes are obviously the builders of the those things too. Where does the government money come from? We have given the federal government sole responsibility for printing our money, but we drive the economy and give that money its intrinsic value via the free market. 

This belief that people don’t get to the top without lots of help from others probably has a lot to do with his own life experience.  He has admitted to being a druggie and slacker in his youth, even into his college years. He has had a lot of help along his way, never having had to do much beside community organizing. We don’t know how he was able to get into an Ivy League school, for example. His college records, including applications, have been sealed, so we do not know how “smart” he is—I have my doubts due to his mispronunciation of the word “corpsman”.  He had help, by a convicted felon, in obtaining a sweetheart deal for the purchase of his home in Chicago. The news media covered for him every step of the way. So sure, he did not get where he is by himself, by how smart he is or by how hard he worked.

Obama’s claims that we owe the government something for our successes is not completely off the mark.  I would correct that sentiment somewhat by saying that we owe the greatest share of whatever success we have in this country to the extraordinary constitution we have inherited from our country’s founders and the freedoms it declares, as coming from God, to pursue happiness.  I would argue that we have often chiseled away at the Constitution over the past 200, but the recognition, to this point, that we have the freedom to pursue happiness is still viable.  Nowhere in the Constitution does it declare that happiness will be provided by the government, however, no matter what the democrats may want to read into it.

If you are a success in this country, our society—and I am not suggesting that government and society are the same thing, because they can be at odds with one another—expects that you give something back.  Because of our Judeo-Christian foundations, we, as a society, feel a moral obligation to look out for those who are unable to care for themselves. It was not part of the Constitution that government should level playing fields and redistribute wealth.  That is, and always will be, a socialist or Marxist notion.  Be that as it may, we have succumbed to such progressive ideas to the extent that we instituted income taxes and then gradually made them more and more progressive to the point that only a bare majority of the population has any skin in the game. When it gets to the point that the minority is expected to carry the weight of the majority, through even greater progressive taxation, we will likely never see a conservative elected to office again, and this wonderful experiment at government, by the people and for the people, will come to an end.

Because I believe such things, many will conclude that I am a racist or a Scrooge.  The fact is that I would vote in a minute for a minority who believes in conservative principles. I read Thomas Sowell’s and Walter Williams’s articles every week and lament the fact that neither of these brilliant conservative black economists are seeking political office. These two are members of a real minority.  I also tithe and donate almost 15% of my GROSS income to charity. The great philanthropic leftists, Joe Biden and Al Gore, as I understand it, are a long way from even being in my class, as to percentage of their income that they are willing to part with for the truly needy. However, they will buy every vote they possibly can with tax money.

So, what do we really owe to the government if we have a successful business? President Obama would suggest that you couldn’t have a successful business without the government’s aid. He would site roads and bridges as necessary government contributions to your success. Interestingly, we would not need all the roads to the extent that we have today if brilliant people like Henry Ford had not gotten private investment capital and tried again and again to build a car that would need such infrastructure.  Oil companies are constantly being demonized for huge profits—actually less than the percentage that Apple makes per dollar investment—but they are not among the entities that take the biggest cuts from every dollar spent at the gas pump. That would be the federal, state and local governments, in that order. And, if the government can take credit for helping businesses flourish, should it not follow that they are equally responsible for business failures? It has been estimated that 50% of businesses fail in the first year and that 90% will fail within 5 years. I would suggest that the government should get out of the way then. Government, it seems to me, owes more to business than business owes to government.

Four years ago we were told that “Hope and Change” would be the result of an Obama presidency. The truth is that we have been given “Opium and Chains”.  The longer we buy this class warfare and race-bating drivel, that the rich need to pay their “fare share!” and that “You didn’t build that!, we will find ourselves more and more in the mire of indebtedness and vote to live off the fruits of others’ genius and labors.